NGO Committee on the Status of Women

Introduction

In May of 2011, a few friendly folks at the NGO Committee on the Status of Women approached Social Ink with unique website request.  The 2000+ member organization needed not only a new website, but one that could handle registrations for the various events (and sub-events) of their yearly fundraising and organizing events.  NGO-CSW also needed to securely accept donations in order to push the organization forward, and wanted everything wrapped in a friendly, updatable package for hardworking staff that weren’t computer geeks.

Site Redesign

Together with key staff members, we migrated their old logo and visual elements into a new site design using the WordPress software.  Our previous experience in using WordPress as a powerful base for sophisticated web applications helped us to work with the committee to create a site that showcased their annual Women of Distinction, annal events and continuous news.

Registration & Donation System

CSW-NGO needed a way to both collect regular donations – and collect payments + donations for the various events they were hosting.  We connected them to the platform set up by the folks at Stripe, using a security certificate and low transaction fee to funnel all transactions in a secure manner using Stripe’s developer-friendly interface (and obviating the need for PCI compliance and other fees that eat away at the bottom line).  We integrated the payment system with a multiple registrations and an upload feature to accept advertisements and promotional items in their annual handbook.

Wrassling with Members

Further integrating the various previous systems at CSW-NGO, we thought of different solutions to migrate the old membership system into WordPress system, accomplishing two goals: centralizing two previously separated systems of membership and website content, and “future-proofing” the membership system by tying CSW-NGO members as “users” in the new website.  While CSW-NGO didn’t need it at the beginning, this site architecture proved useful as the organization began to explore new avenues of allowing members-only login to private website content, as well managing member profiles.

To The Future…

We’re delighted to have worked with these women on their vision toward enlarging CSW-NGO’s role in UN governance.  View the full project portfolio item here.