OpenSourcery

When a person visits your non-profit's website they need to be instantly reassured about a few things:

1. This is the right website for your non-profit organization.
2. The organization is currently active and has it's act together.
3. The website behaves as expected.

In my experience non-profits usually get #1 right just by stating their name and their service region. Keeping your website up-to-date in terms of appearance and fresh content usually takes care of #2. There are many ways a website can fail to behave as expected, automatically making sound is just one way. The Code of Website Silence is the most basic rule The Internet has, and nonprofit organizations frequently violate this rule as they strive get visitors engaged about their charitable cause.

Websites should not make any sound, except in response to a clear choice on the part of the visitor to play the multimedia on your website. If I can hear your website, and I didn't tell it to make a sound, then your website is misbehaving. When music, videos, or sound recordings start playing all of a sudden, it throws your visitor into a panic. They will frantically try to stop the sound from happening. Your website shouldn't beep or make little user-feedback blips, clicks, or fizzles in response to mouse interactions; while these brief sound effects aren't as bad as, say, playing music or recorded speech, they are still an intrusion into the quiet enjoyment your website promises each visitor.

I have been amazed at how many nonprofit website breach The Code of Website Silence, since it's an easy rule to follow and it was established in the early days common web development practice. Just when I think I'll never come across a non-profit website that automatically plays sound, I run across an opera company website, where I am treated to an excerpt of Cosi Fan Tutte; or a hunger relief agency website, where an advocacy video plays each time I return to the homepage; or an animal shelter, where the menu items bark and mew. Thankfully I have yet to encounter a victims of domestic violence assistance website which makes noise, because that would be dangerous (e.g. “Welcome to our website, brave surviver. Be careful not to seek help on this website from your home computer, now, y'hear ?”).

Opera Company: I can tell by the name of your website, and the beautiful images of costumed singers, that you guys really know how to deliver some World-class Opera. I don't need to hear the singing when I visit your page. If I'm an opera fan, I might already be listening to Opera using my computer, or a nearby phonograph, when I visit your website, which would make for some very confusing listening. I might be using your website to look up your phone number so I can order tickets by phone, I don't have time for the ring cycle when I'm trying to ring you up. Your website should remain tacet while I conduct this business. I'll press the play button if I want to hear a sample.

Hunger Relief Agency: I often have several websites open in tabs, and might not even be looking at your page at the moment. I might have decided, “Oh, I'll read about these 10 worthy nonprofits mentioned in this newspaper article about hunger, which I'm still not quite finished reading”, only to be surprised that one or two of those pages started emitting sounds. My response is to frantically close pages until the sound stops. Trust me, more people will look at the video if you let them play it when they are ready to watch it.

Animal Shelter: Great, now my dog is awake and barking at my laptop.

The Tides Foundation is accepting nominations for the $10,000 Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest. The annual prize, now in its third year, honors a software developer whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the nonprofit sector and to ongoing efforts for positive social change.

Read more here:

http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/rfp_item.jhtml?id=243100023