Chapter Websites

I have recently received a request from a chapter regarding chapter websites – asking if it is ok for them to develop their own website rather than use our standard format.  I thought that my reply might be of interest to other chapters:

Hi,

Thank you for your email and I fully understand why you might like to develop a chapter website under your own steam.  Let me give you some background regarding these websites which may be helpful in reviewing your position on this:

• Over the last 9 ½ years we have had many chapters looking to develop sites on their own in NZ. Up until now I have been happy to let these proliferate as I felt that this was a good thing and also BNI HQ was relaxed about this.  What I can tell you is that right now the organisation is undertaking a review of its corporate branding and my guess is that in time we will be required to take control of all websites in our respective countries to ensure consistency in branding around the world.
• Many of the chapter websites that have been developed over the years have been of a very high standard – however they have all been stand alone websites – which means that they require someone to keep them up to date.  Over time many of the sites have become out of date and no longer list correct information such as venue, chapter members etc.
• We have put together a template for a data base driven chapter website.  This can simply be a turn key site whereby someone with no website expertise can log on – enter some basic informaton such as chapter name etc – and the site is ready to go live.  At the same time – we made the decision to leave the door open for chapters to edit just about everything about the site – by way of the CMS editor but the site itself is still automatically updated by the BNI database.
• Listed below are links to two sites – one which is a turn key site and the other one where the webdesigner in the chapter has done his own thing.  I think you will agree that whilst restrictions still exist – we have given the chapters a good degree of flexibility in what they do:
  www.bniprobiz.co.nz    www.waikatometro.bnisite.com

• We have put together a simple video targeted towards people who are not familiar with website software to show them how to set up a chapter website – and for those who are in the know – it is simply a case of using the CMS editor to give the site your own look and feel.
• With regard to domain names – we have given some guidelines on the site to chapters who wish to purchase their own domain names – and have a standard form of domain name that is available free of charge.  As you can see from the two examples above – we encourage chapters to use the format:  ‘www.bni (name of your chapter). co.nz’  if they are purchasing a domain name – or they can use our free domain name – ‘www. (name of chapter).bnisite.com’ 

I hope that this helps – please feel free to contact me should you wish to discuss this further, however in conclusion, I am not saying to you that you cannot develop your own site – but I would encourage you to use our software as the time may well be coming when I am required to start to seek to regulate chapter websites and this is one of the reasons we have developed the current format and made it available free of charge to the chapters.  The other reason is that if we have 100 chapters all using our software and standard form of web address – all promoting themselves and their chapter members – we are going to significantly raise the profile of BNI in NZ.

Kind Regards,

Graham Southwell