The Southern African NGO Network (Sangonet) will be hosting its first-ever NGO Web Awards in conjunction with its second annual ICTs for Civil Society conference in March this year — and NGOs have less than a month to enter.
Sangonet aims to encourage and support the use of information and communications technology (ICT) among NGOs by providing them with various services and initiatives.
David Barnard, Sangonet’s executive director, said the motivation to reward NGOs that have websites is to encourage them to use the internet as a communication and advocacy tool.
“What we also picked up over the past year is that on one level the website uptake and usage in the NGO sector is still fairly limited and fairly basic, but it’s also encouraging that a significant number of NGOs now have a website.
“But obviously the sector is large. There’s most probably an urban bias to who’s having a website … [on a] rural or even a community-based organisation level, obviously resources play an important role in people’s day-to-day survival and infrastructure,” he said.
A panel of five or six judges will judge NGO websites on their use of innovative concepts and content as well as their accessibility, usability and how they attract readers.
The competition aims to raise awareness among South African NGOs about the benefits of having a website.
The winners of the NGO Web Awards will be announced at the ICTs for Civil Society conference, to be held in Johannesburg from March 7 to 9. The conference will focus on a range of new ICT services, and each winning NGO will showcase its website during a special session focusing on the role and relevance of websites in support of the work of South African NGOs.
According to a study conducted in May last year by Sangonet, only 89% of the surveyed 320 NGOs had contact information on their websites.
Fazila Farouk, Sangonet’s deputy director, said: “That was a completely surprising outcome. It’s a basic level of information that one would think that people would expect organisations to post on their website.
“We are now living in what’s commonly referred to as the information society, so the application of ICT tools is becoming increasingly important in the way NGOs are conducting their work.”
The study also looked at feedback mechanisms on the websites, as well as their use of interactive media such as polls, forums, blogs, search tools and subscriptions to mailing lists.
Twenty percent of the surveyed websites offered users feedback mechanisms, 11% ran polls, 19% had search tools and only 17% offered subscriptions for updates or newsletters.
Farouk said the results were disappointing.
“As change agents, NGOs need to influence public opinion and one of the most critical communication tools that the NGO sector can apply to their work is developing an online presence,” she added.
“In South Africa, the NGO sector has not optimised its use of the online environment as much as it’s being optimised by particularly European and more especially the American NGOs.”
For more information about the NGO Web Awards and the ICTs for Civil Society conference, visit www.sangonet.org.za. The closing date for the competition is February 17