NCCD's New Website

Organization Name:
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
City & State:
Describe your creative piece – what is it and what has it been used for, and why is it innovative?
Our creative piece is NCCD's dynamic new website, which launched in January, 2010. Our new website allows us to reach new audiences and utilize newer technologies such as RSS, a blog, and social networking to more effectively spread the word about NCCD's important work in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. NCCD’s new website is used to further public understanding of the issues we care about and to help people understand the complex causes of crime and what must be done to prevent and control it.
What issue or problem were you working to address with this piece?
NCCD is a century old organization and our website appeared just as old. It was unattractive and difficult to navigate. The website was not great at communicating the work we do, and visitors to the site were not able to easily access information or our research publications. It was technologically behind the times and did not have many current standard capabilities such as RSS, a blog, online donations, etc. It limited the exposure and potential affect on policy our research could have, and it also limited the potential for donations that could further our important work.
How has your submission successfully impacted your organization’s ability to solve this issue/problem?
Our new website is interactive and dynamic, easily linking visitors to our new blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages where we write about the latest issues in criminal and juvenile justice. We have integrated our new site with IssueLab, which has helped bring our research publications to a new audience. We have also added a news feed where we highlight relevant articles to create awareness about current developments in criminal and juvenile justice. With our new site we have seen a dramatic increase in our web traffic and we now find our pages at or near the top of Google search results for several of our key words. We have incorporated new ways for people to get involved with NCCD including online donations, which has increased NCCD’s ability to continue our important work.
Creative Submission - URL
http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/index.html