• www.aauw.org comments: moved to www.aauw.org tracking form
  It’s the best way to get a personal message back from the staff on your issue. Specific volunteers have insight into what’s been reported there.
• Training wish list: some things may still be posted here, but for the most part as I find ideas that I think are applicable to AAUW, I’m tagging them with “aauwtech” at del.icio.us. See also wiki.bbvx.org for information that I’ve organized for training purposes — feel free to jump in and add to that.
• General: Items that would have been posted here have been moved to the AAUW NC blog or to my Change blog.

On the other hand, this blog may live for awhile until I have time to figure out a better home for the categories:

• TUAG: Hmm… I need to review those posts and figure out what to do with them and where they’re to live. The TUAG has had a few successes, but the discussion here was not part of that.
• Membership: Hmm…, again. Some of these issues are still open. Some could be referred to the web site tracking system. Others may need to go somewhere else.

The phone number on that page is the  800 number for the helpline. If you want to talk to a particular staff member who isn’t listed on that page(and don’t want to wait for the helpline’s 10:00 a.m. opening), you can call 202/785-7700. That number is in the footer of AAUW letterhead so appears many places on the web site. I don’t understand why it’s hard to find it.

The discussion boards just seem to be orphaned. Other problems with them have gone unresolved for more than a year. So in the grand scheme of things, this is probably not worth reporting.

But if you try to insert a link to a secure site (e.g. [L=Yugma]https://www.yugma.com/index.php[/L], the system inserts an “http://” at the start of the link which results in an invalid link: http://https://… . In this case, I could change the link to http://www.yugma.com, but that may not always be the case.

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/99-email-security-tips-112006/ 

Click contribute in the top navigation bar, and you get to the page noted above.

On that page, if you click the AAUW link near the top (because you clicked “contribute” to make a gift, and AAUW because you wanted to make it to the Association) you’re whisked off to a general info page with no development links visible.

To give you need to read to the second section of the Contribute page and click a link there — or look at the links in the left hand column. Why make it hard for donors?

I’d flip those sections of the page — instead of

• First Time Donor
• Giving Opportunites

maybe

• Giving Opportunities
• Learn why your donation is important

Remember, people don’t come to web pages expecting to wade through deathless prose — their eyes are drawn to links and their brains make assumptions about where those links will take them.

This picture was inserted with “send to editor using original”:

Severity: minor
Audience: smal
Fiscal effect: yes
Policy question: no
Reported: yes (to Tom at ShopAAUW)
Link: http://aauw.tranguard.com/images.asp?id=722

The PDF order form at ShopAAUW says that at-large dues for 2003-2004 are $42. MAL dues for 2006-2007 are $47. Tom said he’d check on getting that updated (and would verify the state sales tax figures).

Severity: minor
Audience: as large as possible
Fiscal effect: maybe (general impression of organization)
Policy question: no
Reported: yes (just now to Betty)
Link: www.aauw.org

Once upon a time, www.aauw.org had a fairly tight (if busy) layout. There was a small “search” in the upper left. It was about the same size as the “member center” button that is near the search form now.

In the fall of 2005, the “old” search was replaced with one “powered by Google”. [The old search, a ColdFusion plugin of some sort, hadn’t been working for months.] The new search (that worked!) was, of course, an improvement, but the Google search form was larger than the old one and that threw off the layout of the home page.

There’s evidently been a standard “make the home page graphic this size (c. 347×378?)” that’s been in effect since the last redesign (2003?). But with the larger search form (and correspondingly taller left column) this graphic is significantly smaller than the table cell allotted for it in the middle of the page.

This, I think, makes the whole page look unbalanced. Given that we’re using a fixed rather than floating design (and one that was initially greeted with “it’s too small!”), it would seem that we could fit the pieces together a bit better. There are also ways to deemphasize the Google search box (smaller logo, etc.).

Severity: minor
Audience: moderate
Fiscal effect: maybe (if branch members don’t think the form applies to them)
Policy question: no
Reported: yes (just now to helpline and webmaster)

In the Member-Get-A-Member info at http://www.aauw.org/member_center/membership_growth/Member-Get-A-MemberCampaign.cfm#Resources

the last item under Resources is

Application Form: Form for new members recruited by members-at-large when the new member does not want to join online.

I think it should be “as members-at-large” rather than “by members-at-large”. The form is more likely to be used by branch members who are giving at-large (i.e. national only) memberships and/or recruiting friends who just aren’t interested in the branch to join us at the national level.