Website Content of Australian Community Based Organisations

Community based organisations (CBOs) are non-profit, non-government organization which serve a local community’s needs. CBOs resemble non-profit small businesses in many ways. However, their special service characteristics and looser support structures make them a group to categorise separately for the purposes of this study. The issues facing CBOs and their development of web sites can differ from those of typical small businesses. There is little research available on the use of websites by CBOs and even less in relation to the content of their websites. This project reports on the analysis of the content of websites of three categories of CBOs. It is known that a similar set of barriers to the successful use of information technologies (and the Internet) as those facing small businesses can be identified for CBOs. Reporting on a study of the websites of 45 CBOs, this paper reflects on the differences between the website content of CBOs and small businesses and classifies the content of their websites according to four areas: identification and image; promotion and contract; relationship enhancement and transactional interactivity. Whilst a number of differences were discovered between the types of website features adopted by different categories of CBOs, the differences are not as stark when CBOs of the same category are compared.