As we have discussed in several past posts, the board has committed to improvement in five areas of focus this year. We have promised to:

• Improve accessibility.
• Hear from members.
• Communicate more.
• Increase accountability.
• Evaluate the organization’s structure and activities.

We’d like to share some of the steps we’ve taken in these areas with our members and with the general public.

This week, we’re going to look further at our successes and our next steps to Evaluate the organization’s structure and activities, this time looking at the structure of our online presence.

What we’ve accomplished

As we have grown and evolved as an organization, with two supporter groups for two local teams, it is critical that we structure our online presence to reflect the relationships among the Independent Supporters Trust and our two supporter groups: the Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters.

Domain name change: As we noted earlier this week, the place where 107IST lives online is no longer timbersarmy.org; it is now 107ist.org. Content on our website that is specific to the Timbers Army is now found under 107ist.org/timbersarmy; content on our website that is specific to the nonprofit organization is found under 107ist.org. When you sign up for events with 107IST, the event addresses will also have 107ist.org links.

Everyday communications: In alignment with the work on the website, we have also spent the last several months reviewing how we use our social media and blogs. We realized the need to communicate similar messages, while also maintaining a distinct voice and presence for each branch. Our communications team has broadened its scope and increased its focus, giving each branch a dedicated group within the comms team, while also ensuring that each branch communicates within the committee regularly. This ensures messaging from each group maintains its unique identity, while also keeping the broader message consistent across groups and platforms.

Next steps

Next steps include a migration of Rose City Riveters content so that ultimately it “lives” online under 107ist.org in the same way that Timbers Army content does, as well as continuing to build out content specific to each branch on the organization’s website.