Nonprofit Religious Organization Web Sites: Underutilized Avenue of Communicating with Group Members

Abstract

The number of nonprofit religious organizations continues to grow in the United States, and most of them now operate an organizational Web site. However, the organizations surveyed for this research were found to be underutilizing their Web sites. Most of the organizations surveyed gave the Web sites less attention than other types of media contact with members, did not view their Web sites as recruiting tools, did not know how many members were using the sites, and few of them employed Internet professionals to oversee and maintain the sites.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was made possible with a grant from the J. W. Criss Fund through Mississippi State University. The researcher thanks the fund for its support of research on the role of Christianity in society.

The researcher also thanks Carrie Crowder and Hilary Gresham for their help in collecting this data.