By Yvette Fawcett
There is no doubt that the internet has increased the prospective scope of clientele of any organisation. The internet provides a unique opportunity for social justice organisations to raise interest and awareness of their cause not only in the wider community but all over the world. This investigation will analyse and compare the web sites of two of the largest community services in Australia, namely Mission Australia and the Wesley Mission. According to Megan Wilson (2003) there are six criteria which may be used to evaluate non-profit web sites; the useability of the web site; its educational value, its effectiveness of conveying the mission of the organisation, its layout and content, its accessibility and the frequency of updating information. All this will be considered in first part of this analysis. The second part will focus on religious aspect, as portrayed in their respective websites, of the Wesley Mission and Mission Australia. Since President George W. Bush announced in 2001 a greater partnership between government and faith-based organisations in the US, social scientists have examined questions not only over effectiveness and fairness of these organisations over secular community services but also on what defines a ‘faith-based’ or religious organisation (Wuthnow 2004: 15). Though this analysis will not be discussing the effectiveness of such organisations, the factors of determining religiosity of a social justice organisation are of particular interest to this investigation.
The useability of a web site covers the functions with which the user can interact with it, including downloads, mailing lists, bookmarks to social networking sites, current news and information. Mission Australia is very effective in this respect. Its home page has a self-scrolling bar on new headlines, a link to subscribe to its newsletter, links to popular social networks and downloads of research and mission statements of the organisation. Wesley Mission has many of the same features but some aren’t as obvious and the user has to search for them. Both have educative websites, identifying and discussing their target issues and services of the organisation. Wesley Mission also includes in its right side tool bar a figure encompassing the impact that each service has had in the community, which helps evoke emotion for the cause. The layout should make the web site easy to navigate and to find information which is sought by its user (Wilson 2003: online). The layout in Mission Australia’s web site is clear and logical links and headings make it easy to find information. Wesley Mission’s web site, however, has many links that are circular, leading the user back to the start again without the information that was hoped would be found. Mission Australia’s web site also conveys its mission statement much better than the Wesley Mission. The theme “pathways” is used in its mission statement as well as many other pages which list its services. Its web site also appears to be more up-to-date, each page includes the time and date on which it was updated. While both websites may be found easily with a quick search on Google, Mission Australia’s web site has the advantage again as it cleverly includes ‘tag clouds’ which contain the major themes of the page. Mission Australia has also expanded to Blogspot, which means more possible links to its web site.
Another part of my analysis of these web sites is exploring their commitment to portraying how religion is relational to their respective social justice mission. Both Mission Australia and Wesley Mission identify themselves as Christian community services, but how involved is this religious dimension in the organisations’ programs? In his book, Jeavons (2001 cited in Ebaugh 2003: 413) discusses central characteristics of faith-based organisations. Firstly, faith-based community services identify themselves as affiliated with a religion (2001 cited in Ebaugh 2003: 413). This is the case with both Mission Australia (which is included in its mission statement) and the Wesley Mission (which is part of the Uniting Church, the third largest Christian denomination in Australia). Secondly, the members of the organisation tend to be religiously active individuals (2001 cited in Ebaugh 2003: 413); this can be seen in Wesley Mission which is headed by Reverend Keith Garner and their staff is required “to affirm [its] vision and values”, which are distinctively Christian. However in the short description of staff members of Mission Australia, it says that they come from diverse religious backgrounds. Lastly their goals and services are usually religious in nature and provided by religious institutions (2001 cited in Ebaugh 2003: 413). This can be said of the Wesley Mission, which offers a number of worship services found on the Praise, Prayer and Preaching Calendar that can be downloaded from the web site. Mission Australia, however, has only chaplaincy services of which the web site does not have much information. It may be said that religion is “passive” in Mission Australia, in that it has no “explicit mention of religious matters in the program” but are revealed in its acts of caring (Wuthnow 2004: 143). The Wesley Mission has a more “integrated” dimension of faith which is a crucial part of the program but the “staff respects the rights of clients to not participate in the religious aspects of the program” (Wuthnow 2004: 143).
From this brief analysis of various aspects portrayed in their web sites, it can be seen that while Wesley Mission has strong ties with Christian values, Mission Australia does not have strong religious visions in their social justice mission. This, however, is not a determining factor is their overall effectiveness. The appeal is determined by its audience and how the clientele of the organisation are perceived through the web site. While an organisation like Wesley Mission would naturally appeal to the Christian community (Wuthnow 2006: 158), the web site does not portray a sense of exclusivity from the wider community. This can more so be said of the Mission Australia web site. Mission Australia has extremely organised and professional web site, while this is a definite advantage for useability, it could be perceived to mean that it is also ‘extremely’ institutionalised and therefore, considering the general trend, more bureaucratic. The Wesley Mission’s web site may be more disorganised and the links may lead one in a circle but it may be perceived to have more ‘charm’ and more sense of community rather than institution. Despite all this, both web sites contain inspiring messages of hope and commitment which have the potential to move its reader, and with any luck it will.
References
Ebaugh, H.R; Pipes, P.F; Chafez, J.S; Daniels, M (2003).”Where’s the religion? Distinguishing Faith-Based from Secular Social Service Agencies”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 42 (3) pp. 441- 426
Mission Australia Web sites: http://www.missionaustralia.com.au/
United Church Web site: http://www.uca.org.au/uca.htm
Wesley Mission Web site: http://www.wesleymission.org.au/homepage.asp
Wilson, M.(2003) Evaluating the Effectiveness of Nonprofit Web Sites. Accessed: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/archives/page9370.cfm . Online.
Wuthnow, R (2004). Saving America?: Faith Based Services and the Future of Civil Society. Princeton, Princeton University Press
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