McCardell non-profit goes live with website

Author: Sonja Pedersen-Green

Choose Responsibility, the local non-profit organization founded by President Emeritus John M. McCardell, Jr. to study the 21-year-old drinking age, officially launched its website (www.chooseresponsibility.org) this week. Although Monday, April 9 was the official launch date, the new site has been live since April 4.

Prior to the launch, the url was home to a splash page that provided limited information about the organization. The group has been working for several months to create their new homepage in conjunction with Burlington-based Union Street Media, which was founded by Middlebury alum Ted Adler '99.5. Choose Responsibility recognized months ago that they would need a Web site to be credible as an organization, even if they were not yet ready to go live with their more in-depth Web site.

"An organization without a Web site is an organization that may as well not exist," said Scott Guenther '06.5, assistant to the director for Choose Responsibility. Because the group was scheduled to meet with a number of people and groups regarding their research, it was essential for them to have a Web site, even if it was not yet complete.

The April launch date was chosen "primarily due to constraints on our time," said Guenther. "We knew that if the site was delayed any longer it would not be noticed by colleges that finish their spring terms in early May," he said. "Any earlier and the site would lack important information. Long ago we thought the site could be launched at the beginning of 2007 - it turned out to be a bigger project than we had initially realized."

One of the reasons that the project became so big is that the site was planned to be "the go-to place for information on Legal-Age 18," according to McCardell in a January meeting with The Campus. Guenther believes the site is heading in that direction, even soon after its launch, but recognizes that it will be essential for Choose Responsibility to edit the site as time goes on. "[We] also realize that we can always use additional information. The site is most definitely not set in stone," he said, "We have editing capabilities and will be constantly adding new information to the site as the field develops, and as we have the time to write about topics in greater detail."

Choose Responsibility has been monitoring site traffic since its inception, and has been somewhat surprised with its findings. Although there are a large number of visitors from the Middlebury and Burlington regions, there have also been a significant number of visits from IP addresses in the Washington, D.C. area and on college campuses across the country. Choose Responsibility is using Google Analytics to monitor their site traffic, which Grace Kronenberg '06, assistant to the director calls, "a very cool tool."

"We're still in the first week of public release," said Kronenberg, "But have gotten hundreds of visits from across the country and even internationally. We've had quite a few people respond with words of support and sign up to receive more information."

The large geographical spread of the site's visitors might be due in part to Choose Responsibility's marketing campaign that correlated with the launch of its site.

"We sent out a flurry of mailings this past week to colleges throughout the country," said Guenther. "As the recipients of that initial mailing spread the word, we are in a position to see a spike of hits in the coming week, as well as a second round of publicity." This will likely increase the publications the group has been featured in. Its research was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education last week, and in the upcoming weeks "will appear in US News, Parade Magazine, on NPR, on the Comcast channel (Art Fennel Reports), and in George Will's column," according to Kronenberg.

"Foremost, we hope the website will help us gain national resonance, and that people will refer to it as they read about us in various news sources, hear about us on the radio/TV, and hear about us online in blogs, etc.," said Kronenberg.