David Tiong: Business

Digital on a Shoestring — What Nonprofits Should Prioritise

2026-01-12T00:00:00Z

If you’re running a nonprofit, you already know that getting donations consistently isn’t easy, and there’s always more to do than there are people to do it. Digital often ends up as someone’s side responsibility, added on top of everything else they’re already doing. Or maybe the website was built by an agency or volunteer years ago, and now nobody’s quite sure how to update it. The result is a site that doesn’t really reflect what you do anymore, social accounts that go quiet for months, and a vague sense that you should be doing more online but no clarity on where to start.

Here’s where to focus when you can’t do everything.

Priority 1: A clear, simple website
Your website is often someone’s first impression. A potential donor, volunteer, or partner Googling you before they decide whether to engage. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it does need to answer three questions clearly: What do you do? Who do you help? How can someone support you? If those aren’t obvious within ten seconds, that’s your starting point.

What often gets in the way is the opposite of simplicity. Too many fonts fighting for attention. Animations that distract, things rotating on hover, content sliding in and out. No consistent colour scheme, so every highlighted section competes with every other one and nothing stands out. Sliders with text that moves before anyone can read it. Popups that are broken or just annoying. Too many buttons and links on a single page, leaving visitors unsure what they’re actually meant to do. Headings used for long sentences, causing text to overlap or break in odd ways.

If a visitor can’t figure out your work in plain language within a few seconds, you’re losing people who might want to help.

Priority 2: An easy way to donate
If donations matter to your funding, make the donate button impossible to miss. Put it in your header, not buried in a submenu. Then test the process yourself. Is it quick and painless, or does it require fifteen form fields, account creation, and three confirmation pages? Every extra step loses people. If your donation platform is clunky, consider switching to something simpler. The small cost is usually worth the reduced friction.

Priority 3: Email over social media
For most small nonprofits, email is more valuable than social media. You own your email list. You don’t own your Instagram followers. The algorithm decides who sees your posts, and that can change overnight. Build the list, send regular updates (even just monthly), and keep people connected to your work. Social media can support this, but it shouldn’t be your only channel.

Something worth thinking about
More people are finding organisations through AI tools now. Asking ChatGPT or Claude for recommendations rather than searching Google. If your website is clear, well-structured, and explains what you do in plain language, you’re already doing most of what’s needed for both humans and AI to understand you. The same things that help a visitor quickly grasp your work, clear headings, straightforward descriptions, no jargon, also help AI tools surface you when someone asks “which nonprofits help with X in my area.”

You don’t need a big budget to have a solid digital presence. You need clarity about what matters most and the discipline to ignore the rest, at least for now. Start with a website that actually explains your work, make it easy to donate, and build an email list. Everything else is a bonus.

Sunset on Retainers

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

You need a tiny website tweak. But you’re waiting on your retainer-based agency, losing momentum, watching opportunities slip by. I used to be on the other side of that equation — and I know there’s a better way.

When I ran my own agency years ago, retainers and maintenance plans were a core part of the business. Monthly fees, ongoing support, always available. It made sense at the time — predictable income, long-term relationships, clients who didn’t have to think about their website because I was handling it. But over time, I started to see the downsides, and now I work differently.

What I noticed:
The retainer model often created dependency rather than capability. Clients would call me for things they could have done themselves with a bit of guidance. They’d wait on my availability instead of moving forward. Small decisions became bottlenecks. And when they eventually wanted to leave or change direction, they realised they didn’t fully understand their own systems. I’d become a crutch — and that limited their growth more than it helped.

The shift:
I also realised that ongoing maintenance work wasn’t the work I found most meaningful. The interesting part was always the beginning — understanding the business, diagnosing problems, mapping out a strategy, helping people see clearly. Not the endless small updates and “can you just change this?” requests. I burned out on that kind of work, and I don’t want to go back to it.

What I do instead:
Now I focus on building your capability. Audits that give you clarity. Training that transfers knowledge. Documentation you can actually use. I use AI where it adds real value — automating repetitive tasks, generating optimised copy, surfacing data-driven insights — without the hype. You’ll understand your options, make informed decisions, and be able to move forward without me.

You might come back for a follow-up session, a new project, or a workshop when something changes — but you won’t need me just to keep things running day to day.

This approach isn’t for everyone. But if you’d rather understand your digital direction and own it yourself — even if that takes a bit more effort upfront — that’s where I can help.

What Your Small Business Website Actually Needs (And What It Doesn't)

2025-12-17T00:00:00Z

There’s a lot of noise about what a small business website “should” have. Animations, chatbots, fancy galleries, pop-ups, AI assistants, integrated booking systems. Most of it doesn’t matter — at least not until you’ve got the basics right. Here’s what actually does.

What you need:

Clear headline: Within 5 seconds, someone should know what you do and who you help. Not clever wordplay — clear, plain language. If your homepage says “Empowering synergies for transformative outcomes,” you’ve already lost people. Say what you do in words your customers would use.
Simple navigation: Home, About, Services, Contact. Maybe a blog or portfolio if it’s relevant to your business. That’s usually enough. Every extra menu item adds cognitive load. If people can’t find what they’re looking for in two clicks, they’ll leave.
One clear call to action: What do you want visitors to do? Call you? Book a consultation? Request a quote? Pick one primary action and make it obvious — in your header, on your homepage, repeated where it makes sense. Don’t make people guess.
Contact information that’s easy to find: Phone number, email address, maybe a simple form. Don’t bury it three clicks deep. Don’t make people scroll to the footer. If someone wants to get in touch, make it effortless.
Mobile-friendly design: More than half your visitors are on phones. If your site is hard to read, slow to load, or has buttons too small to tap, they’re gone. Test it yourself on your own phone — not just once, but regularly.

What you probably don’t need:

Sliders and carousels (studies show people don’t click them — they’re visual clutter)
Chatbots (unless you’re actually going to monitor them and they add value)
Fancy animations (they slow things down, distract from your message, and often break on mobile)
A blog you won’t update (an empty or stale blog looks worse than no blog at all)

On the blog question: This one’s nuanced. You don’t need a blog, but you do need some way to keep your site fresh and give people a reason to return or find you through search.

If you’re going to have a blog, decide upfront: What’s your publishing frequency — weekly, fortnightly, monthly? What topics will you cover? What structure will posts follow?

Then create a realistic plan you’ll actually stick to. A blog with four solid posts per year is better than one with a burst of activity followed by two years of nothing.

If you can’t commit to that, skip the blog and put that energy into making your core pages excellent.

Make your message clear: A simple site that’s clear, fast, and answers the basic questions will outperform a fancy one that confuses people. Get the foundations right first. Make sure a stranger could land on your homepage and within 10 seconds know what you do, who you help, and how to take the next step. Worry about the extras later — or not at all.

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Actually Use ChatGPT Today

2025-12-07T00:00:00Z

Most small business owners have heard of ChatGPT but aren’t sure how to actually use it. The headlines are full of hype about AI replacing jobs and transforming industries, but that doesn’t help you get through your to-do list. Forget the big picture for now — here are five things you can do with it this week that will genuinely save you time. (I’m using ChatGPT as the example because it’s the name most people know, but tools like Claude and Gemini work similarly — try a few and see which suits how you think.)

1. Draft customer emails
Responding to enquiries, following up on quotes, handling complaints — these eat up hours every week. Give ChatGPT some context about your business and the tone you want, and it’ll give you a solid starting point you can edit. It won’t capture your exact voice on the first try, but it’s faster than staring at a blank screen. The trick is to refine your prompt: tell it who you are, who you’re writing to, and what outcome you want.

2. Write social media posts
Tell it what you’re promoting, who your audience is, and which platform you’re posting to. LinkedIn needs a different tone than Instagram. It won’t produce anything brilliant — you’ll still need to add your personality and check it doesn’t sound generic — but it gets you 80% of the way there. Useful when you need to post consistently but don’t have time to craft everything from scratch.

3. Summarise long documents
Paste in a contract, supplier agreement, policy document, or industry article and ask for the key points. It’s surprisingly good at pulling out what matters. Great for getting up to speed quickly without reading every word, or for deciding whether something is worth your full attention. Just don’t rely on it for legal or financial decisions — use it to understand, then verify.

4. Create FAQ responses
Feed it the common questions you get from customers — the ones you answer over and over again. It’ll draft responses you can refine and reuse on your website, in emails, or in your onboarding materials. This is also increasingly important for visibility: AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI overviews pull answers from well-structured FAQ content. This is sometimes called Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) — making sure your content is the source AI tools cite when people ask questions in your space.

5. Brainstorm ideas
Stuck on a tagline, blog topic, product name, or marketing angle? Use it as a brainstorming partner. Ask for 10 options, then ask it to refine the best one, or combine elements from a few. Most suggestions won’t be right, but that’s not the point — it gets you unstuck and thinking in new directions. You can always throw out what doesn’t work.

Get Started Today
None of this replaces thinking. But it does replace staring at a blank page. The key is to start small: pick one of these, try it today, and see if it saves you time. If it doesn’t, you’ve lost 10 minutes. But if it does work, build from there and soon you might find yourself saving hours each week.

Cost of Transparency: Remote vs. Traditional

2024-09-15T00:00:00Z

Analysis of Communication Management in Remote-First Startups vs. Traditional Organizations

Introduction

As someone who’s been in the trenches of remote work for several years, I’ve noticed a troubling trend in how remote startups handle communication. We’ve all bought into this idea that more communication equals better collaboration, but I’m here to tell you – it’s not working out the way we thought it would.

The way we’re doing communication in remote startups is less than ideal, and it’s time we faced that fact. We’ve created this always-on, hyper-connected environment thinking it would solve the distance problem, but in reality, we’ve just replaced one set of issues with another.

Here’s the crux of the problem:

Information Overload: We’re bombarding employees with constant updates across multiple platforms, leading to mental fatigue and reduced productivity.
Context Switching Nightmare: The frequent jumping between tools and conversations is killing focus and deep work.
False Sense of Urgency: When everything is “transparent” and immediate, it creates an environment where everything feels urgent, even when it’s not.
Potential for Burnout: This constant state of communication alertness is leading to higher stress levels, which could contribute to burnout and, potentially, higher turnover rates in remote settings.

In this analysis, I’m going to break down the numbers and show you just how much this communication chaos is costing us in terms of productivity and employee well-being. While turnover rates might be higher in remote settings due to these factors, we’ll focus specifically on the costs associated with communication overhead and context switching.

Communication Management Differences

Remote-First Startups:

Channels: Extensive use of multiple channels (Slack, email, Zoom, project management tools, etc.).
Updates: Frequent updates and notifications across various platforms.
Interaction: High transparency with open communication, allowing extensive participation and commenting.
Context Switching: Frequent switching between tools and channels, contributing to significant time lost.

Traditional Organizations:

Channels: Fewer communication channels, such as email and memos.
Updates: Less frequent, more structured updates (e.g., quarterly newsletters).
Interaction: Information dissemination through managers and formal communications.
Context Switching: Minimal, with more streamlined communication processes.

Basis for Cost Calculations

Disclaimer: The following numbers are hypothetical and used for illustrative purposes only. They do not represent actual data from any specific company or industry. This analysis is intended to demonstrate a method of calculation and to provide a general understanding of potential costs associated with different communication management approaches.

For the purposes of this sample analysis, we will use the following assumptions:

Average Employee Wage: $100,000 per year.
Work Hours per Year: Approximately 2,000 hours (assuming 40 hours per week and 50 working weeks per year).
Productivity Loss Due to Communication:
- Remote-First Startups: 30% of work hours spent on communication-related activities.
- Traditional Organizations: 10% of work hours spent on communication-related activities.
Company Size: 500 employees (for both remote-first startups and traditional organizations in this example).

These figures are simplified for the sake of this analysis and should be adjusted based on actual data when applied to real-world scenarios. The percentages of productivity loss are estimates and may vary significantly depending on the specific organization, industry, and other factors.

Impact on Productivity

Remote-First Startups:

Productivity Loss Calculation:
- 30% of 2,000 hours = 600 hours spent on communication.
- Estimated effective work hours = 1,400 hours.
- Productivity Loss per employee = (2,000 hours - 1,400 hours) / 2,000 hours * $100,000 = $30,000 per employee per year.
- Total Productivity Loss: 500 employees * $30,000 = $15,000,000 per year.

Traditional Organizations:

Productivity Loss Calculation:
- 10% of 2,000 hours = 200 hours spent on communication.
- Estimated effective work hours = 1,800 hours.
- Productivity Loss per employee = (2,000 hours - 1,800 hours) / 2,000 hours * $100,000 = $10,000 per employee per year.
- Total Productivity Loss: 500 employees * $10,000 = $5,000,000 per year.

Conclusion

Remote-First Startups:

Total Productivity Loss: $15,000,000 per year.
Issues:
- Significant productivity loss due to extensive context switching and communication overhead.
- Increased management of multiple communication streams without clear boundaries.
- Potential for higher stress levels and burnout due to constant communication demands.

Traditional Organizations:

Total Productivity Loss: $5,000,000 per year.
Benefits:
- Lower overall costs due to more streamlined communication and reduced context switching.
- Improved focus on deliverables with less communication overload.

This analysis reflects the financial and operational impacts of communication management strategies, demonstrating that remote-first approaches, while offering flexibility, can also lead to higher costs in terms of lost productivity due to communication overhead.

It’s worth noting that while we haven’t included turnover costs in this analysis, the communication challenges in remote work environments could potentially contribute to higher turnover rates. Factors such as feeling disconnected, difficulty in separating work and personal life, and burnout from constant communication could all play a role. However, quantifying these effects would require additional research and data.

Addressing the Communication Conundrum

To tackle these issues and create a more balanced, productive remote work environment, consider the following strategies:

Implement Communication Tiers: Not all information needs to reach everyone. Create a tiered system where critical updates are widely shared, but day-to-day chatter is contained within relevant teams.
Establish ‘Deep Work’ Hours: Designate specific times for uninterrupted, focused work. During these hours, instant messaging and non-emergency communications are discouraged.
Adopt Asynchronous Communication: Shift from real-time messaging to more asynchronous methods like well-documented tickets or thoughtful email updates. This allows employees to engage with information when it’s most convenient for their workflow.
Regular Communication Audits: Periodically review and prune communication channels. If a Slack channel or email list isn’t providing value, don’t be afraid to archive it.
Train on Effective Communication: Provide training on writing clear, concise messages and knowing when to use which communication tool. The goal is to reduce noise and increase signal.

By implementing these strategies, remote startups can maintain the benefits of flexible work while mitigating the hidden costs of over-communication. Remember, the goal isn’t just to communicate more, but to communicate more effectively. With some mindful adjustments, we can create remote work environments that are both collaborative and conducive to high-quality, focused work.