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In order to secure start-up funding, showcase to key stakeholders that there is a need in the community for the service. This can be done either by conducting a community needs assessment or by pulling information from an existing assessment conducted in the region. Moreover, display to funders the website developer options for building the site.

Once buy-in and funding is secured, gather and organize your information into a spreadsheet to begin the process of mapping out mental health resources within the geographic area. This spreadsheet can ultimately serve as the website outline. The process may include gathering input from providers through paper and online forms.

Tip: It’s likely you won’t have to reinvent the wheel, as organizations, like the Department of Safety and Professional Services and 211 United Way, have running lists of active providers you can utilize. It is important to show these organizations that your site complements their services, rather than competes with them.

Once information has been gathered on all providers, treatment options, etc., you will need to go through the vetting process to ensure the institutions and providers are active and have the availability to serve the community in the way you desire. Ensuring all information is up to date provides the website legitimacy and can be done through check-ins with each provider and/or through group conversations with community partners who source your information, such as 211 United Way, Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC), and the Family Services Crisis Center.

Whether you build a referral pathway or a provider listing, consider the following requirements for clinics to be included:

1. The clinic must be licensed.
2. The clinic must agree to be included.
3. The clinic must maintain up-to-date information.
4. The clinic must have a reasonable wait time.
5. The clinic must accept a wide range of public and private insurance.

Tip: If building a referral form, the clinic must respond to the referral form within two business days.

Once contact has been made with the web developer, share with them the website outline along with the copy for each webpage. You will have the most say in the physical design or “skin” of the website, so take time when deciding on colors, fonts, language, banner, and drop-down menu placement, etc. This will be an iterative back-and-forth process for editing and revising the site before it is eventually launched.

Tip: Take careful consideration of the terminology and phrasing used on your website. Consider the language used in your community and try to avoid technical speak. This will aid both the user and your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Referral Form Templates (PDF)
Pathway Partner Referral Tips (PDF)

Beta testing is an open-ended process that allows you to improve the site and garner further community buy-in. You should use this phase to gather as much input from as many different perspectives as possible. Considering the user is at the center of your process, you should allow mental health consumers and mental health navigators 鈥� those who connect people to mental health services 鈥� to beta test the website. Utilize people from within your community networks and existing contacts, such as home visitors, hospital nurses, law enforcement, school counselors, and anyone who might serve as a natural navigator.

Tip: Spend time thinking about how you鈥檙e going to ask questions to elicit useful responses. You should ask questions about how users think something should work, like, 鈥淲hat do you think should appear if you click this button?鈥� or 鈥淲hat would you like to see here?鈥�

Training for various stakeholders – end-users and facilitators (social service providers, law enforcement, etc.) – is critical to ensuring that various organizations across your geographic area can educate others on the website and further the mission of providing accessible mental health resources to your community. In-person, virtual, and video trainings should be offered, the latter of which will ultimately assist in the sustainability of your site, as it provides an “eternal” source for new users to guide them.

Tip: Leverage your professional network connections to reserve time at an organization’s existing meetings to present your website. Even if just 5-minutes – those can be the most impactful marketing opportunities as well as opportunities for new ideas.

The marketing of your website should involve a consistent process of spreading the word in a number of ways, including social media, flyers, posters, yard signs, bookmarks, one-pagers, brochures, sending out newsletters, as well as generating earned and/or paid media. Consider producing materials with QR codes that link directly to the website or set up table tents during the winter season at malls and other local businesses.

Website Flyer (PDF)

Yard Sign Bookmark (PDF)

Note: The Racine County coalition’s connections with local police led to the creation of website information and resource cards to give to those they encountered in a mental health crisis.

Once the site is ready for publishing, consider your capacity to coordinate a formal launch event to aid in your marketing efforts. Use this opportunity to reflect on the community and the process of creating something to benefit it by bringing in key stakeholders for speaking opportunities and beta testing. The event planning process will require you to put the marketing materials you’ve prepared into action online and in the community. You should also work with local media – print, digital, radio, and tv – to produce stories related to your effort.

Tip: Consider launching your website around mental health awareness month, as media buzz is already high on the subject this time of year, thus bolstering your media presence.

If you plan on building a referral form, consider the bare bones of information required by clinics, such as insurance information and basic demographics. You should research various forms from clinics throughout the community to build your own.

Referral Form Template (PDF)

With continuous improvement in mind, update the website on a consistent basis 鈥� either monthly, biannually, or annually 鈥� to ensure that additional resources are being included and that dated or expired resources are removed. It is best to work with involved organizations to periodically check their listings and provide updates. Moreover, you should be aware of the challenges facing your community; as the community鈥檚 needs change, your website should change with them. Another aspect of continuous improvement involves the process of measuring SEO metrics to ensure the website consistently appears at or near the top of search engine results on a regular basis.

Note: Across coalitions, new content was added to the site after the initial launch, such as Strong Minds 4 Men, a page dedicated to male suicide prevention; COVID-19 resources; and a digital message board for front-line agency staff to use for interagency referrals.

There may be other organizations in your region that provide resource listings for mental health or substance use. Some organizations may assist you by sharing provider listings, while others may view your website as a competitor rather than a complementary service, and will charge you for the information you seek. To bring them onboard, you must be diligent in communicating with them by scheduling one-on-one meetings with leaders and hosting regular group conversations, enabling you to continuously highlight the powerful benefit your website can have in the community while also making sure the information on providers is accurate and up to date.

Need to Know Where to Go Flyer (PDF)

With many stakeholders at the table, it can be difficult to focus in on what the website should specifically do. Your first consideration should be addressing the community’s needs. Conduct interviews with front-line staff to get their perception and to create a compassionate space for users.

Due to the fact that referral forms you generate must be Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant, you are unable to collect back-end data, such as personal demographics or whether a patient engaged in therapy. However, you are able to ask for information as a precursor to the form, which allows you to determine where in the community referrals are coming from, which demographics are most often in search of care, and what insurance is most often being used. This ultimately allows you to seek funding from the spaces most impacted and enhance service where it’s needed the most.

In order to get buy-in from community organizations to fund the website, consider how it might fulfill a legal requirement of their Community Health Plan. If your site checks an item off the list for them, it is one less service they have to provide and manage, therefore you can leverage that position for initial or long-term funding. Moreover, by creating value-added content and continuously updating your website based on community needs, you further grow your reach and opportunity for funding from new sectors.

Researching key terms for SEO involves many different factors search engines use to rank websites, including website structure, content quality, user experience, backlinks, and more. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, making it difficult to keep up with best practices. Consistently monitor and update your website and content in order to improve your search engine rankings over time.

Tip: Monitor what services the community is actively searching for and consider building a separate homepage button and correlating webpage that combines those resources to further your SEO efforts.

It is important to continue training key stakeholders on how to use the website. If the website is successful, you will ultimately see more individuals and organizations looking to use it as a resource they can provide others. Ensuring that opportunities to train are always available is crucial to achieving the mission of providing greater accessibility to mental health care.

Tip: Including “How To” tutorials on the landing page of your site will serve the important purpose of teaching new users how to use the site, whether as a facilitator or personal user.

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When planning your beta test measures, consider how visual many people are, especially if your website is intended to be visually engaging. You should think about how community navigators would use the site and what would make it most functional for them. A scavenger hunt activity may aid in this effort, as it allows you to gauge how typical users would use the site and how you can make it more intuitive as a result.

Website Scavenger Hunt (PDF)

You should make regular bi-monthly check-ins with providers to ensure their capacity isn’t becoming too backlogged. For example, if a waitlist for treatment becomes over two months long, you should temporarily disable them until they are able to lower that wait time to an acceptable level.

Leverage your community partner’s connections in the area, and reserve time to present the website at various existing community and organization meetings. Typically, if someone is involved in community relations and has power within their organization, they are an ideal candidate to work with the coalition.

Regular data report-outs are beneficial for understanding the language used by site participants. Taking a measure of what users are commonly searching for allows you to add tags based on commonly used phrases. Moreover, data report-outs aid in gauging the success of marketing efforts, showing you on which days and times the site saw increased traffic.

Consider purchasing a private domain for your website to aid in branding/marketing efforts, SEO building, and credibility. Generic links are often long and generally difficult to remember in their entirety, further increasing the difficulty of marketing your website.

Funding that allows for a sustained marketing effort over time is crucial to the long-term viability of your website, because every time there’s a marketing effort, there’s an uptick in use.

If you are aware of other organizations with similar goals to yours running media campaigns related to mental health, such as during mental health month, reach out to have your website information posted on their social media channels, press releases, email signatures, and any other media they produce, allowing you to meet people where they are to bring attention to your site.

The Brown County Coalition was able to develop a widget for MyConnectionNEW.org that was embedded on other websites, such as the Brown County Health and Human Services page, allowing users to search for mental health resources from outside the actual website itself.

Widget Addition Instructions (PDF)

Consider the creation of a Community Calendar on your website to serve as a one-stop-shop for community events, such as food pantry openings, AA meetings, and more. You can use regular community meetings for stakeholders to submit calendar events, which you then upload to the website, allowing you to drive more traffic, and benefit the community in yet another way.

Keeping continuous improvement at the core of your strategy should include a function on your website for users to provide feedback. This can be accomplished as a “Didn’t find what you needed?” button.