A masjid's website, tickets and donations, live in three days.
The Cincinnati Islamic Community Center came to us recovering from vandalism at their building, with a dinner to sell tickets for and a member list to rebuild. Three days after our onboarding call their new site was live at masjidcicc.org, running on Ummah.
from the onboarding call to a live site on their own domain
they no longer pay for hosting and tools Ummah replaced
Ummah widgets on the site: prayer times, events, donations
A west-side Cincinnati masjid in a hard year.
The Cincinnati Islamic Community Center is a Muslim community in Westwood, on the city's west side, following the teaching of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. They run a weekend school, a speakers bureau and a food pantry that has fed the neighbourhood since 2006, and every year they host a Pre-Ramadan Dinner.
Then their building was vandalized. Repairs cost money a small masjid does not have waiting in an account, and the flyer for the dinner was ready to go out. They needed to sell tickets, take donations and get their members onto one list, and they needed all of it now.
Three tools, each costing more than it gave back.
Their website had been hand-built years earlier and sat on a hosting plan at IONOS. When one line of it broke, the host's support could not help, and the site stayed broken.
For a member sign-up form they had tried SurveyMonkey, which asked for $30 a month, then a $300 setup fee nobody had mentioned up front. Brother Yusuf cancelled it.
For dinner tickets they had Zeffy, which advertises 0% and then adds a tip to the buyer's bill, about $6 on a $40 ticket, switched on by default. Their board did not want a guest paying $46 for a $40 seat.
An onboarding call on Monday. Live on their domain by Thursday.
We did not wait for the call to start building. By the time Brother Yusuf and Sister Jamilah joined, the first version of the new site was done: their programs, their colours, their voice, and every page from the old site carried over.
Three days later it was live on their own domain, hosted by us, with their prayer times, events and donations coming straight from their Ummah account. The site is live at masjidcicc.org.
The hosting bill, the survey tool and the ticket fees went with the old site. Between them, that is over $60 a month CICC no longer spends.
Their dinner on sale through Ummah, on their own site
The Ummah events widget on masjidcicc.org. Their Annual Pre-Ramadan Dinner is a paid Ummah event: one small fee on top for the guest, and CICC banks the full ticket price.
- Pre-Ramadan Dinner tickets sold through Ummah
- No tip added to the guest's bill
- Calendar, card and list views, with search
- Add an event in Ummah and it appears on the site
Giving that sits in the page, in their colours
The Ummah donation widget in the Give band of their site. One-time or monthly, a choice of where the gift goes, and the option to cover the processing fee so all of it reaches CICC.
- One-time or monthly giving
- Donors choose where their gift goes
- Option to cover the processing fee
- Every gift recorded in their Ummah account, next to their members and events
Members join through Ummah and answer CICC's questions on the way in.
What CICC wanted most was a member list of their own: name, phone, email, address. In Ummah they wrote their own community questionnaire, the questions a person answers when they ask to join. Short answers, long answers, single choice, multiple choice, in the order CICC chooses.
Every answer is saved against the member, so the list builds itself as people join, and it can be exported whenever the board needs it. The website sends people straight to it. Their members are joining through the Ummah app, and answering CICC's own questions as they do.
Allahu Akbar.
What else the site had to get right
Their voice, not ours
CICC follows the teaching of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. The site uses their words, their own translation of the Bismillah, and the navy and gold from their own dinner flyer. It reads like them because it is them.
One set of prayer times
The prayer times on the site are the Ummah prayer widget, reading from their account. There is no second timetable to keep in step, and no widget from a third party showing times a few minutes off.
Nothing lost from the old site
About, community development, the meaning of their flag, the food pantry, the speakers bureau and their Imam W. Deen Mohammed library all carried over. Years of their history, on pages that work on a phone.
Their domain stays theirs
masjidcicc.org is registered to CICC. We host it, keep it fast and keep it patched, and their email stayed where it was. If they ever leave, the domain and the content leave with them.