However unglamorous it might be, email is the killer application of the Internet. People visit far fewer websites than they get email messages. Email messages are treated as To Do items, while bookmarks are often forgotten. Email is always a call to action. Email is handled within a familiar user interface, whereas each website has to teach a new interface.
Email is a very personal medium.
Stop obsessing about how many hits your web site gets and start counting how much email interaction you have with your stakeholders. Stop waiting for people to discover your web site, and start discovering their mailboxes. A web site built around an email strategy is more valuable than a web site that is built around itself. On some nonprofit list, somewhere, someone right now is asking how they can get more traffic on their web site. And someone is answering by telling them how to put META tags in their site so they will get listed in search engines.