The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), was founded by Lutheran churches in 1939 in service to uprooted people during World War II. LIRS is a non-profit organization which outlines their goals in its mission statement: “As a witness to God’s love for all people, we stand with and advocate for migrants and refugees, transforming communities through ministries of service and justice.” Their sole objective is to help protect and save all migrants and refugees from dangerous situations in their home countries. In order to determine if this website is effective or ineffective on promoting LIRS and what they believe in, a complete analysis on the audience, purpose, context, author and genre was performed. This website is ineffective in promoting what LIRS is since it seems they have a heavier focus on donations.
The initial or the primary audience for this website is their donors and volunteers. When you look at the navigation bar, the “DONATE” tab pops out since it is a completely different color than all the other tabs which are blue. The donate tab is a burnt orange color. This guides the donors and volunteers eye directly to this button. When you scroll down, looking through the rest of the front webpage, there is another section where you can click and be redirected to the donation page. When taking a look at the “TAKE ACTION”, there are various ways that they offer to be a part of the organization. Under this tab, there is information about being an advocate, hosting an event, becoming a volunteer, and ways on how to give. Under the tab, for how to give, there are various pages dedicated for donors on they can donate.
The secondary audience is immigrants and refugees. For this audience, there are two areas where this audience is thought about and which it is supposed to be directed for. They are both on the navigation bar, but the first place that they could look would be “OUR WORK” tab on the navigation bar where there is information on what the organization does and how refugees and immigrants benefit from them. The other area is through the “RESOURCES” tab, also on the navigation bar. On this tab are different pages on just general resources that LIRS offers, including “REFUGEE SUNDAY”, an event that any church, school, or community can hold with former refugees and can pray for refugees’ safety, care and dignity. 
In addition, at the top right corner above the navigation bar is a link for “Loans Customer Portal”, where a refugee can receive a loan, another great resource. It is known that the donors and volunteers are the primary audience because there is a bigger focus in the website to donate and how to do that as well as the ways available to volunteer. If the primary audience was the refugees then there would be a bigger focus on the resources and what the organization can offer, which the website does not do.
The websites’ overall purpose and motive is to show and explain what Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services is and what they do as an organization. By doing this it is their hope to receive donations and get people wanting to volunteer. Again, there are lots of pages where you can be directed to the donation page, as well as when you scroll down, there is a section which is a little pow wow to give, which is essentially just another way of saying “please donate”. In a more personal way, this website also utilizes using blog posts, which discuss news or interesting facts about what is happening to immigrants and refugees in their home countries. This gives a visual aspect to better understand what these people are going through and why it is so important to help them. Some of these blog posts are even about what life is like after they are able to come to the America. As an example, one of the posts which is on the main page is called, “My America… Is a Place Where All People Can be Free”. This pulls on the need to be a part of this organization, as well as giving faith and trust into the refugees.
The context of LIRS website is the internet. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has decided that the internet is a good outlet to display their organization because nearly everyone is on it and it is especially easy to access for donors and volunteers. Their website can be accessed through a laptop, phone, tablet, and other devices that have access to the internet. Since donations are available online it also makes it easy to do so, which makes donors lives more easy if they are considering donating their money or time for those who can’t offer money. When looking through the entire website, there is a focus of using white and navy blue. There is also a gradience throughout the website of using different shades of blue as well, and the use of burnt orange for the donate tab on top for the navigation bar. There are a few pictures of immigrants and refugees but not many unless they are the cover images for the page that you have clicked on. This can be an issue when you are trying to show what these people are going through, and is hard to know exactly you are donating your money for, if there is no images of it.
The author of this website is yet to be determined but the website is produced by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. This organization is made up of many board members, which includes an executive committee, at-large members, and staff leadership. The entire board is composed of 17 members who have an in depth knowledge for immigrants and refugees. Due to the authors part, this website does feel like it is searching more for money and donations, than trying to convince people to become a part of helping and solving this issue of refugees. There needs to be a bigger focus on helping these endangered human beings who are scared to live in the countries that they do. However, LIRS has a reputation for helping these people, which is dwindling due to how the author is representing the website. To better show their concern for the immigrants and refugees, the author should show more images and videos of them, and volunteers assisting them in any of the ways that the website says that you can help. It gives a visual call of action.
The genre of this website and the text on it would be non- profit. It is non-profit because they are assisting refugees and immigrants to escape from their dangerous home countries. It is also non-profit from the way that the entire website is formatted, and a heavy concentration on donors and volunteers, which is one of the tiers for a non profit website. Non profit websites are also easy to navigate and have simple layouts. Each of the pages has a photo on top of a refugee, immigrant, volunteer, or leader to give visual of what that page is about. The fonts on this website mostly consist of san serif, due to the fact that if there are people with disabilities, like dyslexia, they will have an easier time reading and comprehending the website.
In this rhetorical analysis, the audience, purpose, author, context, and genre were closely looked at and discussed in relation to the LIRS website. also represented was visuals to the website to show what is being discussed for a better understanding. the Lutheran Refugee and Immigration Services has created a well formulated website where information is easy to find, but the meaning has been lost in the creation of it all.
Citation:
“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, 6 Feb. 2019, www.lirs.org/.