Nonprofit Website Design for 2023 – A Primer
Nonprofit organizations face unique challenges when it comes to website design. Here are the very basics you must know before you start.
Nonprofit organizations face unique challenges when it comes to website design. Here are the very basics you must know before you start.
When a website, be it nonprofit or for-profit, is well thought out and branded, it will have a far better chance to exude the entity’s product and, or mission instantly than a website that is not. Moreover, it should appeal to the viewer’s sensibilities and be very user-friendly. In other words, the “user experience” (UE/UX) is vital for any website to compete in today’s WWW marketplace.
For commercial endeavors, the main goal is nearly always to make money, and that’s a given. But for the nonprofit sector, the answer is a bit more complicated.
For the nonprofit, success is not calculated as mere profit (though raising money is undoubtedly a significant priority if it wishes to survive) but rather how well it fulfills its overall mission. Therefore, the product, be it a widget or a social service, has to be sold to someone and generate revenue.
The for-profit website targets the product buyer—who is almost always (save for gift cards) the product’s end-user. So when creating your website for the commercial sector, you are communicating to one audience: the buyer/user.
The nonprofit website, however, generally addresses two audiences—often split equally. One message is for the product buyer (the donor of the product or service), and the other is for the product user (the people in need of the product or service—the client). And this sort of split-branding can be a challenge.
In both instances, the product needs to be well promoted as necessary to the buyer and of good value—be it a widget for oneself or a critical service to another. For the for-profit, this singular focus makes creating the web presence relatively streamlined.
But what about the nonprofit’s end user—the client? Their user experience will not be buyer’s satisfaction or even return on social investment (ROsI), but on when, where, and how to obtain the product/service and how quickly they can access it. (This client priority, by the way, is also essential to the buyer/funder who considers the overall user experience for clients as a reasonable ROsI.)
The ROsI continues beyond the product/service level for the funder or even how well the website offers equal space for donors and clients. The funder tends to look at multiple factors:
As for the client, their priorities may be:
There are pages and applications that are geared more toward the nonprofit than the for-profit:
In a nutshell, the user experience differs between nonprofit and for-profit websites, and we get that. Dot Org Web Works stand out from other website developers because we only work for the charitable nonprofit sector.
As nonprofit professionals, we clearly understand the difference between a charitable nonprofit organization, to that of a for-profit enterprise.
The design and development of a website intended to raise awareness can be a real challenge. Here we offer the key steps to an effective awarness campaign.
If you have Googled “how to create a nonprofit website”, it probably means that you are hoping to create your first charity website on your own. Perhaps because you don’t think that your charitable nonprofit can afford a professionally-developed website or just good old fashioned curiosity has brought you to this resource. Whatever it was that got you here, welcome! No doubt, you care deeply about your charity’s mission. So, the least we can do here at Dot Org Web Works is to provide you with the broad strokes on how to create your first charity website—you know, so that you don’t make the mistakes many first-timers do. If there is one thing you should walk away from within this tutorial, it is this:
Your website is or should be the primary communication outlet for your charitable nonprofit organization. It is where people will learn about, become aware of, your cause or program; gauge how well it works, and assess if it is a good fit for them. It is your virtual, 24/7, open house event to what you do, who you do it for, and how.
Therefore, it is in your organization’s best interest to get your messaging right.
And with that said, let’s get started, shall we?
First and foremost, keep in mind that a charity (or other nonprofit) website is in many respects quite different than that of a commercial one.
Specifically, the commercial (for-profit) website generally targets and speaks to the buyer of the product—the one who is almost always (save for gift cards) the end-user of the product they are buying. So when one is creating a website for the commercial sector, she/he is communicating to one audience: the buyer/user.
But, that is not the case for the charity website developer.
The charity’s message, however, generally needs to speak to two audiences—sometimes split equally. One message is for the “product buyer” (the donor/funder to the product or service) and the other message is for the “user of the product” (the people in need of your charity’s product or service—often referred to as the client). And, this sort of split-branding can be a challenge.
From this point, it is important to gauge how much of your messaging will be shared between the two target audiences. (For specifics on this, please click here for Nonprofit vs. Profit Websites.)
Before you start selecting your website platform (e.g.: WordPress, Wix, Joomla), or even before you start collecting website content (articles, images, videos, stories, and other media), you will need to step back and consider your line of approach. Ask yourself:
In other words, you need to brand your website before doing anything else. Otherwise, you’ll lose sight of your website’s mission.
Although a branding session may contain a couple of dozen or more questions (this we do for all of our clients), the key questions would include:
Once the branding, either formal or informal, is at your ready, now it’s time to take off!—you should now be set to plan out (wireframe) your website.
The format for a charitable nonprofit website is not so different from that of a dynamic brochure, with the content sometimes gleaned from existing organization media. Once this initial phase is completed—that is, you’ve gathered the essential page documents, i.e.: About Us, Contact Us, Giving Options, Programs & Services, to name the most obvious—you will then be able to consider specific options. Do you want to stream your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter accounts? Have featured articles (blog) and a calendar of events? Do you want subscriber/members-only sections? What about client profiles? There are many website options for the charity website, with several of them available for you to consider here.
Few people will want to donate to your charity if you can’t show results. You need to somehow translate how their involvement will bring about a sROI (Social Return on Investment). This can be done in several ways:
The last major hurdle is to actually build out your website. For those who are not artistically and technically inclined, and who do not have a working understanding of website platforms, this may be at the very least intimidating and time-consuming. Therefore, you will want to choose a very intuitive and user-friendly website platform.
We strongly recommend WordPress. It is the CMS (content management system) of choice for about 64% of all CMS websites (about 38% of all websites), and for a good reason. But you will also need to employ the use of a user-friendly pre-developed website “theme” or other similar website builder. (Please see our website builder page for a quick demonstration.)
Once you’ve got these tools in place, you should be ready to build out your site.
But wait…there’s more!
Creating an effective charity website requires a skill-set like any other profession. This is what we do, and we would love to make a difference with you. With your intrinsic knowledge of your nonprofit organization and our experience at website development for charity organizations, together, we could build that website that you’ve envisioned—affordable and within a proper timeline. Let’s talk!
For more than 20 years, I’ve worked “remotely” for nonprofit organizations. At first it was termed: “work at home”, which would mean anything from my newly installed workstation in the den/eating area of my 1 bedroom apartment, to one of the three coffee houses anchored at the traffic circle within a two-minute walk from my home. (In no time at all, it would become “work anyplace on earth but the organization’s office”.)
At the AIDS services organization where I was employed as their newly created web marketing person, I was afforded the opportunity to come and go as I pleased, as long as I had met my department head’s expectations. Utilizing a modified, more concentrated, work week, I worked on the organization’s web presence and printed collateral at home three days a week and would go to the office once a week for meetings and to remind my co-workers that I did indeed actually exist. I was in heaven. I no longer had to waste time in cross-city traffic, nor spend anytime whatsoever choosing the proper work attire. “Casual Friday” was every day.
Over the years, work-at-home has become less of a quirky employment perk and more of a necessity as nonprofit organizations struggle to keep talented staff from seeking employment within the private sector—where pay packages tend to be higher . Many people who work remotely do so because of family necessity or other extenuating circumstances (e.g.: having no choice because of pandemic circumstances). Or, simply, they are willing to trade more income for a more holistic working life that affords more “me time”. This is usually a win-win situation for both the organization and the employee. That is, if the employee can maintain the necessary discipline and production required to sustain the adapted work environment. It is my hope that my experience will help the reader see some of the lesser known issues and pitfalls working remotely. And since the benefits of working remotely are already well known and celebrated, I shall dwell on the troublesome part of working remotely and how to compensate for it. But first, the obvious benefits of working remotely:
Be it at your makeshift at-home office, which can be anything from a dedicated room that mirrors the office you are forgoing at the organization, or the squat table and beanbag seat clustered near the opening into your bamboo hut on a beach in Bali you are currently calling “home”, you need a proper working environment to get the job done.
Sure, working from the local coffee house or your kitchen’s counter can suffice in a pinch when the task is simple and not requiring a lot of focus and thought, but trying to conduct your business this way regularly is both unwise and unproductive. You need a place that isn’t a vortex of distraction, be it from ambient noises, to the lure of multi-tasking non-work activities into your work time. You need to respect your working environment just like you would expect co-workers to leave you alone during focus time at the office.
You would think that staying focused on the job you are getting paid to do would be the hardest part of working at home. That’s not always the case. In addition to maintaining self-governance, you will need to be mindful to:
I’m considered a digital nomad: a person who works remotely—but on an elevated level. But maintaining a separate office space/room, with all of the proper furniture and office peripherals, is generally not afforded to me. But this does not mean that I don’t take time to create a choice work place or maintain an ergonomically comfortable working space—or that I don’t keep my tools (software) up to date. If my apartment/flat (hut) does not have a proper working space, I create it. Not only do I want a visually pleasing work space, I need it to be a healthy one.
Working remotely is a great way to live. I know that I can’t imagine ever working any other way. It simply takes a little more self-discipline than you may normally be used to, and you will have to be able to take care of “office emergencies” since you are not likely to have an IT person at your beck and call. Be sure to take enough time for yourself, but make sure that you are doing your job as expected, or better!—just as if you were down the hall from your co-workers.
Richard Hamel is the founder of Dot Org Web Works and the co-author of The Nu Nomad: Location Independent Living.
If your first question is “Why does my organization and website need a brand?” then you should read: The Value of Corporate Branding for Nonprofits. (It’s the difference between people supporting the Girl Scouts, and not supporting nature kids.)
For example. Let’s say that you are running a nonprofit organization that helps the homeless. For you to create your brand, or how one would differentiate your organization from another homeless services organization, you will need to create a mission statement and brand identity. These are usually derived from:
Once you have a grasp on your brand identity, you then need to have your website not only reflect that identity, but have Google understand your services and brand so that they (via a complex algorithm) may list you accordingly via probable search keywords.
Usually the most difficult part of SEO is trying to gauge what is, not only the most intuitive keyword phrase to use, but which keywords that are actually searched in Google and other search engines.
Using some of the above information, let’s assume that your nonprofit organization provides free legal services to homeless women and families in Los Angeles.
So, if you were to search “homeless services” (and you were online in the greater Los Angeles area when doing so) there would be about 151 million results (pages that would somehow relate to those keywords). But for actual people Googling homeless services, that would result in a search volume of about 150,000 searches per month.* That is an impressive amount of searches per month, but most of those search inquiries would have little to do with your organization’s core services and brand. (The net casted was too wide of a search.)
However, if you were to search “legal services for homeless”, you would see 70 million results, but with 0 per month search volume for that keyword phrase. So even though it’s a very intuitive keyword phrase, one that reflects your brand, it unfortunately isn’t being Googled: people are not entering that specific keyword phrase.
However, with your Keywords Everywhere tool, you will see some recommended keyword phrases that are showing a monthly volume that may directly relate to your services and brand. Such as:
So, of these two recommendations, which would be the best for you?
If you selected the first, because it had a much higher search volume (at nearly 3000 per month) then you would most likely fall through the cracks of all the other web pages that are vying for that keyword phrase. Why do I believe this? Well, by how much one is willing to pay to get their web page on top of the search results using that specific keyword phrase. It has a rather high search term value.
One very good indicator of a search term value, and thereby its competition, is Google AdWords “CPC”, cost-per-click, listing. (Although this is only a reference, unless you are taking advantage of Google’s free AdWords program for nonprofits, it is still a very valuable tool for anyone trying to gauge the keyword competition value.) This CPC value is conveniently listed next to the search volume within your Keywords Everywhere tool results. This shows that others are bidding to be placed on the top results as much as $4.56 per click—which may translate to your listing showing at past page 5 of Google Search results or further. (Since few people will bother to go past the second page of results, your listing is essentially nonexistent.) But if you go with the second keyword phrase, you will see that the CPC for legal clinic for the homeless is $0.00. So, this just may work out for you. No one is bidding on the search term, which means that if you apply the correct SEO terms and branding to your web page, you have a good shot at placing on page 1 of Google Search results. Sure, 30 is less than 2900, but getting half of 30 is better than none of 2900.
There are other ways to see if others are competing with your intended keyword phrase, such as searching your keywords within quotes, i.e.: “legal clinic for the homeless” and searching for pages using this phrase as their page title, i.e.: intitle: “legal clinic for the homeless”
From there, it is just a matter of applying basic SEO (search engine optimization) practices.
Creating an effective charity website requires a skill-set like any other profession. This is what we do, and we would love making a difference with you. With your intrinsic knowledge of your nonprofit organization, and our experience at website development for charity organizations, together we could build that website that you’ve envisioned—affordably and within a proper timeline. Let’s talk!