Five Tips for a Donor-Friendly Website

Websites can sometimes be the most time consuming aspect of starting a nonprofit. More importantly, their design and launch can be extremely frustrating leading people to "set it and forget it." After all, once you've marked a large item off your to do list, you simply want to move onto the next task. That's how we end up with outdated websites that donors struggle to navigate or, at worst, frustrate and deter them from giving. Ideally, we want our websites to be donor friendly, meaning these sites are easy for donors to access, navigate and understand.

But how do we do that?

Here are a few tips:

1. Keep Things Current Because websites don't change as often as social media accounts, it's easy to forget to update them to most accurately reflect your nonprofit's current work. Remember, you set it, then forget it except because websites often act an organization's home-base, this thinking won't work. When donor's visit your site, they should find the most updated impact stats, staff listing, mission, organizational news and more. An updated and accurate website shows an operational and professional nonprofit, an organization a donor can trust.
   

2. Share Staff Bios Transparency is important when people are giving you their money expecting it to support a larger community goal. A portion of this transparency includes letting donors know who's working toward the organization's mission and that includes your staff. A few paragraphs providing some background on each staff member tells your donor base you want them to know who you are. Some organizations even include staff's work emails with specifications on what topic donors should contact them about.
   

3. Fundraising Toolkit Many donors are truly invested in a nonprofit's work and may want to host a fundraiser but aren't exactly sure how to get started. That's when a fundraising toolkit comes in handy. These toolkits are composed of basic information about your organization such as your mission statement, vision statement, EIN, recent impact stats, and logo. Additionally, you should include some fundraising ideas with general instructions on how to manage them and some language around how to promote the fundraiser. The idea is to present your donor with all the foundational tools they'd need to run a fundraiser themselves. You should make the toolkit available for download on your website.
   

4. Clean Contact Page Yes, there is such a thing as too much. While your website may seem like the place to tell visitors all the things about your work and mission, the contact page should be very straightforward. At minimum there should be text boxes for the visitors name, email and message. This isn't the place to "sell" your mission or to "info dump." Remember, each page on your site has a purpose. While your "About Me" page is where visitors can go through all your history (the highlights, the challenges and everything in between), the "Contact" page is where they go to get in contact with you.
   

5. Use a Donate Button Sure, this tip may seem pretty simple. Most nonprofits have donate buttons on their websites and utilizing donate buttons to convince site visitors to give is basic for most organizational leaders. However, just having the button is the first step. It should also be present on almost every website page, ideally on the top portion of the page and to the right. Additionally, the button should be larger enough and have distinct enough colors to catch site visitors' attention. You want them to quickly be aware that donating and supporting your mission is only a few clicks away.
   

The challenges of running a nonprofit are endless but not impossible, especially when you have the right support. If you'd like to learn more about how we can work together, contact me for a free thirty minute consultation!

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