Nonprofits succeed or fail based on their ability to communicate their message and build an audience. Creating a nonprofit website plays a key role in helping your organization achieve both goals.
Creating a website is a great way to get the word out about your nonprofit profit. You can use it to share information and updates, make a persuasive argument, and convince people to get involved. And with the right approach, it will cost a lot less than you might think.
The Essential Elements of a Nonprofit Website
The way you set up and run your nonprofit website will obviously be unique, depending on your niche, goals, and resources. However, as you begin to plan your site, there are a few things you’ll definitely want to include.
A strong nonprofit website should have (at a minimum):
- A mission statement, telling visitors what you are about.
- Lots of details about what you do and why it is important.
- A blog or news section news, to keep people abreast of the latest updates and successes.
- Contact information, so interested parties can get in touch.
- Photographs and biographies of your organization’s members, staff, or key partners.
- Compelling images, incorporated throughout your site.
- A way to accept donations, if you solicit donations from the public.
- A call to action (CTA) inviting visitors to sign up for an email list, volunteer, donate, or do whatever is most important to their or organization.
This may sound like a lot, but putting together a site that encompasses all of these elements is not difficult. All you need is the right set of tools, along with a little time and patience.
How to Create a Nonprofit Website (In 6 Easy Steps)
How to non-profit organization a for-profit organization, you probably don’t have a lot of time and money to spare. Regardless, you want a website that is attractive, functional, and easy to use. The following six steps will guide you through the process of creating this type of site quickly and cheaply.
1. Choose a platform for your nonprofit website
The first thing you need to do is select a platform to build your website on. There are many options, but they largely fall into three camps. You can build a website from scratch, sign up with a website builder, or use a Content Management System (CMS).
Unless you already have some talented developers on board, building a website from nothing is generally expensive and time consuming. Website builders, on the other hand, are cheap and easy to use. However, they don’t offer much flexibility or give you much control over your site.
A CMS is the perfect middle ground. This type of platform is usually open source, which means you can download the software and use it to build your nonprofit website for free. Also, a quality CMS will provide a user-friendly interface that will allow you to customize your site without any technical knowledge.
For a non-profit site, we recommend WordPress:
This CMS it is suitable for beginners and has a great community willing to help when you run into difficulties. The most important thing for your nonprofit website is that it’s free and doesn’t require you to hire a developer.
2. Buy a hosting plan and a domain name
WordPress may be free to use, but building your nonprofit website involves some small costs. You will need to register a domain name and select a hosting plan.
The domain name is the main URL of your site (ie mynonprofitsite.org). When deciding on a domain name, it’s best to give the site your organization’s name or use a short, catchy phrase that sums up your mission, such as saveourlibraries.org.
You’ll also need to choose a domain level (TLD), such as .com or .net. We strongly recommend using .org, as people are more likely to trust nonprofits that use this TLD. However, if your budget allows it, you can also purchase the .com version of your domain name and have it redirected to your site.
To get your site online, you’ll also need to log in and get ready for a plan hosting, which is the “engine” that powers your site and makes it available to other people: Bluehost is a good choice when you’re just starting out. Another benefit of Bluehost is that it gives you a free domain name, which you can choose during the registration process.
Bluehost will also help you install WordPress, which means you can start customizing your website right away.
3.Choose a theme to style your site
At this point, you should have a basic WordPress site up and running. Now, you’ll want to give it a design that showcases your nonprofit’s mission. Fortunately, this is a task that you can “speed up” by choosing the right WordPress theme.
Simply put, the theme of your site controls how it looks and how it is structured visually. This means that even if you’re not a designer, you can select the look and feel you want.
In addition, there are many themes designed specifically for non-profit sites. This means that the style, layout, and elements are customized to meet the needs of organizations like yours. Some even come with multiple templates or demo pages, each designed to match a particular type of nonprofit.
You can choose from many free options in the WordPress Theme Directory, just by searching themes with the keyword “non-profit” (or “non-profit”):
If you have the budget, you can also check out some premium non-profit themes as they are often a little more flexible. General business themes often work well too.
4. Create the basic pages of your site
Once you’ve installed your chosen theme, you’ll want to take some time to customize it. This means adding your own image and branding, as well as adjusting the style and layout to fit your organization. How you do this will vary by theme, but the best place to start is by visiting the WordPress Customizer through your site’s dashboard:
Next, you’ll want to create the basic pages that will make up your website. Creating a page in WordPress is easy, and your theme probably gives you plenty of demo content to work with. At a minimum, you’ll want to include the following pages:
- A home page that lets visitors know what your organization is about (preferably with a strong mission statement and lots of images).
- An easy-to-find contact page, with multiple ways to get in touch.
- One or more pages that provide information about what your organization does and why it’s important.
- An ‘archive’ page to host your blog or news updates.
- A page featuring your organization’s key members or partners, with photos and biographies if possible.
Of course, don’t forget to add that vital CTA. This could be a donation button, a newsletter signup form, or a volunteer request. Just make sure it’s prominently placed and stands out from the rest of your site.
If you want a little more flexibility over how your pages look, a WordPress page builder plugin will let you design your pages using a drag-and-drop visual editor.
5. Consider a donation plugin
We mentioned that word “plugin” above. While themes change the look and feel of your site, plugins help you add functionality to your site.
You can find plugins for all sorts of things, but one of the most useful for a nonprofit site is profit is a complement of donation. . These plugins will help you accept donations and run fundraising campaigns. Beyond that, they’ll also help you manage donors, including an easy-to-access database, as well as the ability to generate the tax forms donors need.
One of the donation plugins The most popular is GiveWP. plugin:
If you want to learn more, we have a full post on accepting donations in WordPress.
6. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
Last but not least, you’ll need to consider how people will find your nonprofit website. Mostly this will happen through search engines, which means doing some Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
This is essentially a collection of techniques to help your site have a high ranking in search engines. What is worth noting is that for a non-profit website (particularly a smaller local operation), “local SEO” will likely play a significant role. This involves optimizing your site so that it appears in searches of people who are physically nearby.
To start optimizing your site, we recommend that you first install the free Yoast SEO plugin on your site and learn how to use it. :
This simple yet powerful tool will help you cover the basics of solid SEO. In addition, its developers also offer a whole series of articles on local SEO, with lots of practical tips.
Although SEO can be a complicated subject, you don’t have to be an expert to benefit from it. , and even learning just the basics will pay huge dividends for your organization.
Conclusion
For many nonprofits, success depends largely on their ability to attract attention. and build a following online. Your nonprofit website will play a key role in that process, serving to both inform your audience and encourage them to take action.
Creating a nonprofit website that is both elegant and functional is surprisingly easy. You just need to:
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