When designing a non-profit website, consider all your supporters who range from donors to volunteers. In this article, we will go over some best practices to engage your potential supporters and facilitate their experience on your website.
- Have a Clear Mission and Identity
- Capture the Attention of your Collaborators
- Facilitate Fundraising
- Quick and Easy Recruiting
- Create a Mobile Friendly Site
1. Create a Clear Mission and Identity
Your identity and your mission should be presented succinctly on the index page. Ideally even your domain name should feature the name of your association so that interested parties may find it easily.Within the first 5 seconds on stumbling upon your website the reader should already have an idea as to what your goal is. From the home page, one should be able to have an idea of your mission through the imagery or maybe even a short video showing the work your team has done. For example, if your Association provides a space for disabled people to take part in sports try including images displaying a match. Or if it concerns feeding those in need a video displaying your team preparing food could be effective. It is important that you include a page describing the organisation’s history and evolution. Secondly, you should elaborate on your aims and what you stand for or against. Next, listing your partners, adding photos your team members and sharing beneficiaries (where possible) could add a nice personable touch. Though we often times disregard the importance of a glossy logo, do not be fooled by its importance. A logo is the emblematic representation of your vision through which your supporters can easily identify your association as opposed to another. This is usually kept at the top left corner of the screen and so it's usually one of the first things we notice upon visiting a non-profit website’s web page.
2. Capture the attention of your collaborators
Now that the viewer knows what you are about you should try and hold their attention and hopefully convince them to be an ally for your mission. Acknowledge that each individual is different, therefore your strategy to attract supporters should also be varied. Include a multitude of content that may attract supporters such as a variety of events consistent with your mission, press releases and multimedia. Your goal here is try and inform and appeal to the empathy potential endorsers. For example, on Protect the Pets, they link one of their YouTube webinars which gears towards a more informative approach. While Hope into Action appeals to the viewer’s empathy through good use of videos and displaying how their movement brought about change into the lives of the homeless. Ultimately, you are the artist, you choose your own means to allure and engage your audience. Ensure that your files are backed up and secure so can restore your previous content if necessary. Hopefully after these efforts, you can get motivated individuals or institutions to respond through contributions and volunteerism.
3. Facilitate Fundraising
Though ASBL hosting for Associations without a lucrative purpose is inexpensive, in order to see your dream, come into fruition you will need resources. ASBL means association sans but lucratif - nonprofit organisation. These are hosting plans tailor-made for non-profits with next-to free hosting. When designing your website page, your donate button or tab should be apparent upon coming to the website. It is usually by the top menu entitled “Support Us.” Ensure that the platform you’re using has reliable hosting with secure payment features for donors. Additionally, include several payment options such as:
- A monthly subscription/membership,
- One-time contributions: Where you can choose to specify certain amounts or grant donors more liberty to freely indicate how much they want to contribute. Erase every potential for doubtfulness in your association. Some donors might have cold-feet when signing up to a website that is new. So prove your trustworthiness. In an effort to demonstrate financial transparency you can try to get accredited by a prominent body to evaluate your charity such as CharityNavigator.org for US or CharityClarity.org for the UK. In Luxembourg, the Guichet.lu has the full guidelines for setting up your non-profit.
4. Make Recruitment Appealing
Potential members usually seek a sense of community with like-minded individuals. So, feature images of current members working together and having fun. Link your social media accounts which showcase comradery between members as well. Volunteers wanting to become a member of your association ought not to be met with burdensome counter intuitive templates. Prepare an easy to complete electronic form with the possibility of auto-fill so as to expedite the process. Consider opening an option where potential recruits can describe how they can aide your association. By this means, supporters can add to your mission by bringing to light a method that supports your goals you haven’t yet considered. Through asking to volunteer in the name of your charity to spread awareness in their own neighbourhoods or by proposing an event that directly supports your mission. For example, coordinating an adaptive sport of Lacross or hosting by an inter-school competition. This can be done on a platform for recruitment, in addition to the “Contact Us” page.
Volunteering can also take the form of virtual contribution.
On your website, you could also draft electronic petitions to send to the city council for reform. Please do include means through which your supporters could share your desideratum on their social media, which would not only attract petition signers but maybe also future recruits. In the aforementioned, we see how important social media is in expediting the process of spreading your message. So do link your social media accounts to your website.
5. Mobile Friendly Website
More and more people are using their phone to surf the web, including potential donors and volunteers. By mobile-friendly, we mean that your website should perform well across different devices. Enhance your mobile view by limiting the amount of content on each page and adapting font and button sizes for mobile devices. Imagine how frustrating it would be for someone to use their thumb to navigate a website not formatted for mobile browsing. It would be difficult to find content and click on appropriate links. So, don’t forget to consider the millions of people around the world who access your website via mobile phones and tablets.
Let’s recap
When making an awesome nonprofit website, first go through a process of identification. Show what your about and what you are trying to achieve through your association. Secondly, inspire others through your content may it be your previous good work or and informative message. When you attract supporters, help them to help your cause by simplifying the fundraising and the recruitment process. We hope that you find this information useful for creating your own non-profit website.
