Tips for Developing Successful Websites for Nonprofits

For most nonprofits, the very mention of a website redesign project is enough to send people running for the hills. After all, most marketing professionals have war stories from past website projects that have gone awry.

It goes something like this:

From the start, the launch deadline — likely ambitious and also arbitrary — looms large on the entire team. It’s seen as an immovable and fast-approaching object.

As things progress, everyone involved places unreasonable pressure on themselves and each other to launch a 100% perfect website on day No. 1. Because of this, rounds of reviews pile up, decision paralysis takes hold, delays mount and the atmosphere becomes tense.

Once the website finally launches, everyone is so exhausted that they never want to look at it again. The website then remains the same for the next three to five years, slowly falling into a state of disrepair before the entire process begins again.

Needless to say, this is not a recipe for success.

Progress Over Perfection

Framing the goal for a website as perfection, or anything close to it, is a recipe for disaster. How can nonprofits even know what a “perfect website” is when visitors haven’t interacted with it yet?

I prioritize progress over perfection. This is a fundamental shift in how to approach website projects. It involves setting realistic goals for the launch of your new site and thinking about it as a minimum viable product (MVP) instead of the be-all and end-all. It’s similar to how app developers approach mobile applications: you don’t release version No. 1 and call it a day. It’s just the start of a never-ending journey to improve the product based on your planned roadmap and user feedback. When you approach a website like this, you create a healthier dynamic where your build stays maintained and improved instead of neglected and scapegoated.

I like to use the analogy that you wouldn’t buy a new car and decide not to change the oil. Why treat your website—one of your most expensive investments as an organization—this way?

User-Centric Design

The emphasis of your nonprofit’s website should be user-centricity. The audiences that visit your website today and those you wish to attract to your new website must be given a prominent seat at the table.

To gather requirements, interview key organizational stakeholders, as well as visitors — from email subscribers to donors and volunteers — representing each group to which you hope to appeal. Resist the temptation to develop a rigid set of questions. Instead, give them space to express their needs and wants in their own words. Use tools, like generative AI, to record each interview and transform their responses into structured data with precise categorization.

What your visitors want out of your website is likely very different from what you, as an organization, want to express. That’s a healthy tension that must be acknowledged and dealt with during the website development process. Be careful not to design your website’s sitemap around your internal department structure. Instead, base it on the information users seek and the most logical paths to get them there. This might mean putting your interests aside so your site is as user-friendly as possible.

Try to think deliberately about each page you plan to add and be ruthless about removing bloat. While it sounds counterintuitive, your website isn’t about you as an organization; it’s about the problems you are working to address and the people who wish to back your work.

Building user-centric websites also requires gathering and analyzing user experience data. This involves implementing tools, like website heat maps and analytical tools (Google Analytics 4, for example), early in your discovery process on your existing website to identify common paths people take and clear sources of friction. Your aim is to create sites that are not only a joy to navigate but also continually optimized based on key metrics and testing.

One indication that your homepage isn’t working is that a large portion of your visitors immediately head to your “About Us” page in the hopes of figuring out what you actually do. If you haven’t seen it, McSweeney’s bemoaned this in their piece, "We Dare You to Figure Out What Our Nonprofit Does." (You know your industry is in trouble when the perception is so common that you get roasted like this.)

Technological Empowerment

Websites can be intimidating for nonprofit staffers. Oftentimes, they wear many hats, with “website manager” being just one of them. Add to that the fact that many nonprofit websites are so dated that they feel like they might collapse if a stiff wind hits them.

Part of any high-quality website project is building in such a way that the nonprofit staff feels comfortable and confident making updates to the site on its own. While there’s a very good argument for bringing in experts to maintain your website, you shouldn’t feel beholden to an agency or webshop to make simple updates to your site. This leads to a poor dynamic where your staff does not feel in control of their own website and must wait however long until their vendor makes each change.

Nonprofits shouldn’t simply outsource the development of their website and wash their hands of it. Instead, they should choose a partner who can explain the work they are doing in layman’s terms, offer robust training and generally get their staff excited about the possibilities instead of dreading the process. This represents the best of both worlds: the benefits of working with web development experts to significantly improve your site without the drawbacks of feeling they are the only ones who can work on it.

Your organization should always feel like it has the keys to its kingdom.

You’re not alone if you and your organization are embarking on a website redesign but have collective trauma over past redesigns. But you also don’t have to repeat the same process. You can choose a better, more pragmatic approach that values iteration and continuous improvement over undue stress and frustration.

This is not to say that a new website should come easily. You have to put in the work — but it needs to be the right work. Hard decisions and debates should be had to reduce bloat, introduce the correct functionality and resist the urge to speak more about yourself than to your visitors. But it doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle against avoidable stressors. Spend the entire time feeling like you’re paddling upstream, wasting effort on avoidable stressors, and you’ll end up without time for the very real and vital work.

Commit to building your next website in a healthy way, rooted in user insights and undertaken pragmatically. By choosing an approach that values continuous improvement, nonprofits can avoid past pitfalls and work toward success together.

The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.