6 Nonprofit Website Elements That Attract Supporters
Your website plays an essential role in engaging and acquiring supporters. As your digital marketing hub, your website should provide a one-stop shop for new and existing supporters alike to learn about your nonprofit and get involved.
To help you transform your website, we’ll cover six essential elements that play a significant role in attracting supporters to your cause. If you’re looking to improve your nonprofit web design or establish your website planning and development approach, prioritize these elements within your plans. By doing so, you’ll ensure you’re centering your main audience—current and potential supporters—at every step of the website refresh process.
1. Your nonprofit’s history and mission
Your website is the first place individuals will check if they’re interested in learning more about your nonprofit. Design a robust “about” page that highlights your organization’s history to make it easy for web visitors to discover what your nonprofit stands for.
Make sure you provide the following details:
Your history, including how your organization was founded and why
Your mission and vision statements
Your core values and how you uphold them
Your current priorities for funding and volunteer work
Make this information visually engaging by presenting it in a multimedia format. For example, you might create an interactive timeline that displays your organization’s history. Or, you can shoot a video that summarizes your mission and vision statements.
When you make your mission and position clear and engaging, website visitors can quickly determine whether your organization’s work aligns with their values.
2. Impact stories
Part of the appeal for individuals who support and donate to nonprofits is the potential impact they can make on that nonprofit’s beneficiaries. That’s why the most effective nonprofit websites share specific details about the impact supporters can make on their mission. This helps prospective supporters visualize the positive difference they can make and shows current supporters the impact of their work, inspiring them to stay involved.
Showcase supporters’ impact across your website using:
Testimonials that include direct quotes and interviews with your beneficiaries.
Statistics that summarize your organization’s successes, such as how many people you’ve served, animals you’ve helped get adopted, trees you’ve planted, etc.
Annual reports that offer financial transparency and a high-level summary of the impact of donations.
Just like your organization’s basic information, presenting these impact stories in a creative, engaging way makes them more memorable for website visitors. An easy way to do this is simply by adding relevant images, such as photos of your beneficiaries and infographics of your impact statistics.
3. Streamlined donation page
Your “giving” page should be as simple and convenient as possible to encourage visitors to follow through on their intention to donate. Tweak your donation form by following these best practices for a streamlined page:
Split your donation form into multiple pages. A multi-step form breaks the process down into manageable steps that are less overwhelming than a long form with all the fields on one page.
Only ask for necessary information. Make your form quick to complete by only asking for information such as donors’ full names, contact information, and payment information. Follow up with a survey later on if you want to gather more insights, such as how donors heard about your organization or what they thought of the online donation process.
Include suggested donation amounts. This will inform the donor of how much your supporters usually give, making it easier for them to choose their donation amount. You can also add impact labels to the donation amounts. For instance, if you’re an animal shelter nonprofit, you can add that $50 is equal to a month’s worth of food for a litter of puppies.
On top of offering a streamlined donation page, you should also provide different ways for supporters to donate. Your constituents may be interested in different aspects of your mission or specific programs or in adjusting their level of support over time. Flexible donation opportunities allow donors to support your mission in the format that’s right for them.
Provide the following opportunities for giving:
Donate to a specific project or program
Monthly giving program
Planned giving
Matching gift opportunities
Donor-advised funds
Major gifts of real estate, endowments, etc.
Stocks and cryptocurrency
Make sure your content management system (CMS) has the necessary tools to create a streamlined donation process, regardless of the donation type. If it doesn’t have these tools, consider upgrading your system to a more robust platform that can handle your needs. For instance, Kanopi’s WordPress guide explains that this CMS offers plenty of useful nonprofit features like the ability to create streamlined donation pages and how to securely process gifts.
4. Ways to get involved
Donating isn’t the only way that supporters can make a significant impact on your organization. Supporting an organization’s projects and programs with time and energy can be just as valuable as monetary donations—in fact, the current estimated value of a volunteer hour is over $31.
That’s why your website should provide opportunities for visitors to get involved in volunteer activities such as:
Advocacy campaigns
Peer-to-peer fundraising opportunities
Events
Create a “volunteering” or “get involved” page and include these activities on it. Provide descriptions of how these opportunities help your mission, what the volunteer’s responsibilities will be, what the time commitment is, and any necessary registration forms so supporters can conveniently sign up for any volunteering activity.
5. Regularly updated blog
A blog allows you to establish thought leadership while providing supporters with background information on your organization and ongoing updates on programs, projects, and fundraising. Build out your nonprofit blog by following these tips:
Vary post formatting with short-form written content, long-form written content, videos, photo galleries, quizzes, and other multimedia content.
Invite experts from your field or within your organization to act as guest bloggers and share their insights.
Promote your blog posts on social media and in your email newsletter to drive traffic.
Increase organic search traffic by incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, such as including relevant keywords in your posts and organizing your content using headers.
Website visitors like to see that your nonprofit is active, and keeping supporters up to date with ongoing activities will increase the chances that more of them will sign up to participate.
As you begin creating content for your blog roll, ensure that it (and the rest of your website!) is accessible to readers of all abilities. This means following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and implementing best practices such as adding alt text to visual elements, adding closed captions to audio and video elements, and ensuring that background and foreground colors have enough contrast.
If you’re looking for examples of how to do this, take a look at these healthcare websites to see how they prioritize accessibility.
6. Appreciation messages
Most nonprofit donors and volunteers don’t contribute their time and money because they want an abundance of adoration and recognition. They do it because they believe in an organization’s mission and want to do what they can to help out.
However, highlighting your supporters’ contributions and thanking them across your website never hurts! When supporters feel appreciated for their efforts, they’ll be much more likely to continue engaging with your organization, boosting your donor retention rate.
Here are a few donor appreciation elements you can incorporate into your website:
Virtual donor wall
Thank-you video
Appreciation event information
Benefits for donors, such as exclusive event access and free or discounted merchandise
Aside from donors, your organization also relies on the support of volunteers to stay in operation. Acknowledge their contributions as well by incorporating appreciation messages throughout your website. If you’d like to take your gratitude further, check out eCardWidget’s guide to volunteer appreciation and see if any of their strategies would work for your nonprofit.
From fundraising to advocacy, your nonprofit relies on the generosity of its supporters to succeed. Including and optimizing these six website elements will make your nonprofit’s website useful and accessible for new and existing supporters alike. Plus, you can boost your nonprofit’s reputation as an active, dynamic organization that’s constantly striving to exceed supporters’ expectations.