Whether a nonprofit succeeds or fails depends on how well it can spread its message and attract supporters. Both of those objectives can be successfully attained by your organization with the use of a nonprofit website.
A fantastic approach to spreading the news about your organization is by creating a website. It can be used to communicate news and updates, persuade others to take action, and exchange information. And it will cost far less than you might anticipate if you use the proper method.
- Every nonprofit website should be search engine friendly.
- WordPress is a free high-quality CMS suggestion for nonprofits.
The Components of a Nonprofit Website
You probably don’t have a lot of time or money to spare since you’re a nonprofit. Yet, you need a website that is appealing, useful, and simple to navigate. You can easily and affordably create this type of site by following the six steps described below.
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Choose a Platform For Your Nonprofit Website.
The first step is choosing a platform on which to develop your website. Although there are many options, they can be divided into three groups. You can utilize a Content Management System (CMS), a website builder, or create a website from scratch.
Unless you already have some talented developers on staff, building a website from scratch is typically expensive and time-consuming. On the other hand, website builders are affordable and easy to use. They don’t, however, provide much flexibility or allow you much control over your website.
A CMS is an ideal fit for nonprofits. Often, this kind of platform is open-source, so you may download the program and use it to create a free non-profit website. Also, a high-quality CMS will offer a user-friendly interface that enables you to customize your website without any specialized knowledge.
For a nonprofit website, WordPress is a good suggestion.
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Invest in a Hosting Package and a Domain.
WordPress may be free to use, but there are a few minimal charges associated with developing your non-profit website. You must choose a hosting package and register a domain name.
The primary URL of your website is the domain name (i.e., mynonprofitsite.org). You should name your website after your organization or use a brief, memorable phrase that encapsulates your objective, such as saveourlibraries.org, when choosing a domain name.
A Top Level Domain (TLD), such as .com or .net, must also be selected. While consumers continue to be more likely to trust non-profit organizations that use this TLD, we strongly advise using .org. However, if your budget permits, you could also wish to buy the .com version of your domain name and point it toward your website.
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Choose a Theme For Your Website’s Design.
You ought to have a fundamental WordPress website operational by this point. You should now give it a design that highlights the goals of your nonprofit. Fortunately, by picking the appropriate WordPress theme, you may “speed track” this process.
Simply put, your site’s theme determines how it appears and is visually organized. This implies that you can choose the style and appearance you desire even if you are not a designer.
Additionally, there are numerous themes created especially for nonprofit websites. This indicates that the design, organization, and components have been altered to meet the demands of businesses just like yours.
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Create your site’s foundational pages.
You should spend some time customizing your selected theme after you’ve installed it. This entails customizing the style and design to meet your company needs as well as incorporating your graphics and branding. The best place to start will depend on your theme, but generally speaking, go to the WordPress Customizer from the site dashboard.
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Take Into Account a Donation Plugin
Above, we discussed the word “plugin.” Themes alter the appearance of your website, whereas plugins enable you to increase functionality.
There are plugins for many kinds of things, but a donation plugin can be particularly useful for a nonprofit website. You may organize fundraising campaigns and receive donations with the aid of these plugins. Also, they will assist you in managing contributors by providing an easily accessible database and the capacity to produce the necessary tax forms for donors.
The GiveWP plugin is one of the most widely used donation plugins
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Make Your Website Search Engine Friendly.
Not least among other things, think about how people will locate your nonprofit website. This will primarily be done through search engines, which calls for performing some Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is simply a set of methods to support a high search engine ranking for your website. It’s important to keep in mind that “local SEO” will probably be important for a nonprofit website (especially for a smaller, locally-based company). This entails optimizing your website to appear in searches made by local users.
Using the free Yoast SEO plugin and getting familiar with it before you begin improving your site is advised. Even though SEO can be a challenging subject, simply knowing the fundamentals will have a significant positive impact on your business.
Conclusion
Success for many charitable organizations depends primarily on their capacity to garner attention and develop an internet following. Your non-profit website will be crucial to this process, serving to educate and motivate your audience to take action.
It’s surprisingly simple to construct a nonprofit website that is both attractive and useful.
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