What a small NGO actually needs from its website
Five common ways small non-profit websites let their organisations down, and a short checklist for getting it right.
Most non-profit websites fail in the same handful of ways, and almost none of them is about how the site looks.
Five ways a website lets a good organisation down
- Nobody can tell what you do. A visitor decides in about ten seconds whether to stay. If they can’t say, in a sentence, what you do and where, they leave.
- There is no way to reach you that works. A contact form that goes nowhere, or an email address nobody checks, loses a funder faster than a plain design ever could.
- There is no proof. Funders and partners look for signs that you are real: where you are based, how you are registered, who is behind the work, what you did recently.
- It can’t be updated. The site was built by a friend or a firm that has moved on, the hosting has lapsed, and the newest news is two years old.
- It is too heavy. Most of your audience is on a phone, often on expensive data. A home page full of huge photos is a page they will never see.
A short checklist
A small NGO website that does its job usually has:
- one clear sentence about what you do and who for
- where you work, stated plainly
- your programmes, each described in a short paragraph
- real photographs, taken with consent
- a clear way to give, to volunteer or to partner
- a contact method that you have tested yourself
- your registration details and the names of the people who run things
- a way for your own staff to change the text without calling a developer
A few habits worth keeping
Ask before you photograph, and be careful with children. A moving photo is not worth a child’s safety or dignity. Use a first name only, or none, and get written consent from a parent or guardian.
Write for the person funding you. Their questions are simple: what problem, what you did about it, what changed, what it cost. Answer those in that order.
Keep it light. Compress images, avoid autoplay video, and test on a mid-range phone with a slow connection.
Own your domain. Register it in the organisation’s name, not a volunteer’s personal account, and write down who holds the login.
None of this takes a big budget. It takes someone to sit down and decide what visitors most need to know. That is the heart of our NGO Support work, and we’re glad to talk it through with any organisation, whether or not you end up working with us.
