Your website is a home for your cause. A communal place where people can gain awareness and learn about your nonprofit's mission.
Anyone with interest in your cause or looking to find out more about what you do will likely head to your website first. This makes site-building a vital part of your brand-building, advocacy, and marketing.
But what makes a good nonprofit website?
To help you answer this question and build or refresh your nonprofit’s website, we’ve compiled a list of the best nonprofit websites to inspire you.
Here are five nonprofit websites you can refer to for website inspiration:
Although its name says it all, the first thing Habitat for Humanity reiterates on its site is its aim. They do this with a large featured image and the statement: “We build strength, stability, and self-reliance through shelter.”
They’ve been operating since 1976 and have worked in over 70 countries so they have tons of information to include, however, they do it well.
The website is simple to navigate and helps users find what they are looking for easily. Great design features like a drop-down menu for users to select their country and a clean menu aid in this.
A bright orange ‘Donate’ button immediately draws attention, calling for visitors to contribute, too. Their menu alone also has dedicated pages for interested volunteers and support.
As a part of the global Oxfam Confederation, Oxfam Canada defends women’s rights and promotes gender justice, non-discrimination, and equality. Their website embodies these values and serves as a strong platform to conscientize people and mobilize them in taking action against global injustices.
Their website does this by centering the participation of visitors in their causes. Below the fold, there is a clear call to visitors to get involved in various ways, as a campaigner, corporate sponsor or partner, fundraiser, member, or volunteer.
It also makes giving easy, with a digital donation structure. A bold red ‘Donate Now’ button is the first thing you see on their homepage. It directs users to a form where they can donate.
A distinct and clearly-communicated purpose and simple ways to get involved mean that all visitors know what their contribution does and how they can help out.
A collection of “stories, solutions, and community actions.” This is what the Only One site is all about. The nonprofit has a site that puts its users at its center. It’s an interactive space that unites people in the same goal: Sustainability.
Only One uses its website as a tool for people to get active. They’ve synced their advocacy programming to the platform so that anyone with a membership can immediately start taking action against our ocean’s pollution and climate issues.
Signed-up users can sign up for events and newsletters, donate, support petitions, communicate with the team and other users, and more.
As one of the best nonprofit websites we’ve seen, Only One is masterful in making a community for their cause and making it easy for people to take action independently and digitally.
Most people know the work that Make-A-Wish does in giving life to the exceptional wishes of children with severe health conditions. And they’ve cleverly placed the stories of these children as the focus of their website.
It is a vibrant and youthful platform with pictures and snippets from different children’s stories. You can immediately understand the purpose of the organization, giving “hope without limits”.
By connecting you to the narratives of the children that the company impacts, they show you where your donations go. And they make it easy to donate with a donation form above the fold on their homepage. Their menu also has a ‘Get Involved’ option that guides you to ways you can contribute as an individual, corporate, etc.
Word on Fire is a Christianity-based organization that shares religious resources like videos, reflections and meditations, books, talks and podcasts, and more. This makes it slightly different from the other organizations on our list as it targets individual and personal beliefs more than it may have a political, ecological, or socio-economic impact.
This is clear in the website structure, its content, and the messaging, “to draw people into or back to the Catholic faith.” Distinct and intentional messaging is an important part of building the best nonprofit website and the Word on Fire platform is a great example of how to integrate your purpose into your wording.
Other than this, their site does a good job of serving as an archive or resource. Less focused on donation, they instead provide an extensive collection of Christian content for users to access, including an institute and bookstore.
To help you create the perfect home for your organization, these are some of the things you should keep in mind:
Ideally, you want to create a site that reflects your mission and makes it easy for people to understand what you’re about.
It needs to be well-designed, engaging, and attention-grabbing while being easy to navigate, donate, or provide support.
You should also keep your target audience in mind, while still trying to cater to a wide range of possible user demographics. After all, the more the merrier!
For more information, check out these nonprofit website design tips.
The best nonprofit websites are those that find the balance between advertising/attracting supporters and building trust and showing the humanity of their cause. After all, charity work is all about people, care, community, and trust and finding ways to bring these together and prompt activism.