Knowing the Goals of your Website

Now more than ever, non-profit organizations are dependent on their online presence to solicit donations, program initiatives, and tell their stories. Utilizing the internet effectively is key for driving support and resources to your organization. 

Reflect on the true purpose of your organization and build a website that clearly communicates its initiatives and program. Focus on educating readers and on how they can participate or make a contribution. Here are some key points to take into account when working with a developer: 

1. What is your primary goal? 
2. What key information do you want people to extrapolate? 
3. Do you want to showcase the organization’s work or services?
4. Can people easily contact the organization?

Language and tone are important.Successful non-profit sites maintain a tone that is professional yet relatable. Your audience should feel they can connect directly with the organization. You’ll be surprised at the kind of engagement and funding you can achieve by being relatable. Crafting content that gives your organization its unique voice should be a priority.

Non-profit and art scenes use taglines such as community and activation. As customer values have changed, these terms have become ubiquitous even in the for-profit sector. For example, supermarket chains have become communities of suppliers and farmers, when in reality they’re merely part of the supply chain. The word community implies that the market functions as a collective rather than a corporation, which often appeals to the customer base. It’s key to use language that is transparent and accessible to your readers, but also original. 

Formatting

We live in an age of short attention spans. We all toggle between tabs, jumping from video to social media to reading a think piece.Thus formatting is important. Long-form format writing is good for storytelling and blog posts (use these to target an initiative or program) but might make your audience think they have to invest a lot of time, which could turn them away. You want to be informative without sounding too academic, which can be effective when sharing statistics or field research narratives. 

Fundraising Tools and Strategies

In today’s non-profit landscape, an organization should take the time to do a bit of market research and gather data from its audience. Begin by scaling a survey that asks: What issues are important to them? Would they be more likely to support social justice, education, or economic initiatives? Mailchimp is now integrated with Google Analytics and can be a great tool for collecting data from an audience. If you’re interested in taking this first step, contact us and we can work on a strategy plan which gets measurable results for your organization.

Fundraising is a crucial component as it represents a revenue stream that sustains most non-profits (in addition to grant funding). We can help create dynamic digital-fundraising initiatives with partner sponsors and non-profits both locally and abroad through our comprehensive network of donors and advocates. 

Be creative! Content should be well-constructed and compelling in order to communicate key points for an initiative. If the focus is on a fundraiser, be sure to outline its target goal. 

A fundraising campaign should always display a donate button, which users can access quickly and efficiently. Give donors contribution options such as Venmo, PayPal, or a major credit card. Tip! Some digital-payment platforms offer incentives for non-profits such as lower processing fees and percentages. Our role would include integrating donor tools seamlessly into the website.