The Best Way to Build a Nonprofit Website
Summary
If you're planning to launch or relaunch your nonprofit's website, stay tuned — because I'm giving you the simple five-step process I walk every nonprofit client through, whether your annual budget is $100,000 or a million dollars.
Want to build a nonprofit website that raises money while you sleep? Start here → marketyourmission.co/website
In this video, I'll show you:
The five-step process every nonprofit needs to build a website that attracts donors and volunteers
How to identify and speak to your five core nonprofit audiences — and why getting this wrong costs you donors
The simple AIM framework for writing website copy that inspires action on every single page
Why design is step three, not step one — and what matters far more than fonts and colors
How to measure your website's success with the three analytics metrics that actually matter
"I've seen nonprofits with very simple, very sleek, and almost minimalistic design raise tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars on very simple donate pages — because the messaging is more important."
If you want to build a nonprofit website that raises money and recruits volunteers while you sleep, you need a proven framework that puts the right message in front of the right audience — before you ever think about design.
"Be really careful when you're writing your website pages to write in a way that centers one of your ideal audiences as the hero of that story, as the center of that story."
In this episode, learn how to build a nonprofit website using the proven five-step process Ricardo uses with every client — from $100K to million-dollar budgets. Plus, you'll discover why most nonprofits start their website build at step three, and why that mistake is costing them donors and volunteers.
Watch the video to get the full training.
Free Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the best way to build a nonprofit website?
The best way to build a nonprofit website is to follow a five-step process: define your audience, craft your message, design your website, ignite your movement with content, and measure your success. Most organizations jump straight to design, but the most important steps come before that. Knowing exactly who your website is for and writing a compelling message for each of those audiences is what ultimately determines whether your website raises money and recruits volunteers.
2. Who are the five core audiences a nonprofit website needs to serve?
Every nonprofit website should be designed to communicate with five core audiences: (1) clients or direct program beneficiaries, (2) donors and financial supporters, (3) volunteers who contribute their time and labor, (4) stakeholders such as elected officials and community organizations with a vested interest in your mission, and (5) the general public. Unlike for-profit websites that focus primarily on buyers, nonprofit websites must speak meaningfully to all five groups.
3. What is the AAIM framework for nonprofit website content?
AAIM stands for Audience, Action, Intent, and Message. It's a four-part framework to use when writing every page of your nonprofit website. Start by identifying which audience you're writing for on this page. Then define the one action you want that visitor to take. Next, think about their intent — what problem are they trying to solve or what information are they looking for? Finally, craft a message that meets their intent, affirms their positive identity, and makes it easy for them to take that action.
4. Why is design the third step — not the first — when building a nonprofit website?
Most people want to start with design, but defining your audiences and crafting compelling messages for each of them is far more important than colors, fonts, or visual bells and whistles. Nonprofits with simple, minimalistic designs regularly raise tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars because their messaging is clear and persuasive. Design matters, but a beautiful website with the wrong message will not convert visitors into donors.
5. How do I optimize my nonprofit website for mobile users?
If you're using a modern website builder like Squarespace or WordPress, mobile optimization is largely built in — but you should still test your site on multiple devices to confirm everything looks and functions correctly. One of the most important things you can do is upload compressed, smaller-sized images. Large HD photos and videos can dramatically slow down your page load times, and slow sites lose donors, especially on mobile where internet speeds vary widely.
6. What does website accessibility mean for nonprofits, and why does it matter?
Web accessibility means ensuring that everyone — including people with visual, auditory, or physical disabilities — can fully experience and navigate your website. The standard to follow is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), which you can find by searching "WCAG" online. Two of the most impactful accessibility improvements you can make right away are: (1) check your color contrast using a tool like WebAIM's free color contrast checker at webaim.org, aiming for AA level or higher, and (2) avoid placing important text inside images, since screen readers cannot read image-embedded text.
7. How often should my nonprofit publish content to attract donors and volunteers online?
Aim to publish one piece of long-form content per week on your website blog. This could be a blog post, a client testimonial, a white paper, a volunteer activity recap with photos, or a short video. Publishing consistently gives search engines and AI platforms new content to index, gives your social media channels something to share, and gives you a reason to email your list that isn't a direct fundraising ask. It's one of the most effective ways to keep your community engaged between campaigns.
8. What is a conversion, and why does it matter for measuring my nonprofit website's success?
A conversion is any measurable action a visitor takes on your website that directly supports your mission — such as making a donation, signing up to volunteer, registering for an event, downloading a resource, or subscribing to your email newsletter. Unlike page views, which only tell you how many people visited, conversions tell you whether your website is actually inspiring people to act. Tracking conversions helps you understand which pages and messages are working and which need improvement.
9. What three analytics metrics should my nonprofit focus on?
The three most important metrics to track in Google Analytics (or any analytics tool) are: (1) page views, which tell you how many people are visiting and which content is most popular; (2) time on page, which indicates whether visitors are actually engaging with your content or leaving right away — a very short time on page often signals a mismatch between what a visitor expected and what the page delivered; and (3) conversions, the measurable actions that directly support your mission and reflect the real-world impact of your website.
10. What kind of content should my nonprofit publish to stand out online?
Focus on what makes your organization unique — your geographic focus, the specific population you serve, or the particular way you approach your mission. In an era where AI-generated content is everywhere, authentic stories about real people, real volunteers, and real impact are what will differentiate you. Share program recaps, client stories (with permission), volunteer spotlights, event photos, and issue-based reports. The goal is to deliver consistent value to your community so your organization stays top of mind even when you're not in the middle of a fundraising campaign.
Full Transcript
The Five-Step Process That Works for Every Nonprofit — From $100K to Million-Dollar Budgets
If you're planning to launch or relaunch your nonprofit's website, stay tuned because I'm giving you the simple five-step process to relaunch your website that I walk every nonprofit client through, whether their annual budget is $100,000 or a million dollars. Hi everyone, I'm Ricardo Ibarra with Market Your Mission and today we're talking about the five simple steps that I use without fail with every nonprofit client. So, let's jump into it.
Step 1: Define Your Audience — The Five Core Groups Your Nonprofit Website Must Serve
Number one is define your audience. Now, unlike the for-profit world, in the nonprofit world, most organizations have five, sometimes even more core audiences that they need to communicate with via their website. In the for-profit world, typically your website serves one purpose — to sell your product or service. And so, you have buyers and non-buyers.
In the nonprofit world, because our work touches so many different facets of life — sometimes it's tangible work like cleaning up a local watershed, other times it's intangible work like educating folks or helping them access jobs — there are five audiences I want you to think about in this step.
Number one, of course, are the clients or the people who directly benefit from your mission. Number two are the donors and supporters, the people who make financial contributions to your organization. Number three are the volunteers and the other folks who show up with their time and their labor to help make your mission possible. Number four is your stakeholders, the people who have a vested interest in your mission — that could be elected officials, that could be community groups. And of course, number five is the public. Most nonprofits are doing something for the public good and so you need to consider how your website speaks to the general public as well.
Step 2: Craft Your Message — Make Your Audience the Hero, Not Your Organization
Step number two in my process to create an incredible website that helps you raise money and volunteers online is craft your message. I have a four-step simple framework I want to talk about in just a sec, but this is so critical because one of the big mistakes that I see nonprofits make is they spend too much time on their website talking about themselves and not talking with their ideal audiences.
What that looks like is maybe your about page — you have a whole long section about your organization's history and how it was founded and why it was founded and the good work you've been doing over the many, many years. Well, the problem with telling a story like that is you're leaving out your audience. You're leaving out the volunteers and the donors who need to see themselves in the evolving story of your organization.
Now, I'm not saying don't talk about your organization's history, but I am saying be really careful when you're writing your website pages to speak in a way, to write in a way that centers one of your ideal audiences as the hero of that story, as the center of that story. This may mean you invite them to participate and envision the next 10 or 20 years of your organization. Or it could be simply reframing your history to talk about the impact that donors, funders, stakeholders, volunteers, and clients had to bring your nonprofit to its current level of success.
The AAIM Framework: Four Questions to Ask Before Writing Every Page of Your Nonprofit Website
Now, when I'm writing a website page, I think of four key things. And I want you to think about this on every single page of your website when you're writing for it, whether it's your contact page or your about page or your donation page.
My four-step AAIM framework to help ensure that the website content you're writing helps you achieve your nonprofit goals is: Audience, Action, Intent, and Message.
Audience: Know Exactly Who You're Writing For
First, audience. We just talked about the five core audiences that I believe every nonprofit should focus on. On each specific page, identify which one of those audiences you're primarily speaking to. That clarity shapes every other decision you make about the content on that page.
Action: Define the One Thing You Want Each Visitor to Do
Number two is action. What is the one single action you want the visitor to do on this page? Is it donate? Is it volunteer? Is it send an email to their city council member? Fill in the blank here. Every page of your website should ask the visitor to do one primary action.
Intent: Meet Your Visitor Where They Are
The next step in our AIM framework is intent. Now, this attempts to capture and speak to what the visitor is trying to accomplish by visiting your website. For a program page, they might be looking for information on eligibility or whether your program meets their needs. If they're visiting the donate page, of course, they're probably looking for not only ways to donate, but reasons to donate — validation that your organization is a great place for them to donate their money. Really try and think about what audience you're serving on this page and what their intent is. What are they trying to do? What problem are they trying to solve? What information would be helpful for them as they're reading this page?
Message: Structure Content That's Easy to Read and Impossible to Ignore
And finally in our four-step process is message. What are the core important messages you want to share on this page? Make sure you don't leave anything out, but also make sure you structure this information so that it's easy to read. Think about using descriptive headers and bullets, because on the web, we tend to skim content rather than reading long, heavy paragraphs. Think about how you can break up your content with images, core themes, and use bullets to present shorter pieces of information.
You also want to affirm their positive identity on this page. You want to speak directly to the ideal audience for this page. You want to acknowledge their intent, meet it with the content that you're sharing, and affirm their positive identity — as someone who gives their time, someone whose life can be made better by volunteering, or someone who will directly benefit from your programs.
Step 3: Design Your Website with Mobile Optimization and Accessibility as Your North Stars
Number three is to design your website. Now, of course, I could talk ad nauseam on this, but this is the step where most people, when they're starting to build their nonprofit website, actually want to start. And I put this number three because identifying your ideal audiences and crafting an interesting and compelling message to them is far more important than the design of your website.
Don't get me wrong — you can't have a really crappy looking website. But you also don't need to spend nearly as much time on the fancy bells and whistles, the pretty colors, or picking just the perfect font as you think you do. I've seen nonprofits with very simple, very sleek, and almost minimalistic design raise tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars on very simple donate pages, very simple campaigns — because the messaging is more important. That's why that's step number two.
Mobile Optimization: A Growing Percentage of Donors Are Giving on Their Phones
But now that we're here in step number three, it's important to consider accessibility and mobile optimization as you're designing your website. Now, if you're building your website on a content management system like Squarespace or WordPress — which are my top two recommended systems — they're going to do a lot of the work for mobile optimization for you. However, it's still really important for you to double check on multiple devices that your website works well on mobile.
A growing percentage of donors are giving via mobile. And if your website is difficult to use or navigate, you could be turning away valuable donors, inspired volunteers, and even potential clients. So, be sure to check your mobile optimization. Make sure that your site looks good and that the functionality works on mobile. And most modern website builders will really help with this.
What's important to consider is uploading smaller images. If you have a staff photographer or even if you've been taking photos and videos on your mobile phone, chances are those are HD recordings. You don't want to upload the full-size images or the full-size videos to your website because that could slow down loading time. Not everyone has super fast mobile internet speeds, and so it's important to consider how your website loads and functions on mobile.
Accessibility: Designing Your Website So Everyone Can Experience Your Mission
The second point about designing your website is accessibility. I'm sure you've seen in the news in the last couple of years there have been some pretty high-profile lawsuits against organizations who did not have websites that met digital accessibility standards. The standards I'm referring to are called WCAG — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — and you can find them by searching "WCAG" online.
They get pretty technical, but I'm going to give you a few tips on improving the accessibility of your site right away. Number one, think about color contrast. That is probably the fastest way to make your site inaccessible — presenting like colors on like colors. Think of something like a cute salmon-colored text on a peach or cream-colored background. Chances are there's not enough color contrast for users with visual impairment to read the content on your page. And if you spent all that time writing a compelling message and no one can read it, well, what was the point of all of that?
There are a number of online color contrast checkers you can find. My favorite is from WebAIM at webaim.org. What you're trying to achieve is a contrast ratio that meets the AA level or better.
Another important accessibility consideration is text in images. I see a lot of nonprofits using their Instagram feeds as a kind of micro-website, publishing images with quote cards or event promotional graphics that have text over a photo. That's fine, but screen readers and other assistive devices cannot read the text in that image. A best practice on your website is to put the text from your image right next to it on the web page as well. You can have a branded graphic that promotes an upcoming event, but right next to it in the actual text of your website, put the same information so it's accessible to everyone.
Step 4: Ignite Your Movement with Consistent, Valuable Content That Keeps Donors Coming Back
Okay, number four is ignite your movement. This is where you devote time and energy to attracting people to your website through your content. Now, there are really only two ways to get eyeballs on your website — content and ads. I'm not going to dive too deep into ads, but I am going to say a few things about content.
It's important in this day and age, where content is everywhere and it seems like everyone is churning out AI-based content, to think about what you can share online about your nonprofit story, the people you serve, and the work you're doing that's truly unique and differentiates you from other organizations in your sphere. Many of you have specific missions — maybe a geographic-based mission, or you're serving a particular priority population, or you're doing something really unique. Lean into that in your content to help stand out on the web.
The other thing I see a lot of my nonprofit clients struggle with is they're not producing enough content frequently enough. The algorithms on social and search are constantly scraping the web looking for new, interesting, different content. So, it's important to target an ideal posting frequency of once a week.
I recommend every nonprofit produce one piece of long-form content per week, and that content should all live on your website blog. When you publish a new blog post, white paper, client testimonial, or slideshow recap of your latest volunteer activity, post it as a blog post — then email your list and share on social media: "Hey, come over to our website and check out the latest blog about XYZ."
What this does is provide new content for search engines, AI engines, and social media users to find and share. It also keeps your audience coming back to your website. It gives you an excuse to email them that isn't asking for money or volunteers. It's a way of nurturing your relationship.
That's how you ignite the movement — by showing up regularly, posting interesting and valuable content on your website every week, and giving your community a great reason to engage with you. Whether it's a report on an issue they care about, a behind-the-scenes look at your programs, or a powerful client story, you're welcoming them into your mission and showing that you value their perspective and their time.
Step 5: Measure Your Success — The Three Analytics Metrics Every Nonprofit Should Track
And finally, the last step of my five-step process is measure your success. Now, if you don't have Google Analytics or another simple analytics tool on your website, get on it. You can learn so much about your audiences and how your website is performing by using analytics.
There are a number of things you want to look for, but I'd like you to focus on a few key ones.
Page Views: What Content Is Attracting Your Audience?
First, of course, page views. How many people are coming to your website? And what are the most popular pages and blogs? This is really important because you'll see the most popular content in your analytics and you can create more of it. For example, if you do a river cleanup every quarter and you realize that your lightest blog post — the one with a bunch of videos and photos attached — did really well, maybe you'll start including more video of your cleanups. Or maybe you'll see if you can do more frequent river cleanups if they draw attention and volunteers to your organization.
Time on Page: Are Visitors Actually Engaging with Your Content?
The other metric I want you to think about is time on page. That's a great indicator of whether the content on each page of your website is attracting and serving the audience you're trying to reach. A good time on page is usually a couple of minutes. If you're seeing a whole bunch of visitors coming and spending 10 seconds, 30 seconds, or under a minute on a page before bouncing, that might be an indicator that they're arriving expecting one thing and the page isn't matching their intent.
Conversions: The Metric That Tells You Whether Your Website Is Actually Working
And the final thing I want you to think about when evaluating your website analytics are conversions. Conversions are just marketing speak for someone taking a measurable action on your website. Conversions for nonprofits include donations, volunteer signups, downloads, event registrations, and email newsletter signups — all measurable activities that are directly benefiting your mission.
As opposed to page views, which just give you a good indication of how many people are coming to your website, conversions can really help map the performance of your marketing, communications, and outreach for your organization.
Wrapping Up: A Quick Review of the Five Steps to Build the Best Nonprofit Website
All right. So, I've shared with you today the five-step process that I use with every nonprofit, whether their annual budget is $100,000 or over a million dollars. Let's review them real quick.
Number one, define your audience. Make sure that you are clearly identifying the five core groups of people you need your website to serve. Number two, craft your message. Use the Audience, Action, Intent, Message framework on every page to make sure you're writing words that will inspire people to act and support your mission. Number three, design your website. We're focusing on mobile optimization and accessibility so that everyone who visits your website can have a great experience and be inspired and engaged with your mission.
Number four, ignite your movement. This is all about creating content that is shareable, that gives you a reason to connect with your audience and deliver value to their lives through stories, reports, videos, photos, contests, and all sorts of other engaging formats. It's a way of keeping your organization top of mind even when you're not running a fundraising campaign.
And number five is measure your success. Pay attention to page views, time on page, and most importantly, conversions — the actual measurable actions someone can take on your website that support your mission, like donating, volunteering, and email signups.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you'd like more information on nonprofit websites so that you can gather more donors and volunteers to your cause, stay tuned and subscribe to this channel.
