How to Optimize Your Nonprofit Website For Fundraising and Program Success

Your website doesn’t have to be a stale information portal; no, it should be a tool to help you achieve your organization’s goal.?

Whether that goal is raising more money or reaching more people, in this new world where almost everything has gone online, your website has a huge role to play.?

Aside from helping you achieve your goals, your website must also be informative enough to provide even a three-year-old with a complete picture of your organization and its programs in a grasp.?

Unfortunately, what we have today is the complete opposite with so many poorly built websites not producing any results for the organizations that spent so much creating them in the first place.?

This was the situation of my present client before I stepped in. In short, a top finder in her country provided her feedback on their inability to completely understand the organization from their website. This was what led her to connect me to the web developer for a complete overhaul. Regardless we are following up on the prospect and I am sure of winning the organization anytime soon.?

You don’t want to find yourself in her position before you do the needful. You don’t want prospects making a U-turn. The competition out there is unlike any today, one small friction and your prospect are gone.?

To help you, here are five ways to optimize your website for success.?

1. Identify the first three goals you can achieve for your organization using your website. Proceed to place a call to action that helps you achieve these goals as the first three icons any visitor will see when they visit your website.?

For example, if your three top goals are fundraising, volunteer recruitment, and community signup, your donate button, join volunteers button, and community sign-up button should be what your visitor sees the first time they visit your home page.?

2. Use triggering words to direct visitors to your call to action. Rather than just quote your mission and include a donate button (this seems to be what everyone does), you want to include a sentence that will trigger your visitor to donate before including the donate button which should be called something else as the word “donate” these days pushes people off. For the client above, we included “Explore our corporate sponsorship opportunities and the amazing benefits it provides”. The button underneath was “learn more”. This of course leads the inquisitive company executive to want to learn more about the benefits they can get which leads them to a well-crafted sales page explaining why they should sponsor and of course a button to schedule a time to meet with the executive team of the organization rather than just leading them to a web payment page. This is because company executives are most likely going to want to meet before making any significant sponsorship.?

3. Each Program Must Have Its Web Page. Having a Webpage for each program provides you the opportunity to clearly explain each program and of course, lead them down your program funnel. One feedback the executive provided my client was a lack of information about her programs. This was because she didn’t do what I am asking you to do now. By creating a page for each program, you can narrow down each program, providing data backing your programs and clear descriptions.?

4. Each Program Web Page Must Have a Call To Action. For a school sensitization program, the call to action is to get more school administrators to apply for the same program to be implemented In their school. The call to action was a form collecting the contact details of the school head/teacher for a follow-up call by any of the organization’s executives.?

The goal here is to identify the most important target audience for each program and ensure there is a call to action at the end that calls them out.?

5. Fundraising Web Page. Lastly, you must create a webpage for every fundraising strategy you are implementing on. In the business world, they are called sales pages.?

Nobody just gives out money anymore. People give because they are asked to, they feel the need to give (emotional trigger), logically it makes sense to give (logical trigger) or it helps them meet their needs (selfish trigger), etc.?

Your role is to identify as many triggers or reasons why people should give to your organization. Then create a sales page explaining why they should give including a call to action asking them to give.?

Here you have it. 5 steps to optimize your website for fundraising and program execution success.