Someone hears about your organisation from a friend, sees a post about your work, or searches for a cause they care about. They arrive at your website wanting to help. What happens in the next minute decides whether that goodwill turns into a donation, a volunteer or a partnership, or quietly fades away.
Non-profit websites often lose people in that minute. The cause is buried in a long history, the impact is described in general terms, and the "donate" option is hard to find or asks for an EFT that the visitor means to do later and never does. A good NGO website does the opposite: it makes the cause clear, the impact real, and helping easy.
Your cause in one line
A visitor should understand what you do within seconds of arriving. Write one clear sentence and put it at the top of the home page:
- "We provide daily meals and homework support for 120 children in Khayelitsha."
- "We rescue, treat and rehome abandoned dogs on the West Coast."
- "We train unemployed young people in Soweto for jobs in the trades."
Who you help, how, and where. Everything else on the website can expand on it, but that line does the most important work.
Show the impact, specifically
Supporters want to know that their help makes a difference. General statements ("we make a difference in our community") don't do that. Specifics do:
- Numbers you can stand behind: meals served, children in the programme, animals rehomed, people placed in jobs
- Stories of real people, told with their permission and with dignity. One story told well moves people more than a page of figures.
- Photos of your actual work, not stock images
- What a donation does: linking an amount to something concrete, such as a week of meals for one child, helps a donor picture their gift, as long as it is true for your programme
When you share stories and photos of the people you serve, ask for their consent and protect their dignity, especially children's. Donors notice, and so do the communities you work in.
Be open about money
Trust is everything for a non-profit. Being open about how money is used builds it:
- How donations are spent, in broad terms: how much goes to programmes, and what it costs to run the organisation
- Your registration details, as they appear on your registration documents
- Your board or leadership, with names and a short line about each
- Annual reports or financial statements, if you publish them
- Partners and funders you're permitted to name
You don't need to be large to be transparent. A small organisation that clearly explains where the money goes is often more convincing than a large one that doesn't.
Make giving easy
A donor who decides to give should be able to do it in under a minute, on a phone:
- A "Donate" button on every page, not hidden at the bottom of an "About" page
- Card payment online, rather than only bank details for EFT. Some people who mean to do an EFT later never get round to it.
- Suggested amounts, with what each achieves, plus an option to choose their own
- A monthly option, if you can offer one. Regular donations give you something to plan around.
- An immediate thank you, and a receipt by email
Keep your bank details on the website as well, for donors and companies who prefer EFT.
Offer other ways to help
Not everyone can give money, and many people want to give more than money:
- Volunteering: what you need, when, and how to sign up
- Donations in kind: food, clothing, equipment, with where and when to drop them off
- Corporate partnerships and employee giving
- Fundraising for you: a run, a birthday, a challenge
List what you actually need right now. "We need volunteers to help with Saturday reading club" gets more response than "contact us about volunteering".
Report back
The supporters most likely to give again are the ones who saw what their last gift did. A news page with regular updates, a short email after a campaign, or a note at the end of the year showing what was achieved turns one-off donors into long-term supporters. With their permission, keep in touch.
How SiteHub can help
SiteHub builds websites for NGOs, charities, NPOs and community organisations, around the things supporters look for: your cause in one clear line, your impact and stories, how donations are used, and easy ways to help. Your domain, business email and hosting are included, and you see a live preview of the finished website before you pay anything. Every SiteHub website is built with SEO foundations as standard: page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, structured business information that tells Google who you are and where, image descriptions and a mobile-friendly design. You can add online donations by card, with suggested amounts and a thank-you message, as an optional add-on, paid into your organisation's own PayFast account; the calculator shows what your setup would cost.