Website for an NGO or association: mission, projects, donations, transparency

An association lives on the trust of people who do not know it personally. Anyone landing on an NGO website wants to find out three things quickly: what you do, with what verifiable results, and what happens to their money if they donate.

More often than not, the organisation has an active Facebook page and an old site made by a volunteer who has since left. Donations are made by bank transfer, with the account number copied from an image. We build a site the team can maintain by itself, where donating means filling in a short form.

Online and recurring donations: what happens after the button is pressed

The donation page has a few suggested amounts, an amount of the donor’s choice and a choice between “one-off” and “monthly”. Payment is made through an authorised payment processor, with which the association signs a contract. Card details are entered on the processor’s page or in its fields and are not stored on the site.

A monthly donation requires the processor to be able to hold the card securely and charge it periodically. Not every account has this feature switched on from the start, so we check it before designing the page. Donors must be able to stop their contribution simply, with no explanations and without having to go anywhere.

• Short form: amount, frequency, name, email; the other fields are optional.
• Automatic confirmation: a thank-you message with the details of the donation.
• Records: the list of donations in the admin panel, exportable for the accounts.
• Earmarked donation: a choice of project to support, if the organisation can track the money by project.
• Bank transfer: the account number shown as text that can be copied, for those who prefer the bank.

NGO website: the mission, the projects and the transparency page

The mission fits into two sentences on the home page: who you work for and what you change. Each project then has its own page, with its status (ongoing, completed), location, partners, funders and what was actually done, in the organisation’s own words and figures. We round nothing up and embellish nothing.

The transparency page is the one that careful donors and funders look for first. The reports sit there as files to download, but also with a summary written on the page, so that they can be read on a phone.

• Activity reports, by year.
• Financial statements: where the money comes from and what it is spent on.
• Leadership: the members of the board, by name.
• Identification details: full name, tax identification code, registered office.
• Funders and partners: with their agreement to be named.

Volunteers, newsletter, income tax redirection and sponsorship

Volunteers sign up through a form that asks what the person can do, how much time they have and which town or city they are in. Applications go to the coordinator, not to a general address. For volunteers who are minors, the conditions are checked beforehand with a lawyer.

The newsletter uses a specialist email service, connected to the site, with double opt-in: the person receives a message and confirms that they want to subscribe. Every email has an unsubscribe link. Donors are not subscribed automatically; the tick box is separate and unticked.

For the redirection of part of income tax (commonly known by the form used, Form 230) and for sponsorship from companies we prepare separate pages: short explanations, the association’s details ready to copy, a contact form. Who can redirect, how much, by when and how the form is filed are things that change, so you confirm the copy with your accountant before each campaign.

Tools the next person on the team can take over

NGO teams are small and change often. That is why we choose widely used tools that the next person can take over: WordPress with a custom theme and Elementor Pro as the visual editor. Projects and reports are content types with fixed fields, so that anyone fills them in the same way.

For donations we use either a WordPress donation plugin or a custom form connected directly to the processor, depending on what the processor requires. Organisation-type structured data tells Google who you are and how you can be contacted. We measure the result by completed donations set against those started, by the number of monthly donors who stay and by newsletter sign-ups.

• The starting point: sources of funding, who updates the site, which processor you have or want.
• The content: mission, projects, transparency, written with the team.
• The imagery: real photographs from projects, with the consent of the people who appear in them.
• Payments: trial transactions in the processor’s test environment, then a real one.
• Handover: training and a short guide for whoever takes over administration.

This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.