NGO Website Development: How to Make Your Site a Success

A thoughtfully created non-governmental organization (NGO) website increases the legitimacy of your organization, helps supporters better understand your cause, and solidifies your professionalism when soliciting support. As a result, you’ll be better positioned to push forward your mission.

To maximize these benefits, we’ll walk you through the best practices and web design tools you need to revamp your digital presence:

Since most NGOs have limited budgets, a strong website design is a cost-effective and efficient way to spread your cause beyond local advocates and increase your support. Let’s get started!

How can I make an NGO website?

Thanks to modern technology, creating a website is becoming easier and easier. You no longer need a developer to set up a basic website because there are several easy-to-use website builders that you can use to simplify the process. By getting your NGO website up and running promptly, you’ll increase visibility and further your mission.

Before launching your site, you’ll need to complete a few steps:

1. Evaluate your organization’s goals.

First, identify your intended audience and the goals you wish to reach with your NGO website.

Pick the design elements that are most relevant to your organization and its goals. For instance, if your organization’s online objective is to secure donations, your website should clearly explain your need for funding and how the donations will be spent.

On the other hand, if your website’s purpose is to connect with people who need help—families who can’t afford food, for instance—include instructions for applying for federal food aid or post a map indicating local food banks.

Depending on your focus, figure out how to integrate and apply these elements to your organization’s web design. This way, you know exactly which pages and information to include as well as which elements to emphasize when creating your layout.

2. Select a website builder.

Now it’s time for the most important step: choosing a content management system (CMS).

Don’t just settle for any CMS. Rather, do your research and compare your options. That way, you’ll invest in a comprehensive solution that suits your organization and offers the features you need, such as form builders and event ticketing. Above all else, it should be functional and easy to use.

If your website builder offers templates, select one to simplify the design stage and get your website up and running with ease. You’ll find that some have pre-set designs, while others provide you with more creative flexibility, such as the ability to choose from different gallery sliders and menu styles. Once you’ve chosen a good fit, start designing! For some inspiration, check out our tips for creating a beautiful nonprofit website design.

3. Start the website-building process.

At this point, you can begin the website-building process in earnest. This process can take several months and has many steps within itself. For example, some of the things you’ll need to decide include:

• What the site directory will look like
• How the site will flow
• Which pages you want to create and the purpose they’ll serve
• Which elements you want on each page
• The specific visual elements and text on each page
• What pages should be featured in the navigation header

Start the process by putting together a website-building plan that includes all this information and anything else you’ll need to keep in mind. As you do so, focus on thinking through what should be on each page and how users will navigate to reach their goal destination.

Building a website plan can be a daunting task if you’re unfamiliar with the process. That’s where web design companies come into play—these organizations are dedicated to helping you create the website of your dreams.

For example, Morweb offers an easy-to-use CMS for nonprofits and NGOs of all sizes—no technical knowledge necessary! We work to help organizations achieve the greatest fulfillment of their vision online so they can build meaningful connections with users and grow their impact.

What should my NGO website contain?

An effective website looks different for every NGO, which can make it difficult to choose what to include on your website. While it ultimately depends on your NGO and its goals, there are a few common pages any NGO should include:

Donation Page

Funds are essential to continue striving toward your mission. While membership dues might make up the majority of your funds, donations can produce additional revenue for your NGO. Because of this, you’ll want to feature a well-designed donation page instead of solely relying on direct mail and in-person donations.

Arguably the most crucial part of this page is your built-in donation form, which is proven to drive more donations than externally linked forms. Select a CMS that comes with an intuitive form builder and payment integration for collecting donations online to create a streamlined donation process for your NGO. Plus, make sure that it can accommodate the various donation types you accept, such as matching gifts or recurring gifts.

Follow best practices when creating forms, such as limiting the number of input fields to ensure prospects will be motivated to complete the process. After all, once someone feels motivated to donate, you don’t want anything to slow them down. Your CMS should come with everything you need to create a seamless donation experience that supporters can complete in just moments!

Events Page

As an NGO practitioner, you may be accustomed to raising funds through membership dues, proposal writing, corporate partnerships, and direct calls. However, special events can take your fundraising strategy to the next level. With an easily accessible events page, members and donors will know exactly how they can stay involved with your NGO.

To create your event page, ensure your CMS offers registration and ticketing capabilities. It should also allow you to feature elements like:

• A header image
• Date and time
• Description
• Register button
• Built-in registration form

These design elements make your events page much more engaging than a generic calendar. Remember to add your events page to the navigation menu, so users know exactly where it is the moment they land on your homepage.

Members-Only Area

As an NGO, a substantial portion of your revenue likely comes from your membership program. Members-only areas serve as a great incentive for joining your organization, allowing you to attract and retain valuable members. Prioritize the member experience by featuring these members-only areas on your website:

• Educational resources. Provide members with high-quality educational resources, including articles, podcasts, and webinars.
• Members-only events. Show members the value of their membership by inviting them to exclusive events. If these are virtual or hybrid events, be sure to include the event link directly in the members-only area.
• Forum. A discussion forum allows members to interact with each other, enabling them to discuss recent events, industry trends, and their personal experiences. Plus, your team will have an accessible outlet for quickly announcing updates and answering questions members have.
• Members map. An interactive map is a great engagement tool. Sort and categorize members into a member directory and map so that members can easily search for others to connect with. Make sure it’s mobile-friendly, too, so that users can access it whenever they need it!

With members-only areas, NGOs can establish a sense of community and demonstrate the value that they bring to their members. This boosts member satisfaction and retention, and soon enough, the word will spread about the positive culture your NGO has instilled.

Be sure your CMS allows you to manage user permissions so that you can privatize any members-only pages and leverage these benefits.

Updated Blog

Fuel your NGO’s growth by putting industry knowledge at readers’ fingertips. A blog is a great way to accomplish this, providing you with an outlet to share educational content and powerful stories that evoke emotion in readers. Determine what goal you’d like your blog to accomplish. Then, develop content that communicates your vision and will push you along that path.

For instance, if your goal is to persuade public officials to make a policy change, you should focus on addressing specific policies and starting a conversation amongst readers. Whether you feature industry knowledge or updates on your NGO, take extra time developing valuable posts. You’ll bring in more members and keep them involved with high-value content.

Social Sharing Options

Your online engagement strategy may start with your NGO website, but it certainly doesn’t end there. To fully extend your reach, expand your marketing to social media by featuring social sharing buttons on your website.

Links to your social media accounts allow you to connect with prospects and donors through those channels. When visitors feel compelled to share your insightful blog posts or exciting events online, social sharing options enable them to do so. By making it convenient for them, supporters will be much more likely to pass along your message to their friends and families on their favorite platforms.

Tools for Building Essential NGO Website Pages

Now that you know the pages and elements your NGO website should contain, let’s take a look at helpful tools for building your website.

Morweb

Choosing the right CMS is crucial when it comes to ensuring that your website-building process is smooth and uncomplicated. Luckily, Morweb offers just that with its host of helpful features:

• Drag and drop editor. Editing content and page layouts is simple with Morweb—our intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows you to adjust on-page elements without any coding. Plus, it’s convenient for you to make changes in the future to help your website stay fresh and up-to-date.
• Optimized images. Once you upload images to Morweb and add them to your page, they’ll automatically be optimized in size and dimension. This ensures quick load times and visually appealing images for all viewers, regardless of screen size.
• Mobile-responsiveness. Morweb will automatically optimize all of your on-page elements so they look crisp across all screen sizes. Plus, use the mobile preview toggle to see your website as it appears on smaller screen sizes so you can ensure simple mobile navigation and a positive user experience.
• Social media integrations. Allow web visitors to share any page, post, or image from your website directly to social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll also be able to add your social media feeds on your website to show off your recent social activity and garner more followers.
• Accessibility features. Stay compliant with accessibility standards with Morweb’s built-in accessibility tools, including ALT tags, descriptions, custom URLs, and more. Embed an accessibility widget that allows web users to change font size and color and highlight links to create a web experience customized to their needs.
• Analytics and reporting. Stay in the know on visitor engagement and if your website is trending in the right direction with our integration with Google Analytics. This displays vital analytics for your NGO website, pulled from Google Analytics in real-time. Plus, make adjustments to your strategy with our built-in SEO tools.

With Morweb CMS’s features, you’ll be well-equipped to create the NGO website of your dreams.

Double the Donation

Aside from membership dues and other fees, your NGO likely relies on donations for a significant portion of your revenue. As these funds are essential for you to fulfill your mission, maximizing donations should be one of your priorities. And one of the top ways to do so is through matching gifts.

This is how the matching gifts process usually works:

1. An individual donates to your NGO.
2. The donor fills out a matching gift request and submits it to their employer.
3. Their employer verifies their gift and determines if your NGO is eligible for matching.
4. The employer submits a gift match to your organization.

Although this process is straightforward, it relies on the donor to be aware of matching gifts and to be willing to put in the effort to determine if they’re eligible for gift matching. It’s estimated that over $4 billion in matching gift funds go unclaimed every year, indicating that awareness is a huge issue that needs to be addressed.

That’s where Double the Donation comes in—with its matching gifts solution, 360MatchPro, you’ll be able to prompt donors to check their matching gift eligibility during and after the donation process, allowing you to effectively double the donations you receive.

You’ll be able to save staff time by automating gift-matching request emails and messages and gain access to a vast database of companies with matching gift programs. Plus, with features such as auto-submission, you can streamline the matching gifts process even further for donors by submitting requests to their employers on their behalf.

Kwala

To help your NGO website stand out from the crowd, be sure to incorporate appealing visual elements throughout it. In addition to core branding elements such as your organization’s logo, this also includes images and icons that engage the viewer. However, these elements may be difficult to create if you lack graphic design experience.

Kwala is a great resource for any NGO professional looking to spruce up their website with fun visuals. This agency offers graphic design services for a fixed monthly price to help you create visually appealing images, with unlimited designs and revisions. Upload these to your website to provide an engaging experience for all web visitors. Plus, they offer services outside of images, including flyers, t-shirt graphics, stickers, postcards, and more!

NGO Website Design Best Practices

With about 1.5 million NGOs in the U.S. alone, it’s important to make yours stand out. A poorly designed or unstructured website will turn users away, making you miss out on crucial support that you could have otherwise secured.

To avoid a negative user experience, let’s dive into a few best practices for effective NGO web development.

Feature a Mobile Responsive Design

These days, most users browse the web on their mobile devices. In fact, 1 in 4 supporters use a mobile device to discover nonprofits that they were previously unaware of, according to Nonprofits Source. In other words, if you’re not using a mobile responsive design, you’re likely missing out on a considerable amount of supporters.

Mobile responsiveness means that the content on your website will adjust to fit any screen size. Whether users are visiting your site on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone, they should be able to view your pages without zooming in and out. Otherwise, navigating your NGO website will be difficult for mobile users, ultimately leading to frustration and causing them to leave your site altogether.

To easily optimize content for all devices, make sure your CMS features automatic mobile responsiveness so your team doesn’t have to adjust each element manually.

Optimize for Search Engines

When people search for your NGO, how easily can they find your website? Are your blog posts ranking for the search terms you want them to? If not, it’s time to work on your search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, involves optimizing your NGO website’s content to help it prominently rank on popular search engines like Google. To improve your visibility on search engines, make sure your CMS offers built-in SEO tools. Specifically, keep an eye out for meta titles, meta descriptions, and customizable URLs. This way, you can rank higher and drive more traffic to your NGO website.

If your NGO is also a nonprofit, make the most of your SEO efforts by also applying for the Google Ad Grant. Through this program, you’ll gain $10,000 worth of Google search ad credits every month, allowing you to greatly boost your website’s traffic. Take a look at this hypothetical example of how your nonprofit’s website could be featured on a Google search results page:

Unlike other grants, nonprofits will be approved for the Google Ad Grants program as long as they meet its requirements. If you’re already engaging in SEO activities for your NGO website, you’ll be well on your way to earning ad credit and increasing your website’s visibility. Plus, if you’d like extra help with maximizing your results, you may consider working with a Google Grants agency.

Use White Space

Overloading your pages with text and images can distract users from your core messaging. To help make your content easy to digest, incorporate white space.

White space is a useful tool that breaks up text and makes web pages more visually appealing and less distracting, allowing users to focus on your important content. For the most effective design, you’ll need to strike the perfect balance between content and the space between it.

To help you navigate this process, Morweb offers customizable templates that feature an effective balance of content and space. Not only will these speed up the design process, but they’ll ensure you’re using white space effectively.

Include Engaging Imagery

Motivate users to support your cause by featuring compelling images and videos. Powerful visuals bring prospects to your NGO website and keep them engaged as they navigate from page to page.

However, you’ll need to go above and beyond generic stock photos by instead featuring your own, high-quality images. These could include staff members, advocates, and those who are directly impacted by your work. Using this type of imagery enables you to better illustrate the importance of your mission and ultimately build strong, emotional connections with potential members.

Follow Web Accessibility Guidelines

When it comes to NGO websites, you want as many people as possible to view and interact with your website. To accomplish this, you’ll need to adhere to web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) so that people with disabilities or impairments can still interact with your NGO website. Start by implementing the following accessibility best practices in your design:

• High contrast colors. High contrast colors make it easier for visually-impaired users to see and read your content. The WCAG 2.1 guidelines require a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1, so be sure to test your contrast colors for all text and graphics.
• Alternatives for videos. Visitors with hearing or visual impairments may struggle to view and understand your videos without some extra help. Provide a written transcript or feature captions in the video for those with hearing impairments. Then, consider adding an audio description to describe visual-only elements to those who are visually impaired.
• Headers for content. Clearly titling your content makes it easier for users with visual disabilities and those using screen reader technology to jump to different sections to find the information they need. A good CMS with front-end editing capabilities will allow you to do this without having to code it yourself.

Many accessibility guidelines require the assistance of a professional web developer. However, there are several steps you can take on your own, so long as you’ve invested in the right non-technical CMS. There are several other tips you should follow, but these should serve as a good starting point.

Facilitate Connections With and Between Members

To reinforce the value of membership with your NGO, you need to build relationships between your organization and your members but also facilitate connections between members. There are many ways to do that, including establishing members-only areas and creating exclusive member events.

Another way you can create these connections is through using an eCard tool. eCards, or digital greeting cards, are a great way for your organization to show members appreciation for their continued support and foster stronger relationships. For example, you can use the tool to welcome any new members. Or, you can allow members to send eCards to one another with networking requests, such as an invitation to a coffee chat or virtual meeting.

Examples of Top NGO Websites

Now that you’re familiar with effective NGO web development practices, you may need some examples to get the creativity flowing. Let’s take a look at these practices in action with some well-designed NGO websites.

Best NGO Website Design #1: Greenbelt

Greenbelt uses a design that captures users’ attention from the moment they land on the homepage. They feature enough information to pique interest but not so much that it’s overwhelming. Their original images convey their core purpose and draw the user in to learn more. Within their navigation, their most significant pages stand out in colorful buttons, so users know exactly where to head to find out more and get involved. Take a look at their beautifully-designed NGO website:

Best NGO Website Design #2: Limb Kind Foundation

Limb Kind Foundation takes a unique approach to NGO web design by featuring a simplistic layout. The main focus of their homepage is powerful imagery of their work in action and encourages readers to click through to learn more. Plus, they keep accessibility guidelines in mind by using high contrast colors so that everyone can easily navigate their site. Explore their effective NGO web design:

Best NGO Website Design #3: The Hudson Guild

The Hudson Guild features powerful imagery that captivates visitors and encourages them to continue exploring the website. Using original images and videos, they effectively convey their mission in a way that evokes emotion. They draw the reader in even more by balancing it out with white space to really make important elements stand out. Take a look at the powerful imagery the Hudson Guild uses to encourage users to keep exploring:

The Gist

By creating the best possible NGO website, you can put your organization on the map and generate more buzz around your mission. The design process doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply implement the best practices discussed in this article. So long as you’re armed with a powerful website builder, you’ll set your team up to create a beautiful and content-rich NGO website.

If you’re looking for additional information on NGO website development, explore the helpful resources below:

• 15 Best Membership Website Builders: The Ultimate List. A membership website is an important part of your NGO’s digital strategy. Check out these website builders that can simplify the design process.
• 30+ Best Nonprofit Websites + 4 Tips for Designing Your Own. Need some inspiration for your NGO web design? Check out these well-designed nonprofit websites to spark some creativity!
• Best Website Builders for Nonprofits: Compare Your Options. If your NGO is also a nonprofit, you may have unique needs for your website. Check out our list of the top website builders to compare your options and select a provider that works for you!

Improving your digital presence is easily achievable by leveraging the tips covered in this post, but to maximize your potential, you’ll need a powerful CMS on your side. With Morweb, designing a beautiful NGO website is possible for everyone. We know exactly what it takes for organizations just like yours to be successful online, so reach out to our team to discuss your unique needs.