A website builder for a nonprofit

Volunteer turnover is the real constraint

These sites are usually kept up by whoever is around, and that person changes. A tool one volunteer learned and nobody else can use is the main reason they go stale and stay that way.

So choose for handover rather than for power. A simpler tool two people can learn in an afternoon beats one only the last trustee could use.

Keep the accounts in the group's name rather than a personal one, and give more than one person access. That is the best hour anybody will spend on this.

Ask whoever currently updates it to show somebody else how, this month rather than when they leave. Twenty minutes with a second person watching is the cheapest insurance a small charity can buy.

Accessibility is a higher expectation

Groups serving the public often reach the very people a hard-to-use site shuts out. Funders now ask about it too, which turns a principle into a requirement.

Look for a builder that gets headings right, asks for alt text and gives readable contrast by default, rather than one where you have to remember all three.

Our page on the accessibility checklist covers the work in order. The basics do most of the good and take an afternoon.

Three audiences, one site

Somebody who needs help, somebody thinking about giving and somebody offering to help all want different things. A site written for one of them fails the other two.

The builder has to support three clear routes from the first screen, not one blended line about the mission. Our page on nonprofit websites covers each one.

That is about structure rather than looks, and structure is what an answer engine reads. A tool that makes clear menus easy is worth more here than one with a big gallery of designs.

What a nonprofit should compare

The list below is what actually matters for an organization with a small budget and changing volunteers. Almost none of it appears on a pricing page.

• Accessible output without anybody remembering to configure it
• Two or more logins, in the organization's name
• A donation route that does not complicate the site
• Simple enough that a new volunteer can learn it quickly
• A usable export, tested before committing
• Nonprofit pricing, if it exists, without a feature penalty
• Somewhere to publish filings and governance details

Donations and data

Taking donations means taking personal and payment details, which brings duties about storing and using them. Our page on personal data covers the shape.

Keep the donation route short. Most donation forms lose people at the third field, and asking less is usually worth more than any amount of persuasive copy above it.

Say what happens next: whether you keep the details, whether you will write again, and how to stop. Unclear answers here lose repeat donors faster than anything.

Budget, honestly

A no-cost tier usually carries the platform's own branding. That is a poor look for a group asking people for money, so weigh it against the saving.

Many services have a charity price. Ask rather than assume, and check whether the cheaper plan drops something you need, which happens often.

Count the whole year, including the domain and any fees on donations. Those fees are the part most often forgotten, and they grow as the giving grows.

Watch out for plans priced per editor as well. A group where four trustees each need occasional access can end up paying four times over for a site that changes twice a year.

Keeping it alive between volunteers

Write down where everything lives: the accounts, the domain, the giving platform, who to call and what needs doing each year. That one file survives a change of committee.

Put a review date on the pages that age, particularly anything about services, eligibility and hours. Our page on keeping content current covers the routine.

And keep the site small enough to look after. Eight pages that are right help more people than forty where half describe work that ended.