Charity Website Design

What usually goes wrong

• Donating takes four clicks and a form that asks for a title, a postcode and a phone number nobody needs.
• Gift Aid sits as an unexplained checkbox, so you lose the extra 25p in the pound you were owed.
• Your impact is locked in a PDF annual report that almost nobody opens.
• Every wording change waits on a trustee, so the homepage still promotes last year's campaign.
• Volunteering is an email address at the bottom of a page instead of a role and a form.
• The donate journey cannot be completed with a keyboard, which matters when some of your supporters and beneficiaries rely on one.

Questions charities ask us

Do you work with small charities?

Yes. Most of the charities we talk to have one person handling comms alongside another job. That shapes the build: fewer moving parts, plain editing, and nothing that needs a developer to change.

Who updates the site after launch?

You do, for anything that changes regularly. We hand over a site where campaign pages, impact figures and volunteer roles are editable without touching code. We stay on for hosting, security and the things that genuinely need us.

How much does it cost?

It depends on how many pages you need and whether you are taking donations directly. We give you a fixed, itemised quote after a short call, so there are no surprises and nothing open ended.

Can you work with the donation platform we already use?

Usually yes. If your supporters and your finance team are used to a platform, ripping it out mid build adds risk for no gain. We connect to it, and if it is costing you more than it returns we will say so.

Our trustees have to approve changes. Does that slow you down?

It does not have to. We agree the structure and the copy in one pass so the board sees a finished thing rather than a series of decisions. After launch, the pages trustees care about are the ones we lock down, and the rest are yours to edit.

More questions we get from charities

What does a charity website have to show by law?

If you are a registered charity in England and Wales, your registered charity number has to appear on your website. Most charities also publish their registered office address, trustee details and annual accounts. Beyond that, if you collect supporter data you need a privacy notice that explains what you hold and why.

Does our charity website need to be accessible?

The Equality Act expects you to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people can use your services, and a website is a service. If you deliver anything on behalf of a public body, the public sector accessibility regulations apply directly. In practice, aim for WCAG 2.2 AA and test the donate journey with a keyboard.

How do we take donations without losing a chunk to fees?

Every route takes something. Card processing has a percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction, and hosted fundraising platforms add their own cut on top. Taking cards directly on your own site usually costs less per donation than routing supporters to a third party page, and it keeps the supporter with you rather than handing the relationship over.

Can we get free or discounted software as a charity?

Yes, and most charities underuse it. Google for Nonprofits includes Google Ad Grants, which is up to 10,000 dollars a month of search advertising. Charity Digital Exchange offers donated and discounted licences from a range of suppliers. Both are worth setting up before you spend anything on paid advertising.

How often should we update a charity website?

Campaign pages need to change whenever the campaign does. Impact figures should follow your reporting cycle. Everything else can sit still for a year without harm. The bigger risk is a site nobody can edit, so the answer is usually to fix the editing, not to schedule more updates.