5 Ways Your Nonprofit Website Could be Hurting Donations

5 Ways Your Nonprofit Website Could be Hurting Donations

The competition for donor dollars between not-for-profit organizations is intense in this day and age. As a consequence, nonprofits rely heavily on an array of resources and strategies to attract donations. This includes an organization's website. 

If you are responsible for a nonprofit's funding you need to make certain that all elements of its fundraising efforts are in top form, including what is done via the organization's website. There are five ways in which your nonprofit's website could be hampering your donations. 

Difficult Navigation 
A key problem you might have with your nonprofit website is challenging navigation. If your website is not particularly visitor friendly your organization will lose prospective donors. 

As is the case with a business website, a visitor to nonprofit site will not spend an undue amount of time trying to figure out where to go to achieve an objective. A potential donor needs to be able to easily glean necessary information from your website and to find a user-friendly donation portal. 

Some website design experts caution that visitors to a retail or nonprofit website will not spend more than a matter of seconds on a homepage. They will depart a site quickly if they cannot immediately find what they are seeking on a homepage. This underscores the necessity for having a nonprofit website that is easy to navigate in order to ensure it is attractive to donors. 


Unattractive Presentation 

Nonprofits oftentimes strive to find ways to save money on administrative and marketing costs. Towards that objective, some nonprofits cut costs on website design and development. The net effect of taking this tactic is a website that might not look particularly attractive. If this sounds familiar to you, your nonprofit's website may not make an appropriately attractive visual presentation to visitors, including potential donors. 

While there might be a spot of truth to the idea that a plain website sends the message that a nonprofit if frugal, a website that appears to pay no never mind to style and design may come off as unprofessional. While financial patrons of a nonprofit want a nonprofit to be fiscally responsible, donors also want a not-for-profit to have an appropriate level of professionalism. 

Lack of Concise Information 

A third reason why your nonprofit website may be hurting donations is a lack of concise information about the work of your organization at the site. This issue can exhibit in one of two ways. 

First, a nonprofit website can hurt donations by having too much information available to potential donors. Second, a not-for-profit website can drive away potential donors when it lacks enough information. 

Ensuring that a website has an appropriate amount of information truly is a balancing act. Ultimately, the information presented to garner donations should concisely cover these key issues: 

  • mission of the organization

  • how donations are used

  • specific examples of organization successes

  • portal to obtain more detailed information

Unreliable Appearing Donation Portal 

Not only must a nonprofit website have a easy to access donation portal, the digital pathway must not only be reliable and secure but it must look trustworthy. If possible, the donor portal should feature reputable and well-known payment options, including multiple major credit cards and payment services like PayPal. 

The donation portal should be secured by a reputable payment system. As people use the internet with increasing frequency to transact business they are becoming more aware of secured and trusted payment systems. 

Poor Communication Availabilities 

A visitor to your nonprofit website may not be in a position to make an immediate donation. For example, a potential donor might need answers to questions before making a contribution. 

Another way in which a nonprofit website could hurt donations is by lacking a reliable communications portal for a visitor. A nonprofit website must have a reliable communications portal through which a potential donor can ask questions and submit a request for more information. Not only must sending out questions and requests be easy to do, a response must come quickly. The system might be designed to include an immediate response that states "someone will get back to you" within a specific period of time. 

As noted previously, these are the most common ways in which your nonprofit's website might be hampering donations. Your organization's website may have some other issues that hurt donations and require remediation. You might want to consider offering visitors to your website an opportunity to share with you what they like and do not like about your organization's site.

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Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who focuses on personal finance and other money matters. She currently writes for Checkworks.com, where you can get personal checks and business checks.

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