Is WordPress a feasible solution for nonprofit websites? If you are looking for a better platform to build a website for your nonprofit organization, can WordPress get you covered? We are going to explain.
WordPress is one of the biggest CMS (Content Management System) platforms in the world. Currently covering 64% of all CMS market share, and 42% of total websites globally. It is open-source, immensely functional, and feature-rich with thousands of plugins and themes.
In this blog, we will be showing you how WordPress can help to build a website for nonprofit organizations. Also, we will be guiding you to implement some of the best plugins and themes you need to succeed.
Nonprofit Organizations in a Nutshell
A nonprofit is a kind of organization that is not established to generate profit for the organizers or owners. Rather it is designed for bringing help to people who need it, for social welfare, and for other collective aid whenever necessary.
A nonprofit organization is destined to collect money or invest that money and earn profit only to raise the trust fund. That fund is aimed to accomplish the social welfare goals it set while establishing.
Some of the common goals of nonprofits are –
- Raise awareness on a particular or several issues
- Provide guidance and support to individuals or other organizations/communities
- Provide specialized services like legal aid, human rights, etc
- Relief services, medical aids, educational support, etc
So, if you are a nonprofit organizer or owner, your website should get along with the same goal. Which is different than the common company website which exhibits business profiles or is designed to buy or sell products for business purposes.
Here to go on WordPress for nonprofits. You are about to learn how this CMS platform going to help you in this regard.
WordPress for Nonprofits- Why Should You Go for It
WordPress began its journey as a blogging platform in 2003. Since then the open-source platform evolve a lot to become the most powerful CMS globally. You can start for free with WordPress. And go for all the free versions of necessary plugins and themes to customize your website.
With its initial features and user-friendly functionality, WordPress was on-course to become a household name even from the beginning. Now that decades have passed, it is a reality. You don’t need any prior technical knowledge to start a website with WordPress.
As for nonprofits, WordPress offers plenty of reasons to make you believe why it can be a great solution.
Advantages of WordPress for Nonprofits
1. Ease of Use
You can go for WordPress.com and purchase a managed hosting plan (not recommended if you have a larger vision). Otherwise, you can build a power-house of self-hosted WordPress.org site which will be low in cost, comparably, and rich in functionality.
Both of them are simpler and more manageable than any other CMS available in the market. And it only requires a few steps to begin. You don’t need to be a technical expert, being an enthusiast would be enough.
2. WordPress is Affordable
WordPress software is free. However, to build a professional nonprofit WordPress website, you need to purchase a hosting plan that is remarkably affordable. WordPress plugin directory offers a horde of plugins that will be enough to help you add donation pages, beneficiary options, or set up payment gateways. We will be talking more about the cost of developing WordPress for nonprofits further.
3. Highly Customizable
WordPress is open-source. So, if you have a bit of technical knowledge you can customize your own pages, features, and appearance. Also, there are no limitations to implementing plugins or themes to your website in a WordPress atmosphere.
4. WordPress Community Benefits
Right now, there are over 455 million websites that are built on WordPress. And the number is growing every day. So does the WordPress community is going stronger and bigger continuously. Every WordPress expert is trying to improve the platform simultaneously.
So, whenever you face any problem while using WordPress, your solution is already there. What you require to do is to ask. For this, you will find the official WordPress community and a lot of forum that discusses only WordPress-related issues. These people are kept being a big help, all the way around.
5. SEO Friendly
WordPress is highly SEO (Search engine optimization) friendly. Most of the WordPress themes and plugins have compatibility with SEO. That’s why when you are using WordPress for nonprofits organization, you don’t need to think much about SEO issues. Also, you can install top-notch SEO plugins to make each of your moves more discoverable by Google.
6. Mobile Responsive
All the modern WordPress themes are mobile responsive. So, your patrons, donors, or supporters easily access your websites regardless of any devices. Share your good works on social media. Make donations more easily.
7. Lowest Cost to Manage
WordPress is free to use as it is licensed under GPL. You just need to have your own hosting plan to host your site with a domain name. Initially, it costs about $50-$80 per year. But yes, if you want to build a more customized website using premium tools, the cost may vary based on your needs. According to our experience- A full-fledged professional WordPress site may cost around $200-$250 per year. The price includes-
- Domain Name Registration
- Hosting plan
- Premium Theme
- Premium Plugins for Payment, Forms, Email Marketing, Live Chat, and other related tools.
Steps to Create a Nonprofit Website with WordPress
Well, it will only take a handful of steps to create a WordPress site for nonprofits. As we’ve mentioned earlier, the steps are simple and don’t need any prior technical expertise. However, let’s take a look –
Step 1. Find a Suitable Domain Name
The domain name should be unique. It will be the address of your website (for example – getwemail.io). The foremost qualities of a superb domain could be the following –
- Reflects your brand name and values
- Reflects the type of your organization. Suppose, .com domains usually go for commercial purposes. Commonly, most nonprofits or charitable organizations go for .org.
- A domain should be easy to read
- keep it short
You can purchase a domain name from any domain shop. There are many, and usually affordable if you really have a unique domain name to register.
Step 2. Purchasing a Reliable Hosting Plan
You need a hosting or cloud server where your website’s directory, files, and contents will be stored. To be precise, you need storage for your WordPress website, and hosting services are designed to give you that.
You can purchase a hosting plan from a local hosting provider in your country. Otherwise, there are international hosting providers to solve this step for you. Don’t worry, we have plenty of suggestions for you.
Step 3. Installing WordPress for Nonprofits
You have a domain. And you have hosting. So, the next thing is to install your WordPress on the hosting server. If it looks like a bit difficult task, we assure you, it’s not.
In most cases, you will find your local hosting provider helpful in installing WordPress. Therefore, you will find tons of tutorials that will give you proper guidance.
Well, here’s an in-detail guide provided by WordPress itself for safe and better installation.
Step 4. Installing a theme for Your Nonprofit Website
Themes will help you dress up your website. You can design and customize your site after installing a WordPress theme. It is crucial to choose a suitable theme that reflects your site’s goals and vision, besides being easy to comprehend by your members, patrons, and visitors. After you pick a theme that fits your website, start customizing it.
Here are the considerations for selecting the perfect theme for Nonprofits –
- You need to choose a theme that will exhibit your projects, progress, activities
- Be minimalistic in nature. It will make your site faster, and provide a better user experience
- Choose a color palette aligned with your organization’s theme color
- Flexibilities to create donation pages and integrate payment gateway
To assist you more, we will show you some examples of nonprofit WordPress sites that are robust and beautiful at the same time.
Step 5. Setting Up The Crucial Pages
A nonprofit organization needs a set of pages to execute its actions and accomplish its goals. Usually, it will be different than any other business portfolio website. You need to create a handful of pages while customizing your website. They are –
- Home Page
- About Section
- Service Page
- Donation Page
- Gallery & Portfolio
- Contact Us Page
Building such pages, designing, and customizing them is way easier with WordPress.
Step 6. Enable Membership Features on WordPress for Nonprofits
Like any other nonprofit organization, you can initiate frontend options for your members and patrons. It will be a good decision to let them use the site with functionalities like writing blogs, contributing to the gallery and portfolios, and opinion pages.
Therefore, you must install a frontend plugin to add a donation receiving feature. It will let your user donate directly from the donation page, and you can track their activities at ease.
To empower these essential features of WordPress for nonprofits, you can install a plugin like WP User Frontend Pro in no time.
Step 7. Setting Up Your Payment Gateway
After you’ve installed WP User Frontend Pro, you can easily add payment gateways available to you. There are gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Skrill, Amazon Pay, Payoza, etc. However, you must consider your location before adding a payment gateway. As some of them are not available in particular countries.
Take your fundraising to the next level with Payment Gateways!
Step 8. Integrating Email Marketing to Your Nonprofit WordPress Site
One of the finest benefits of WordPress for nonprofits is its openness to customization and reaching out capabilities. You can easily integrate an email marketing platform like weMail or MailChimp to promote your nonprofit organization and send educational content to your subscribers. To do this, you need to do the following –
- Install a weMail from Your WordPress dashboard
- Setting up your sending gateways
- Create subscription forms to increase subscribers
- Import subscriber list, or add external email lists of your donors and patrons manually
- Create email campaigns to enlighten or educate your subscribers about your goals and ask for support
- Start sending your campaigns
Top Nonprofits Organization Using WordPress
Well, now that you know how to create a non-profit website in WordPress, let’s check out some of the beautiful nonprofit websites that are running in WordPress. They will help you a lot to get inspiration.
Latino Community Fund
The organization is dedicated to creating a vibrant Latino community in Washington. Its goal is to maintain a well-developed Latino community that emphasizes good health, education, and charity.
Some of the noted points you can get inspirations are –
- The site is vibrant, aligned with the moto
- Have dedicated pages of about, portfolios, and donations
- They also share their source of investment
- Social channels are integrated
- If you visit the website, you can learn almost everything about it
Treehouse for Foster Kids
Treehouse is U.S. based nonprofit organization dedicated to foster care. They ensure the foster kids get a good and healthy life, education, and career support. The organization began its journey in the late ’80s by a group of social workers, since then it become a remarkable place for foster kids across Washington State.
Their WordPress site includes –
- A story-based theme that shares the organization’s story with a visual representation
- It would only take a few moments to comprehend what is the website about
- Easy navigation through pages and different section
- Have a vivid and heart-warming donation page to inspire patrons
- Easy payment gateway integration
- The UX (User Experience) is superb
Books for Prisoners
This is one of the most beautiful WordPress-based nonprofit websites to look for. Books to Prisoners’ goal is to promote books behind the bars to provide prisoners of the greater Seatle area a source of knowledge, good life, and quality time.
Their mission statements read, “..a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a love of reading behind bars, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-empowerment, and break the cycle of recidivism.”
Their WordPress site includes –
- A beautiful minimalistic WordPress theme (Ixion by Automattic)
- A faster page-loading experience
- Easy navigation
- All the page reflects the motive of the organization
- One-click simple donation page with powerful copy
Well, we’ve hand-picked the above WordPress for nonprofit examples to give you a clear idea. You can search for more to get inspiration.
Closing Up on WordPress for Nonprofits
After you’ve purchased a domain name and hosting, and installed WordPress, you are going to need a set of WordPress plugins and themes to develop your website. Throughout the blog, we’ve discussed those necessary steps one by one.
Here’s to rewind the kind of plugin and themes you need, look at the checklist below –
- A theme best for nonprofits, portfolios, or membership site
- A page builder like Elementor to create donations and other types of page
- To enable membership features and payment gateway setup, you need a frontend plugin like WP User frontend pro
- Payment getaway integration (considering your scope and locations)
- An email marketing tool to increase your reach and collect subscribers
- SEO plugin
- Security and backup plugin, etc.
So, here were. We hope you’ve gotten all the crucial questions answered in this blog. If you have any confusion or want to know more, let us know in no time.
