Website for an NGO: the pages donors look for before they give

A donor who has never heard of you will open your website before giving more than a token amount. They look for five things, roughly in this order. What you do and where. Who runs the NGO. Proof that it is registered and its accounts are open. A way to reach a real person. A donate path that takes a minute. Miss any of the five and some visitors will close the tab, and you will never learn why.

What does a donor check first?

Not the donate button. They check whether the NGO is real and still working. Put one clear sentence on the first screen: what you do, for whom and where. For example: "We run evening classes for girls in Jaipur's walled city who have left school." Anything vaguer, such as "serving the community", tells them nothing and sends them to a competitor.

Next they look for dates. A news section whose latest item is two years old reads as an organisation that has stopped. If you cannot post often, drop the dated "news" label and use "Our work" with a few pieces that do not age.

The pages, in the order donors look

Use this as a checklist when you plan or fix the site.

1. Home. One line on what you do, one photo of the work with consent, one number you can prove from your records, and a link to the donate page. Not a slider of five slogans.
2. About and people. Names and faces of the trustees or board and the person who runs the day-to-day work, with a line on each. Donors tend to doubt an organisation with no names on it.
3. Programmes. One page per programme: the problem, what you do, where, how many people you reach, how a gift is used. Figures must come from your own records.
4. Registrations and accounts. The registration details you hold, shown plainly, with downloadable annual reports and audited statements if your adviser says you can publish them. Do not claim approvals you have not verified. How to word this is in our post on presenting credentials without overclaiming.
5. Stories and updates. Short accounts of real people or days, with consent. A donor wants to see that gifts become something.
6. Contact. A named person, a working phone number, an email you read, and the address of your office or project site. A contact form alone feels like a wall.
7. Donate. Covered below.

Skip a separate "Volunteer" page if you cannot answer volunteers. Put a short note and a phone number on the contact page instead.

What should the donate page do?

The donate page is a landing page with one job. It should state what a gift pays for and offer two or three fixed amounts with plain examples. It should accept UPI and cards. Near the payment step, add a reassurance line: who you are, how the receipt arrives and whom to call if something goes wrong. Keep the form short. Name, phone or email, amount. Ask for PAN or address only if your adviser says the receipt needs it, and say why.

Avoid pop-ups on arrival, a long form with fields about the donor's job, and a "monthly giving" box that is ticked by default. A pre-ticked recurring payment can surprise donors and lead to complaints or reversals, so let people opt in themselves.

If you run the page from a landing page tied to a campaign, keep the wording consistent with the main site. A donor who clicks an appeal about wells and lands on a page about school kits will leave.

For example: a girls' education NGO in Jaipur

This is an invented example. A small trust has a Facebook page and a QR code on the classroom wall. A local company's foundation officer is asked to consider a grant and searches the trust's name. The officer finds the Facebook page, a photo from three years ago and no way to confirm who the trustees are, writes "could not verify" and moves on.

Nothing there was badly designed. The answers were simply missing. The trust builds a seven-page site: home, programmes, people, registrations and accounts, updates, contact and donate. The trustees' names go on the people page. The registration details and last year's audited statement share one page. The next time an officer searches, they can send their committee a link instead of a Facebook post.

The result is only partly a win. Two months on, a second company foundation asks for the same checks and the page answers them, but it also asks for a utilisation report the trust has not written, which is now the next job. The site cost the trust a few weekends of a trustee's time. Local giving through the wall QR code carries on as before. The site did not create donors; it stopped good ones being lost at the verification step.

What to leave out

• A "Partners" strip of logos you have no permission to show.
• Counters of "lives impacted" you cannot back with records.
• Stock photos of smiling children. A real photo of your own room, even rough, beats them.
• Automatic music and full-screen videos.
• Pages for every festival campaign you ever ran. Archive them.

Keeping it simple to maintain

Someone on the team has to own the updating. Name that person, give them a login, and agree that one new story or update goes up when something happens, not on a schedule nobody keeps. If you use a template or a builder, check you can edit text yourself without paying every time.

Temples and trusts that take offerings and seva bookings need the same pages plus a clear booking and receipt flow. That is covered in temple management software and online seva booking.

Test it on three strangers

Before you pay anyone, hand your phone to three people who do not know the NGO. Ask each to find, without help, your registration details, the name of a trustee and the way to give. Watch where they hesitate. Whatever takes more than two taps goes on the list for the designer. If you want that list turned into a plan, website strategy and information architecture is the work, and the non-profit hub covers the wider sector. To have a site planned around your own donors, tell us what you need.