If you work for a nonprofit, you probably have a lot to do without a lot of resources, so what you choose to focus on matters. A lot.
This is something we hear often: “We need a better website, but we don’t have the time/know-how/capacity/fill-in-the-blank to take care of it.” We get you. Creating a website can stress your limited resources and feel like a daunting task.
So don’t.
Building a nonprofit website—or updating an outdated web design—is crucial if you want donors and prospects to engage with you and take action (donate, register, volunteer, etc.), but it’s not something you need to take on yourself. Or even should. In fact, flying solo as your own web developer could create more problems than it solves—like these.
1. It’s distracting and pulls your focus from your day-to-day responsibilities. Do you love interacting with your constituents? Planning events? Creating marketing materials or fundraising strategies? If you try to be your own web development company, too, you’re going to feel frustrated, because it’s going to take you away from what you love (and need) to do. Sure, there are tools out there that’ll help you cobble a nice brochure site together with few technical or design skills, but is that what you really want: a website that looks nice, but has no functionality? Even if you’re cool with that, your constituents and online visitors won’t be.
2. You’ll end up with little to no tech support. Let’s say you use a free website builder to create a site that you’re okay with. That’s great for starters—but what happens when you have a technical question? What if a link breaks and you don’t know why or your design looks wonky on a smartphone (and you don’t know why) or if your database becomes corrupt? Who you gonna call? “Ghostbusters” is not an acceptable answer, unless you think your website is haunted. What you really need is a nonprofit website that’s easy to manage, but with a safety net support team who can walk you through (or better yet, FIX) any glitches or issues (ahem, like Firespring’s stellar support rockstars who will actually care about your cause).
3. Your website’s security may be questionable. This is a biggie. If you’re taking people’s names, email addresses and credit card numbers, cyber security has to be one of your biggest priorities. It’s a big PR mess if hackers are able to get in and steal that stuff, and you’re left explaining the hows and whys to your donor base. Do you really want that responsibility? It’s important to entrust your website to a web development company that knows how to host your site with optimal security measures in place in order to keep your information safe and ensure uptime. Let someone else do the security monitoring for you so you can focus on growing your organization rather than apologizing for security breaches.
4. You may have to put up with crap you don’t like, all in the name of “free.” Again, there are free website builders out there, but they come at a cost. You may have ads displayed on your site that distract your visitors. Or a template that looks dated after a year, but you can’t remove it. You might have a content management system with poor functionality or limited design choices that don’t really fit your brand. And ugh—it’s a pain to take down and recreate a website every year because you’re not able to easily update and manage the “free” one you just built 12 months ago. The adage “you get what you pay for” has never been truer in the world of tech, and in fact, a free website may be costing you loads of money if your constituents can’t use your website with point-and-click simplicity or make a donation that feels secure. Don’t let “free” mislead you.
5. You lose sight of what you’re passionate about. You got into nonprofit work for a reason, and it probably wasn’t to become a tech geek or computer programmer. We’d like to help you keep sight of your “why.” At Firespring, we always say that “our mission is to accomplish yours.” What do we mean by that? In short, we’re saying “let us do our thing so that you can do your thing.” We live, eat and breathe technology and marketing, we stay up on the latest trends, we’re constantly evolving and updating how we approach website building, and we do all of that in the name of love—the love we have for the nonprofit world and your mission to make the world a better place.
As a certified B Corporation, our commitment to providing best-in-class nonprofit websites has freed thousands of nonprofits to keep their mission front and center and to focus on their “why” rather than their “why???” You know, like “Why does my site keep crashing? “Why can’t I change that homepage image?” “Why does my donation form keep breaking??” Those are the whys we want to take off your plate.
Here’s another important why: Why not take us for a spin? Book a free website demo with one of our nonprofit website experts to see how incredibly effective and affordable a Firespring nonprofit website is, and free yourself up in 2023 to do what you love most: grow your organization.