Nonprofit New Year's Resolution: Get A Website That Doesn't Make My Eyes Bleed

One of my biggest complaints with the nonprofit sector is that it looks like hell.

Look, here's the deal friends. People judge books by their covers. In a world where there are a ton of great causes, people are increasingly looking for quality of impact to compliment the tug on their heartstrings. Like it or not, one of the most important elements of how people make a decision about your quality is how you present yourself.

The very, very first impression most people have of your nonprofit is going to be your .org website, and when it looks terrible, you're basically sending a signal that you don't mind your image being sloppy, just okay, and generally mediocre.

What to I mean by "look terrible?" Well, for one, no Times New Roman. Less than five total fonts please. High resolutions photos. No pixelation, anywhere. Actually have a site architecture with sensible navigation. Make it easy for me to contact you. Make your site pull me in. Make the colors reinforce your logo and the visual identity you want to convey.

It doesn't have to be stunning, but it does need to convey to people that you're serious about everything you do. And while you're at it, make sure the copy simply and easily says what you need it to say, yea?

The problem is not that a good website has anything to do, necessarily, with being good at the work of your nonprofit. Of course, I'll take great impact and a terrible website over the reverse any day. But for anyone you want to engage with - donors, fundations, stakeholders, whomever - your brand all flows together. People don't have a brand score card where being good in one area makes up for another.

Brand is about overall impression, and so when you concede one big piece of how people interact with your brand to mediocrity, you're jepordizing the whole shebang.

What does this mean practically? I think that, in general, nonprofits should spend their web development dollars on quality design and interface, not on content management.

In my estimation, the average nonprofit's web strategy is to find a "web developer" they know and pay them $5-$15k for a website that has some version of a custom "Content Management System (CMS)." Custom CMS' are almost never a necessity for nonprofits, for whom CMS providers like Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal are almost certainly a better option.

I would instead put those dollars into a design that actually makes your site look as good as your organization's impact really is. A good front-end designer - particularly someone with some experience in brand strategy - can help a nonprofit go from the dready duldrums of "just okay" to "something special" really quickly.

Indeed, there's an opportunity here. The state of the nonprofit web design is so bad that it's almost a distinguishing factor simply to look good. Particularly for startup nonprofits who are in "fake it till you make it mode," this is a way to build a bigger brand now.

The point is that I think the sector has to get over the notion that it doesn't have to think about brand, design, and it's public presentation. Every new nonprofit is competing for scarce resources.

First, by all means, you need to be good. But then you need to look good, as well.

A few nonprofits that do it well:

(Photo: chris.corwin)