In the first video of our #TechFriyaySA series with our NetSquared South Africa Community, we detail the 5 must-haves for your website for your online fundraising needs:

1. About Us Page 

Your About Us page is the number one place a potential donor will go to, in order to find out more about your organisation. Make sure that you keep it updated with relevant and credible information like how, when and why your NPO was formed; what keeps it going and so on. Also add in detailed information about your Board, Team, Partners, Stakeholders and various opportunities for entities to collaborate with you. Don’t forget to also include your Mission, Vision and Value statements!

2. Contact Page (Relevant and Updated)

There are multiple things you can detail on this page to help a potential online donor engage with you. Have different contact numbers (perhaps a landline and cell number), an email address, your GMB Listing or a contact field for a website visitor to complete so that you can call them back. Places of safety and GBV organisations very often don’t have too much information on this page for obvious reasons, but a suggestion is for them to communicate the reason for security measures and have an alternate means for donors to contact you. 

Need a website for your Nonprofit? Find out more about our website special here. 

3. Blog Page 

This is a feature on your website where you can add regular articles about your programmes and activities. A good formula to follow is to update this page once a month with content that is about 500 words long. The reason why this page is crucial for your NPO is because it assists SEO efforts with the relevant keywords you blog about which will ultimately help Google send relevant website visitors to your site.   

4. Wish List 

Make it easy for a potential donor to not only give to you once, but to give to you in multiple ways by listing your needs on a wish list. The three pillars of your wish list are: 

• Financial – amount and how the monetary donations can be made

• Gifts-In-Kind – detail exactly what are your specific needs are

• Support services or Volunteering programmes, opportunities and vacancies that are available. 

5. Email Subscriber Option

You want to make sure that your website is being used to build one of the most powerful forms of marketing tools on the globe right now, and that is Email Marketing! Make it easy for a website visitor to subscribe to your email newsletters or receive updates by having a visible and easy to use email subscribe function. 

Keep in mind, that when a person gives you their email address they are genuinely interested in building a relationship with your cause so make sure that you deliver relevant and reliable content to them by means of your newsletters. This will also give them an idea of how and how often you engage with your community and beneficiaries online.  

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