The Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make when Writing Their Websites

The single biggest mistake I see over and over again when auditing nonprofit websites is this: not having a clear statement about what they do and who they serve right at the top of the site. 

There are a lot of understandable reasons why this happens so often. 

Nonprofits speak to a lot of different audiences. There is the community that is most impacted by their services, the people who are likely to volunteer time or work with the nonprofit, and then there are of course the donors, big donors and little donors. These are all distinct audiences with distinct needs and languages and interests. How do you talk to them all at once? 

Then there’s the problem of how to write for the web. People running nonprofits tend to be pretty smart. Y’all got PhDs and Masters degrees and all this stuff. Which is fine. But, let's face it, academia thrives on complexity. And sometimes, complexity is just there to make us look smart. It’s not bad, we were trained to write like that. But it doesn’t work on the web. 

The goal of the writing you’ll do on the web is different. You want simplicity and clarity. You want the benefit right up front. 

Here’s why: 

Your organization probably does a lot of different things. That makes it hard to be specific about your goals, but if you don’t explain right at the start exactly what you are there to do, your site visitors won’t have the context to make sense out of the rest of your site. It will all feel like noise. Your work is complex. That is why it is so important to be clear or your site visitors will drown in the complexity. Throw them a life raft. Help them understand what you do. 

People do not read websites the way they read articles or books. They skim. They are looking for the information that will be valuable to them. If they don’t find it right away, they’ll scroll for a little bit, but websites tend to get more complex as you go, not less. So if they didn’t get a clear picture on the first screen, it’s going to be a lot of work for them to get it later on. More than likely they will just bounce. 

Best practice is to be as clear as you can about what you do and who you serve right at the top of your website.