6 Well-Designed Charity Websites That Inspire & Engage
The most engaging websites are attractive, intuitive, and easy to navigate—those are principles that apply to nonprofit and charity websites just as much as they apply to for-profit sites.
But even more importantly, charity websites reflect their nonprofit’s unique brand and mission. Potential donors should know the minute they land on the website that it belongs to a nonprofit and what that nonprofit is all about!
To help your organization design a compelling website, we’ve laid out six outstanding examples of charity websites from nonprofits just like yours—all designed by real nonprofits using Neon Websites!
Here are the organizations we’ll highlight:
- Erie Neighborhood House
- Concrete Safaris
- Lakewood Service League
- International Neighbors Charlottesville
- Islamic Scholarship Fund
- New York State Dispute Resolution Association
We’ll walk you through each organization’s mission and why their charity websites are such a success.
1. Erie Neighborhood House
Who They Are
Erie Neighborhood House is a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides immigrant communities with legal services, ESL classes, mental health services, and more.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
They make it clear what they do.
On Erie Neighborhood House’s homepage, they give a clear and brief explanation of their organization and their services. Then, in the next block, they divide all their service offerings into five categories.
What’s great about this layout is that anyone could stumble onto this website, and, in a minute or less, they would be able to easily understand who this organization is and what it does.
They keep their charity website updated for current events.
The banner module at the very top of their website keeps their constituents informed on their reopening plan. Additionally, the slideshow of images includes their most recent fundraising campaign and the enrollment link for their reopened child and youth programs.
Keeping charity websites updated is very important—this is the first place your constituents will go for updates from your nonprofit. Try to find a place on your homepage to share news, updates, and other announcements.
They make it clear how to donate.
The top navigation includes a “Donate” button in a standout color (red on a white background) that can be accessed from any page.
By making this button clear and visible on every page, Erie Neighborhood House reduced any potential roadblocks to receiving a donation.
Neon One Tip: Once a visitor clicks the “Donate” button on your website and moves onto your donation form, don’t try to replicate every single element of your website. Include your organization’s logo, colors, and look and feel, but get rid of your website’s navigational elements as they can prove distracting. For Neon CRM users, the system’s branded donation form templates come with best practices built in—and they integrate seamlessly with Neon Websites.
2. Concrete Safaris
Who They Are
Concrete Safaris is an organization in Harlem that provides engaging, active, outdoor after-school programs for children grades K-5. They also offer paid internships and leadership opportunities for young adults.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
They use a compelling hero image.
Their images represent their program in action. This gives potential donors and volunteers a window into what Concrete Safaris’ programs do and what they accomplish.
Active pages that emphasize the important things
On most of Concrete Safaris’ pages, there are active page elements that add some interest. On their homepage alone, you can scroll down to see different text boxes appear as you scroll.
The data block that shares member and volunteer participation numbers have visual animations that rotate around the page. See it for yourself!
Branding and Colors
As seen above, Concrete Safaris has chosen blue, green, and orange as their brand colors. The logo was made using a unique and memorable font.
By selecting colors representing their program’s environmental and outdoor focus, a snappy organization name that encompasses what their nonprofit is all about, and a unique, eye-catching logo, they’ve done excellent branding work.
If your nonprofit’s brand could use a refresh, check out our Better Branding for Nonprofits eBook.
3. Lakewood Service League
Who They Are
The Lakewood Service League is dedicated to improving many different facets of the Lakewood and East Dallas community, from the economy to education to cultural and civic conditions. They do so by mobilizing their members to complete projects around the community and neighborhood by donating to other charitable organizations in the area.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
Their mission is at the forefront.
The very first thing you see under the logo and navigation are the Lakewood Service League values: Community, Service, and Friendship. Anyone can understand and relate to these values and the right words to inspire the right target audience to get involved.
They include social sharing buttons.
The Lakewood Service League features icons at the top of their homepage that their supporters can use to share information with their networks with the simple click of a button! Through this feature, the organization can bring in more new donors and members from social media.
It is all about making it easy for your supporters to spread the word!
It’s designed with simplicity.
This website doesn’t need a bunch of bells and whistles to look attractive! Instead, Lakewood Service League has simply included a navigation bar, logo, mission, and what they do.
This simplicity highlights their crucial content and makes their website more accessible for users to navigate.
Neon One Tip: Is your nonprofit’s website fully optimized? Take our Website Optimization Assessment to learn if your site needs an upgrade. And for a step-by-step guide on how to improve your nonprofit’s site, download our Website Optimization Action Plan.
4. International Neighbors Charlottesville
Who They Are
International Neighbors Charlottesville (INC) is a nonprofit that helps refugee immigrants acclimate to America, get the skills they need, and find success, including employment assistance, navigating the US healthcare system, and providing families with donated necessary goods.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
Catchy Tagline
Just below their navigation bar in the top right corner of their hero image, they include their tagline, “Helping aspiring Americans thrive in five.”
The great thing about this tagline is that it’s not only catchy, it also quickly explains the work their nonprofit does: To help immigrant families prosper in less than five years.
They’re people forward.
The design of the website reflects the organization—it’s people first. You can see images and stories of families helped by INC on almost every page.
They also spotlight volunteers on their site and make them feel valued and recognized. You can tell the team at INC really has strong relationships with their volunteers.
This is a great example of how to illustrate the value of a charitable program.
Their navigation is intuitive.
There’s a navigation bar at the top of the site that can be accessed from every page. It includes short, clear titles so that users will never have any doubt about how to find the pages they’re looking for.
5. Islamic Scholarship Fund
Who They Are
Islamic Scholarship Fund strives to find and support the next generation of American Muslim leaders and get them a seat at the table in policy, law, media, and film positions.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
They provide many ways to give.
Islamic Scholarship Fund (ISF) fills their web pages with content that inspires and prompts visitors to donate. Additionally, their donation button in the navigation bar shares all the ways you can support them in the subpages: A standard donation, stock donations, or through their endowment fund.
As a bonus, they include a matching gift research tool on their donation form brought to you by Neon One partner Double the Donation.
By providing their potential donors with many giving options, ISF is helping their donors find the type of gift that works best for them.
It motivates with powerful calls to action.
If you scroll through the carousel on ISF’s homepage, you’ll notice that the buttons for most of the items all use the same specific phrase: Support a Changemaker. These calls to action prompt you to donate in a way that stands out and explains exactly what the donation goes toward: funding an ISF changemaker.
Their logo is in the top left corner.
It’s a standard web design practice to include your logo in the top left corner of the site and link back to the homepage. Islamic Scholarship Fund does this with a logo that summarizes the organization efficiently and elegantly.
Neon One Tip: Our partnership with Double the Donation and their 360MatchPro platform allows Neon CRM users to automate their gift-matching fundraising and gain actionable insights. Learn more about our integration with Double the Donation in the Neon One Partner Directory.
6. New York State Dispute Resolution Association (NYSDRA)
Who They Are
New York State Dispute Resolution Association, Inc. (NYSDRA) is a membership organization that promotes quality conflict management and peaceful dispute resolution. Through the support of its members and in partnership with Community Dispute Resolution Centers across 62 counties in New York State, NYSDRA provides services to over 74,000 New York residents every year.
What Makes Their Charity Website Awesome
They clearly highlight how to use their website.
There are different groups of people who will visit your nonprofit’s website, and that site has to work for all of them! NYSDRA’s website works great for all its different constituent groups, including members, donors, potential clients, and first-time visitors looking for more information.
Below their hero image, their homepage features four boxes highlighting the top four things visitors would be looking for. The boxes are labeled:
- Programs: What We Do
- Events & Trainings: Get Involved
- Become a Member: Join Our Network
- Donate: Join the Giving Circle
All constituents are covered. Clients can visit the programs section, current members can look up events and training sessions, prospective members can apply to join, and current or potential donors can make a gift. It’s all right there!
Their branding is strong.
NYSDRA’s brand colors are based on various shades of green, and those colors are used consistently throughout the site, with a bolder green serving as their primary color while lighter shades are used as accents.
In a particularly nice touch, there is even a brief section in the middle of their homepage that explains the significance of the olive branch in NYSDRA’s logo as a symbol of “peace and friendship.” That’s a great way to reinforce their commitment to conflict resolution and meditation!
Its name is front and center.
When you’re an organization that has a longer name and goes by an acronym, as NYSDRA does, it can be helpful to put your full name front and center on your homepage.
And that’s exactly what they do! The association’s full name is layered on top of their hero image. It’s literally the first thing you see when you arrive on the site.
Just in case a new website visitor is worried that they might not be in the right place, NYSDRA’s website puts that worry to bed.
It includes a sticky header.
When you scroll down NYSDRA’s website, the header at the top of the page doesn’t disappear. It follows you down the page.
That’s called a sticky header, and it’s a great way to ensure that your visitors always have easy access to the rest of your site.
NYSDRA’s site also makes good use of their footer, which includes their address, contact info (phone, fax, and email) plus links to all their social media channels.
Reimagine Your Charity’s Website with Neon One
A well-designed, well-functioning website is critical for the modern nonprofit. All six of the sites that we have highlighted in this article convey their organization’s mission, vision, and impact in a clear way that engages all their different constituent groups.
Is your charity looking to build a new website? Well, we have some good news! Neon Websites is a website solution from Neon One that’s designed specifically for nonprofits, with mission-specific templates, an easy no-code website builder, and a seamless integration with Neon CRM.
With Neon Websites, your organization gets a full partner that’s invested in your mission’s success. From design, to construction, to continuing support, the experts at Neon Websites can help your nonprofit redefine its online presence.
If you’d like to know more, schedule a consultation today!
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