WordPress for Nonprofits: A Practical Guide for Your Team

If you’re considering WordPress for your nonprofit’s website, you’re in good company—WordPress powers 43% of all websites (including this one!), and 55% of nonprofit websites. Nonprofits value WordPress for ease of use, flexible page-building, and a vast ecosystem of plugins and themes. And yet, WordPress is not always the right choice, and there’s a lot that goes into the care and feeding of a WordPress website.

The goal of this post is to provide a WordPress-101 orientation, so you can get a sense of when it might be a good fit. We’ll also provide a birds-eye view of what you can expect when creating and launching a WordPress site, as well as some thoughts about that long-term care and feeding.

We’ll cover:

• Nonprofit WordPress Basics
• WordPress for Nonprofits: How to Determine Your Priorities
• Key Considerations to Get Started With WordPress for Nonprofits
• Examples of Nonprofit WordPress Websites
• WordPress for Nonprofits FAQ

Nonprofit WordPress Basics

First of all, what is WordPress, anyway?

WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS), which is a piece of software that you use to manage the words and images you’re going to display on a website, provide an administrative interface for you to log in and make changes, and provide a technical foundation for the core features that we expect websites to have nowadays.

WordPress can be hosted (which means someone else runs it, and you just log in and start using the page builder) or self-managed, in which you make a copy of the software (which is available at no cost, because it’s open source) and install it on a server or on a dedicated WordPress host. We’ll talk more about which of those would be best for you later.

WordPress is often—but not always—the best choice for nonprofit websites.

The more your website just needs to do normal website things, the more likely it is that WordPress is your best bet. WordPress strengths include:

• Flexible page-building tools for non-developers. With WordPress, you should be able to build and update pages without needing to touch any code.
• Robust plugin ecosystem. There are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins that can add key functionality, integrate with third-party platforms, etc.
• Ubiquity. WordPress is everywhere; folks at your organization are likely to have worked with it before, and there are many, many hosts that support it.
• No licensing fees or vendor lock-in. WordPress core is free to download and use, and you can freely move your WordPress site between hosts.
• Search engine optimization (SEO)-friendliness. A properly-configured WordPress website makes your content easily crawlable by search engines (and LLMs, too), so people can find you.

If the main thing your website needs to do is display text and images and the occasional embedded video, WordPress is a great choice.

When should a nonprofit consider another platform?

WordPress may be the most obvious choice for a nonprofit, but it’s not always the right one. For one thing, it’s a complex piece of software, and it’s important to keep it up to date with security updates and patches.

When you create a WordPress website, you need a plan for keeping it secure, and you’re likely to want support when things break, so you’ll want to think about long-term care and feeding—as the saying goes, WordPress is “Free,” as in “Free Kittens!”

Here are a few situations where you may want to consider another platform:

• If your site is very simple or your budget is very small, you could consider a simple do-it-yourself web platform like Squarespace or Wix. These are great for smaller sites without too many pages, or for spinning up something simple if you don’t have much time. Also, you don’t have to worry about security updates or patches (because it’s a hosted platform, not an independent CMS), and the monthly costs are low.
• If your site is more complex, for example, if you are building a logged-in user experience, or if your site contains fielded data that you need to report on or treat like a database, WordPress’s relatively messy, content-focused infrastructure isn’t the best choice; consider Drupal or Backdrop.
• If the website is focused on something other than content, a content-focused CRM like WordPress may not be the best choice. For example, if your site is mostly a store with a few pages in front of it, consider Shopify. If your site is mostly just a veneer over your marketing tools, consider HubSpot.

If you’ve considered all of those and you’re still here, congratulations, you get to use WordPress!

WordPress for Nonprofits: How to Determine Your Priorities

Before you start: be clear about your goals.

You’ve got a lot of decisions ahead of you. Before you begin, take some time to consider what your website is for. Here are a few common goals:

• Your website tells your story, so that your community knows who you are and what you stand for.
• Your website builds credibility. A well-crafted website that demonstrates your accomplishments and your expertise gives potential funders, allies, or supporters confidence.
• Your website is a tool for online fundraising. You want to make it easy for your donors to support you.
• Your website is a hub for your advocacy. If you’re encouraging your supporters to take action on a campaign, a lot of that usually happens over email or in social media, but most campaigns benefit from a central hub to make the broader case and highlight available actions.
• Your website is how potential supporters may find you. If someone who cares about your issues does a web search, you need a website for them to be able to discover you.
• Your website shares resources or tools to advance your mission. Some nonprofits make change by helping other changemakers. If you share resources, toolkits, events, webinars, etc, you need a library with good search-and-sort features to distribute your work.

Almost every nonprofit needs its website to tell its story and build credibility, but take the time to decide which goals are most important for you, so you can prioritize them in your decision-making.

Know your audience.

At the same time you’re thinking about goals, be clear about who your audience is. If you’re guiding your own website development process, it’s a good bet that you know enough about your organization and your community to make a high-level, actionable list of audiences. Who are you speaking to? Funders, probably. Allies? Are you speaking to other folks who are professionals in your space? Are you speaking to people you serve directly?

If you’re not sure, remember that nearly all nonprofits have two overarching audiences:

• People who know what they want from your site, and are just trying to find it. These folks need your navigational support—clear menus and clear pathways to what they need.
• People who don’t know who you are or what they want from your site. These folks need your narrative energy. You have to tell them who you are, why they should care, and what to do.

Key Considerations to Get Started With WordPress for Nonprofits

Information architecture: planning your website.

At its simplest level, information architecture is answering the questions, “What pages should be on my site?” and “What should my menu be?” For this, try a user-focused thought exercise: what are my users looking for? How do I structure the menu so they can find it? A good menu should show your visitor at a glance who you are and what they can do on your site. On each page, offer clear user pathways so each audience always knows where to go next. Also, be sure to invite users to do what you’d like them to do with a clear call to action.

Consider SEO when assembling your menu; which menu items answer the questions that users are most likely to be asking a search engine or LLM? Use language in your menus that anyone would understand (and potentially search for) and avoid internal language and terms. Carry that language through to your page headings and sub-headings, because those carry more weight for search engines.

Website design and branding

Now that you know what your website’s content will be, it’s time to develop a look-and-feel to match. Branding and design are big topics, but be sure to start with a clear sense of who you are, who you’re speaking to, and how you want to be seen.

If you’re just getting started, you might choose an out-of-the-box theme that feels close enough to your brand to get your website off the ground. If you’ve been around for a while, you might want to explore designing a custom theme, which can be more tailored to you, and also provide a leaner set of purpose-built elements for your site, to make it easier to build visually consistent pages that match the rest of your site.

Either way, be sure to keep accessibility standards in mind. Nonprofits often have legal requirements to be accessible, and it’s also just the right thing to do. Giant Rabbit recommends the WAVE evaluation tool as an easy way to scan your site for compliance issues, problems with color contrast, missing alt text, etc. Also, please don’t use a third-party accessibility overlay for actual remediation; disability advocates and accessibility specialists don’t like them, and they won’t protect you from lawsuits.

Craft pages with users in mind (and robots, too)

Now that you’ve got a site structure and a theme, remember the goals of each as you build out your content. Remember each of the key audiences, and keep in mind each individual page’s place in that user’s journey, including the calls to action that are relevant and appropriate.

As you’re creating pages to guide your human visitors, think back to your SEO goals and keep your SEO priorities in mind. Making your headlines clear and direct will help new visitors understand who you are and navigate your site, and it will help LLMs and search engines direct traffic to pages that answer questions for humans who might not know you yet. For a nonprofit, writing menu items and headings with clear, direct language is good for search robots and human users alike.

Use plugins or third-party services for advanced features

Most nonprofits need their websites to be more than informational. For adding email signups, donation forms, event listings, membership forms, and more, you’ll usually be looking outside of WordPress core.

Plugins are WordPress addons (some free, some paid) that add new features, or, in some cases, transform WordPress significantly. Here are some common plugins to consider:

• Yoast is an industry-standard SEO plugin for a reason; their free version manages redirects, offers recommendations, automates XML sitemaps, and more.
• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) allows the creation of powerful custom fields that can be used to create custom post types with a wider variety of data types and relationships, for use in structuring searches, displaying special content, and more.
• Gravity Forms is a widely used form builder for setting up contact forms and other submissions. If you add a payment processor, you can use Gravity Forms to collect payments and donations (although you’ll often want a dedicated donation platform for the latter so you can have a platform that understands donation receipts, etc., natively).

Other advanced features can be found via specialized third-party services. Often, those services provide simple code snippets you can copy and paste into your page builder to embed additional features without adding a plugin.

Embedded features are a great way to provide an “integration” with your website without needing a developer. You might consider:

• Eventbrite offers event registration, and you can embed signup forms for both free and paid events.
• Mailchimp will allow you to collect emails on your website, and you can then use the platform to send mass emails.
• Donorbox is an easy-to-use donation, events, membership, and CRM platform with simple embed capabilities for donation and registration forms (or a plugin, if you need something more complex than their embedded form). Donorbox also offers a native integration with Salesforce and several other popular CRMs.
• A two-factor authentication plugin is a must to keep your administrative accounts secure. Consider WP-2fa or Two Factor Authentication.

If you don’t know where to begin, start with whatever is simplest, most straightforward, or easiest to use! Ease-of-use is a good first clue that the platform sees the data the same way you do. Starting with a simple version of a feature is a great way to figure out what’s really important, and where or whether you need to look into a more complex solution.

What’s the best host for my nonprofit WordPress site?

Nonprofits have many options for hosting their WordPress sites, which is one of the strengths of the platform.

• Simplest: WordPress.com offers paid hosting for your WordPress site, with tools for automatically applying updates and more. It’s fast to get started, but there are platform limits on what you can install and customize.
• Good tools for self-hosting: If you want the full flexibility of WordPress, and you’d like some WordPress-specific tools to help manage updates, backups, and security, consider a WordPress specialist host like WPEngine or Kinsta. You’ll ultimately be responsible for your site’s security, but you’ve got tools to make that easier.
• Fully managed hosting. If you want the full flexibility of WordPress and don’t want to worry about becoming a WordPress security expert on your own, consider full-service managed hosting that takes full responsibility for testing and deploying updates and dealing with bots, and offers real human support along the way.

Launching your new site is the beginning, not the end.

As soon as your new site is better than your old one (and if you’re a new organization, this will happen pretty quickly), launch it! Don’t let perfect be the enemy of launched. Get your new site out into the world, and keep working on it. For your website to stay relevant, it needs to evolve with you.

Of course, be compassionate with yourself, and don’t set yourself up with a content schedule that your team doesn’t have the capacity to meet (front page “latest news” from three years ago isn’t a good look). At the same time, be sure to stay engaged with your site, and periodically review how your needs are evolving. A friendly, reliable support partner who understands your website and your people can help with that.

Examples of Nonprofit WordPress Websites

Nonprofit WordPress sites can look very different from one another, and do very different things since the platform is so flexible. Here are a few WordPress websites we’ve designed and built:

Just Zero

Just Zero is fighting back against climate change and toxic chemicals in the environment by advocating for zero-waste solutions across the United States.

Beyond the Pill

Beyond the Pill works to advance reproductive autonomy and contraceptive access through cutting-edge research, public policy advocacy, training, and resource development.

Unbound Philanthropy

Unbound Philanthropy is a private grantmaking foundation working for a world in which migrants, refugees, and their families can thrive in a society that embraces the diversity and opportunity that immigration brings.

Trails Rx

Trails RX is a project of Sempervirens, providing trail guides and recommendations for people to improve their health and well-being through a curated group of trails in the coastal redwood forest.

Farm Direct Incentives Guide

Farm Direct Incentives Guide is a project of the Farmers Market Coalition that provides guides and resources for local farmers’ markets to accept SNAP benefits at their markets, to increase everyone’s access to healthy foods.

Explore WordPress for Your Nonprofit’s Site

If you’re considering WordPress for your website, reach out! We can help you evaluate your options. We’ve spent more than 20 years supporting nonprofits, so we’ve seen a lot of websites. We can help you pick the right platform for your nonprofit, whether you’re just getting started or whether you’ve been around for longer than we have.