Welcome back to GWS’s series on charity website design.
In our first post, we introduced the four basic functions of a charity website:
Communicating with
the public to encourage individual and new supporters;
Communicating with corporate and large-scale grant funders to achieve long term partnerships;
Conveying your expertise to professionals in your charity’s field, and
Evidencing your committment to engaging directly with australia phone number data your charity’s target beneficiaries.
Today, we’ll be covering how website design can achieve the first objective.
As well as being clear and focused with a one line explanation of what you do (your ‘vision’ and your ‘mission’ – crucial for any charity homepage) it’s important to be visually appealing; and enthusiastic about the potential of your charity to help.
Lifewater.org is a wonderful example of how to inspire using one striking image:
We also love Action for
Children’s fantastic Flash animations telling the stories of children they have helped; striking and evocative.
Read on for more great examples of how to achieve Objective 1 in charity web design.
Potraying your supporters in action at fundraising events is a well-established method for encouraging visitors to imagine themselves doing the same; as Brace has done on their homepage.
To engage the public in your cause and tell a story, link your charity with topical and recognisable ‘social currency’, meaning current events, and emotive or popular themes.
These themes can be as simple as the season (Christmas), or current affairs (hardship from the global recession).
Action Aid’s homepage makes great use of all social currency; showcasing pne of the best ways to grow individual fundraisers, snippets about people ActionAid have helped, and celebrity involvement, with positive yet evocative images.
All these positive images motivate donations, by reminding visitors tg data that you have concrete objectives and they can contribute.
Showcasing fundraising targets and specific focused campaigns is great for this too.
Summing up clearly achievable goals creates a sense of team spirit between you and your supporters, like Farm Africa’s inspiring and impactful ‘donation boxes’.