Charity website design examples

A donation route that is impossible to miss, regular giving offered as the default rather than an afterthought, clear information on where money goes, Gift Aid handled properly, and routes for people who want to help in ways other than donating. The structural mistake most charity sites make is treating the site as a brochure about the cause, when its actual job is converting sympathy into a standing order.

Usually by reducing friction and defaulting to monthly. Suggested amounts as buttons rather than an empty field lifts average gift, because an empty box makes people guess and guessing goes low. Beyond that, showing exactly what a specific amount does, and making the Gift Aid declaration a single obvious tick, both move the number more than any redesign of the homepage.

Gift Aid lets a UK charity reclaim the basic-rate tax on donations from UK taxpayers, worth an extra 25p per pound at current rates. It belongs in the donation flow as a clear, single declaration, with a plain explanation of who is eligible. A surprising amount of eligible Gift Aid goes unclaimed simply because the form made it easy to skip.

Yes, and only real ones. Donors and funders both check, and an inflated figure is far more damaging to a charity than to a commercial business because trust is the entire product. Where numbers are estimates, say so. Where they come from an independent evaluation, say that too, because it is worth much more than a round number with no provenance.

With consent, and with dignity. The sector has moved firmly away from imagery that presents people as helpless, both because it is ethically poor and because it performs worse with modern donors. Outcome-focused photography, where the person has agency, raises more and treats them better. Consent should be recorded, and for children it needs particular care.

Platforms are useful and take a cut, and they own the donor relationship rather than you. A modest website that accepts donations directly, captures the supporter details, and keeps the Gift Aid declarations is usually worth it within a year. Many charities sensibly run both, using platforms for campaigns and their own site for regular giving.

The Equality Act applies, and if you deliver services under public sector contracts the accessibility regulations may apply as well. Beyond compliance, the audience makes it obvious: charities frequently serve people who are older, disabled, or using assistive technology, and a site that fails them fails at the point of the organisation. We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as standard.

A few weeks. What tends to set the timeline is governance — copy about beneficiaries and impact usually needs trustee sign-off, and rightly so. We write it, your board approves it, and nothing ships that has not been confirmed.