Tuning your charity's website to the frequency of funders: 3 C's to consider

Rachel Cross is back with us after a couple of months off, and returns with a doozy of a blog all about making sure your website works for you as a fundraising tool...

For charities and social enterprises, your website can be just as important as your application when it comes to trusts and major donor fundraising.

After all, apart from your Charity Commission record, in the modern world your website is the key place a funder (or indeed, anyone) will look to understand who you are, what you do and whether you are trustworthy. Think of it as the concertmaster that sets the melody for every other piece of content, application, proposal or information you deliver. If it’s out of tune, everything else will be too.

But, especially for small charities, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by how much could be done. You can easily spend thousands on slick aesthetics and SEO, whilst still missing what actually matters when a potential funder visits your website.

We’re often asked our advice on this. While we're not communications specialists, we know that your website is a crucial instrument to be tuned as part of an effective approach to trusts and foundations fundraising. Tuning this instrument rarely requires enlisting an external IT agency or graphic designer, but a key understanding of why funders visit your website as part of their decision-making in the first place.

In this blog, I've distilled our top tips into three Cs for you to consider.

Though it’s worth noting before we begin, your funders likely aren’t the only audience your website may need to cater for. Whilst the following points come from a trusts fundraising perspective, recognising what your service users, individual donors and other stakeholders may need should always be held in balance when deciding which information to prioritise online.

Your website is the concertmaster that sets the melody for your other content - but is it out of tune?

#1 Clarity

When I land on your home page, is it obvious who you are and what you do? Is information about your work and/or projects defined clearly under relevant sections that are easy to find and written in plain, simple language?

In a very similar way to approaching a funding proposal, a time-poor funder does not want to dig around to find the basics. If your website is littered with jargon, or if a funder ends up more confused about your work by visiting your website, this isn’t a good sign.

Alternatively, it might not be littered with jargon, but is your website too vague? Can I spend five minutes on your site and leave with a clear picture of your mission, vision, activities and impact?

For example, you’re a charity centred on a rare species that needs protecting from extinction. The information you provide about said species could be second-to-none, but if what your organisation does to help protect said species is shrouded in mystery or generic language, as a funder I am still going to question how you’ll be using my cash.

​Be specific about what you do and how you do it, but keep it simple.

#2 Consistency

Is the information you’re presenting online consistent with what you’re saying about yourself in your funding application? Do your vision and values align? Are you claiming one thing in an application whilst your website says otherwise?

Discrepancies in messaging can cause confusion and sow seeds of doubt in the mind of a funder. I’ve worked in smaller charities where often the way in which we internally speak about our work naturally evolves slightly over time, and frequently for good reasons.

You may not be intentionally trying to present a drifted mission or activities, but an outdated or misaligned website can easily discredit even the most well-written funding proposal if it’s not clear how it seems to fit with what you’re saying publicly.

Despite it being the front-facing centrepiece of your charity, sometimes the accuracy and consistency of the messaging on our website can simply get overlooked whilst we’re busy aligning everything else. When was the last time you checked the wording of your ‘about’ page against a recent application?

Of course, there is often necessity here for wider conversations around consistency of messaging across staff and volunteer teams, and it could actually mean that your proposals are off key instead. This is why we always recommend investing in an internal case for support that is routinely updated and is used consistently within an organisation to frame your messaging across different audiences.

​It’s also worthwhile agreeing on a regular review period for checking and updating both your website and your case for support, which might be anywhere from monthly to every few months, depending on your organisation. 

Funders will head to your website to learn more about your organisation and check the details in your application. Will they find what they need?

#3 Credibility

Last but definitely not least: credibility. Whenever a funder visits your website, especially for the first time, the question of credibility is front and centre. After all, they’re considering trusting you with their money and will be keeping their eyes peeled for potential red flags.

You might think that a super-polished website with expertly designed graphics and add-ons makes your organisation appear more credible, but if you’re a small charity, the opposite might actually be true.

If your website appears disproportionately professional to the size of your organisation, a funder may question your decision to invest your limited charitable income into marketing and IT. Of course, in this day and age, people expect to see a certain level of modernisation (clunky, retro websites also stand out!) but smaller or family trusts in particular remain wary of anything that looks too good.

More critically, could the claims you make on your website be misleading in any way? Even seemingly innocuous turns of phrase can unintentionally mislead.

For example, you’re a small charity supporting young people living in Herefordshire, who are not in education or employment, to access skills-based apprenticeships. You say online, ‘we help 10,000 people every month’. These sorts of phrases can cause problems, particularly because they pair a specific claim (i.e. 10,000 people per month) with a vague action word (‘help’).

What you actually mean is that your social media content reaches 10,000 unique accounts every month (which is awesome!). But what a funder might interpret is the claim that your organisation directly enables 10,000 young people onto apprenticeship schemes a month. Compared with your other impact data, it quickly becomes clear this doesn’t stack up, which raises a question mark.

With stakes high and hundreds of competing applicants, unfortunately few funders will ask for clarity or give you the benefit of the doubt, especially if you’re a new applicant. In the current fundraising climate, funders always need to whittle down their pile of applications. 

Having someone external read over the types of claims you make publicly – especially ones containing data – can be a really helpful way of picking up on these potential issues. Additionally, being transparent and surrounding your claims with specific details will help avoid misinterpretation. For example, if you’re claiming ‘100% of people said...’, tell us how many people were asked. 100% of two is still two!

And finally... a note on accessibility

I hope that remembering these three Cs – Clarity, Consistency and Credibility – when curating your website will help you explore how to best present your organisation and your work so that it sings to the beat of a funder’s drum. These points also apply to the information you put out on your social media channels or other public forums.

​But, as I said previously, funders may only be one of many different audiences accessing your website for various reasons, and the way in which information is presented here shouldn’t come at the expense of making it inaccessible to another key set of people, especially your service users.

On that note, digital accessibility should be a priority for your charity’s site, whoever you’re catering it for. Our friends over at Charity Digital have a host of helpful tips on this issue here.