The Recipe for a Dynamite Nonprofit WordPress Website

Andy StittWordPress consultant for nonprofits

Deliberate Media Solutions

Why WordPress for nonprofits?

• Solid software that doesn’t cost a fortune

• Community generous with time and resources

• Large library of plugins

#1 goal of any nonprofit website

It must help the organization meet its mission

Nonprofit employee/board member: I want the website to have X, Y, and Z pages on it.

You: Good. How does this help you meet your mission?

Caveat: if it doesn’t directly help you meet your mission but makes one of your major donors happy, then it helps you meet your mission :)

Different kinds of nonprofits and their missions

• Cause-based - serving people around a cause, i.e. social justice, clean water, access to healthcare

• Membership associations - serving their members and chapters

• Schools - serving their students

The importance of storytelling on your website

• Telling stories of how your organization has impacted lives

• Individuals telling stories about how their lives were changed

• Stories where the donor is the hero, i.e. “here’s how your gift made a difference”

Storytelling on your WordPress website

• Use Posts and Pages to tell stories

• Media Library for pictures

• Easy to embed videos within Posts and Pages

Using WordPress for event management

• Nonprofits have lots of different events

• These include donor receptions and program-related events

• Event management plugins make it easy to advertise and collect sign-ups for events

Why custom post types are useful to nonprofits

• The WordPress “Post” is not inherently meaningful

• However, “Event”, “Board Member”, and “News Story” are meaningful

• Develop custom post types or use a plugin that accomplishes that goal

Typical nonprofit problems

• A volunteer designs and/or maintains the website and then disappears or can’t do it anymore

• Not enough staff knowledge re: maintenance, so lots of out-of-date plugins and WordPress core

• Too many plugins that aren’t regularly updated and conflict with each other.

Solution to all three problems

Hire someone who knows what they’re doing

Have a WordPress expert on hand

A WordPress expert can help you:

• Choose the best plugins

• Do regular maintenance work, including plugin and core updates

• Make coding changes to the site to change a font here, a color there, etc.

Typical nonprofit problem

• Not upgrading their Microsoft Front Page design from 2005 due to fear of it being too expensive

• Solution: lots of good-looking, inexpensive, customizable template designs

WordPress themes for nonprofits

• Keep it simple: do things the WordPress way

• Keeping it simple = don’t use Theme Forest :)

• For quick and lower budget projects, commercial theme customization works

• Can build Genesis Framework child themes among others

Useful plugins for nonprofits

• Nonprofits need the same functionality as small businesses, bloggers, startups, etc.

• Yoast SEO

• BackupBuddy/Updraft Plus/VaultPress

• Wordfence/Sucuri/iThemes Security

Give donation plugin by WordImpress

• Online donation forms on your website

• Integrates with all major payment gateways

• Better donor experience than regular e-commerce plugins

• Donor data is stored on your own server

• GiveWP.com

Third party software integration

• Constant Contact and Mailchimp

• Salesforce and CiviCRM

• Gravity Forms extensions to integrate with this software

Resources

• NonProfitWP

• The Landscape of WordPress for Nonprofits

• New WordPress for Nonprofits podcast launching on September 19

Resources

• Philly GiveCamp

• Baltimore Techies for Good

• Philly NetSquared

My Own Projects

• Math Corps Philly

• Neuroblastoma Children’s Cancer Society (in progress)

• Jazz With Aloha

Stay in touch

• Twitter: @andywpdev

• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewstitt

• Email: andy@andystitt.com

• deliberatemediasolutions.com