When it comes to running a successful nonprofit organization, there are typically two primary goals – raise awareness and funds for your cause. This can be achieved through a variety of tactics, from sponsored events to merchandise sales, and having a website is the best way to manage these initiatives and share your cause with a global audience.
Despite what some may think, you don’t need to know how to code – let alone be an expert programmer – to build an effective website. Many still think of WordPress as an old-school blogging platform, but it’s actually the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. A recent survey shows that WordPress powers 26.4% of the Web with 59.4% market share. So, if you’re thinking of building a website for your charity, WordPress is a great start. Once you have a website, it’s important to know how to make the most of it. That means having a way for people to contact you, a description of what you’re trying to achieve, a way for visitors to get involved and more. Through my experience using BoldGrid, a premium website builder that works on top of WordPress (if you’re a web design newbie I highly recommend it!), I’ve discovered the best plugins that can take your nonprofit’s website to the next level.
We know fundraising is a huge priority for nonprofits, so it’s important that your website provides an easy way for visitors to instantly donate should they feel compelled to do so. Give is a free plugin that allows visitors to make donations directly through your website via PayPal. This plugin is very easy to install, but more importantly, it allows your site to remain PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. The transaction happens on the PayPal site, so you don’t have to worry about maintaining PCI compliance.
Another great feature of Give is that it manages the receipt process for those who make donations, providing customizable and tax deductible receipts (if applicable), complete with your logo, a personalized thank you note and more. Adding that personal touch goes a long way with donors, and personalizing receipts through Give is a great way to do it.
Events Manager Pro is a paid plugin, but it’s well worth the cost considering how vital events are to running a successful nonprofit. For example, the 2016 Philadelphia Auto Show’s Black Tie Tailgate sold more than 4,800 ticket, helping to raise over $550,000 for the Division of Neurology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
While events are an undeniably great way to raise funds and engage potential donors and volunteers, the logistics of running one can cause a lot of stress. From keeping track of registered attendees to online ticket sales, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to managing an event, and Events Manager Pro makes it easy. Events Manager Pro serves as a central hub for all your event’s needs, helping sell tickets online, manage attendance, notify registered attendees of schedule changes and more. It also offers spam protection through ReCaptcha, keeps a thorough payment transaction record and has a coupons and discount managing feature, which can be very helpful when trying to boost last minute ticket sales.
Selling merchandise and putting the proceeds back into your nonprofit is a tried and true way to raise both funds and awareness, and setting up a digital storefront on your website ensures visitors from all over the world can participate. There are lots of WordPress plugins that can facilitate online sales, but there’s a reason WooCommerce is the most popular. It offers users the ability to ship wherever you like, accept most forms of payment, including major credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers and cash on delivery, and even implement subscription options to continuously sell new products every month. Another huge benefit to WooCommerce that while it works for WordPress users of all levels, it has an extremely durable and robust framework, so you can easily scale your e-commerce operations as your organization grows. Selling branded merchandise online provides multiple benefits for nonprofits – not only do you raise money from the initial brand, but you build an army of supporters who physically show their support for your cause, which is great word of mouth advertising – and using WooCommerce is the best way to do it.
MailChimp is a free email marketing plugin that can help you harness the power of email to inform supporters of upcoming events, news related to your organization’s cause, volunteer opportunities and more. Sending the right email at the right time can drive substantial traffic to your site and remind supporters of the great things your organization is doing. MailChimp is an excellent email marketing plugin for several reasons.
To start, it allows for easy integration for other plugins – including WooCommerce. By using the two plugins together, MailChimp allows you to create campaigns to drive e-commerce sales with added bonuses like automatic product follow-ups and back-in-stock messaging. Another great feature of MailChimp is its flexible design capabilities. Its drag-and-drop designer allows users to easily play around with different formats and styles to ensure their marketing campaigns accurately reflect the aesthetic of their organization. And finally, MailChimp offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, which helps users understand what’s working and what’s not. If your email marketing is doing well, then keep it up and stay the course. If not, it’s time to change it up. MailChimp makes it easy to monitor the success of your email marketing campaigns and adjust accordingly.
Every site should have a contact form to make sure that visitors can easily get in touch with your organization at any time and from any place. Formstack is a paid plugin (starting at $39/month) that you can use to manage contact forms, and you’ll probably find several other uses for the plugin once you start using it, as contact forms aren’t the only forms your website can leverage.
Want to send an automated thank you tweet to anyone who fills out your form? You can do that with Formstack. Along with numerous workflow integrations, Formstack supports the use of drip emails, a pre-written set of messages are automatically sent to customers or prospects over time. Contact forms are just the start of what Formstack can do. It supports integrations with more than 40 popular web apps, including Facebook and Salesforce, so you can direct visitors to fill out the same form across multiple platforms.
In today’s day and age, having a web presence is essential for any nonprofit hoping to raise awareness and funds for its cause, and thanks to the flexibility of WordPress, it’s easier than ever to get started. While there are thousands of plugins to choose from – and you may very well end up using quite a few – the aforementioned five are a must for nonprofits.