Web Design
—25 August 2026
Best Nonprofit Websites: Examples and What Makes Them Work
A look at some of the best nonprofit websites and what they get right, from clearer storytelling and stronger trust to donations, accessibility and useful calls to action.
There is a temptation when looking at nonprofit websites to judge them in the same way as any other design project: nice typography, strong photography, good colours, interesting layouts.
Those things matter, but they are not really what makes a nonprofit website good.
A nonprofit website normally has a harder job to do. It may need to explain an unfamiliar problem, establish that the organisation is legitimate, show where money goes, recruit volunteers, attract partners, publish resources and persuade someone to donate — sometimes within the same visit.
The best nonprofit websites I've found aren't necessarily the ones doing the most visually. They're the ones that make the organisation, its impact and the visitor's next step unusually easy to understand.
Here are a few worth studying.
1. charity: water — make the impact tangible
charity: water is probably one of the better-known examples of nonprofit web design, but there is a reason it keeps coming up.
The homepage starts with an enormous mission — bringing clean and safe water to everyone — and then spends much of the site making that ambition feel concrete.
Rather than simply asking visitors to trust the organisation, it provides evidence. Its site currently publishes figures for projects funded, countries reached and people expected to be served. It also explains that projects are documented using photographs and GPS coordinates. charity: water
That's an important distinction.
"We do good work" is a claim. Showing someone what happened is proof.
The donation proposition follows the same pattern. The site prominently explains its model for directing public donations to water projects and provides several distinct ways to contribute, including monthly giving, project sponsorship and fundraising. charity: water
What I'd take from it
A nonprofit shouldn't make its impact something visitors have to hunt for in an annual report.
Bring the evidence into the website itself:
real numbers rather than vague statements
completed projects
photographs and outcomes
where donations go
who has been helped
what a particular contribution can achieve
Good nonprofit website design isn't just about creating emotion. It's about backing that emotion with enough evidence for someone to act on it.
2. Kiva — turn the mission into the website
Kiva is interesting because the website isn't merely a brochure explaining what the organisation does.
The website is how you participate in what it does.
Its proposition is immediately actionable: visitors can browse real people seeking loans and contribute from $25. The homepage moves quickly from explaining the idea to showing actual funding opportunities. Kiva
Kiva then makes a potentially complicated model surprisingly understandable.
Its explanation boils the process down to finding someone to support, deciding how much to contribute, funding the loan and potentially relending the money after repayment. Kiva
That's good UX, but it's also good communication.
The organisation doesn't assume that visitors understand microfinance before arriving. It explains enough for someone to become comfortable and then gives them something meaningful to do.
What I'd take from it
Ask whether your website merely describes your mission, or whether visitors can actually participate in it.
That might mean:
sponsoring something specific
registering as a volunteer
finding a local programme
joining an event
downloading a resource
supporting a particular campaign
becoming a member
Sometimes the best nonprofit homepage isn't primarily an About page. It's a doorway into the organisation.
3. DonorsChoose — make choice feel manageable
DonorsChoose has the opposite problem to a small charity with one campaign.
It has a huge amount of choice.
Teachers across the US can request classroom resources, while donors need to find the projects they actually want to support. That could easily turn into an overwhelming database.
Instead, the website gives people different ways into it.
Visitors can search by school or location, look at urgent projects, browse requests for basic supplies, find historically underfunded schools and explore projects with matched donations. DonorsChoose
There is also an important trust layer beneath all of that. DonorsChoose explains its process from donation through fulfilment and tells donors how their money was spent. DonorsChoose
What I'd take from it
More choice doesn't automatically make a website more useful.
If your organisation has dozens of programmes, locations, campaigns or resources, don't dump everything into one enormous navigation menu.
Help people enter through intent:
I want to donate.
I need help.
I want to volunteer.
I want to find something near me.
That's often a much better information architecture than expecting visitors to understand your internal organisational structure.
4. Feeding America — remember that not every visitor is a donor
This is something I particularly like about Feeding America's website.
Nonprofit websites can become so focused on fundraising that they forget one fairly important group: the people the nonprofit exists to help.
Feeding America's homepage prominently provides routes for finding food and resources. A visitor can enter their ZIP code to find a local food bank, while additional routes point toward SNAP assistance and other meal programmes. Feeding America
Fundraising still matters, of course, but it doesn't consume the entire experience.
That's a useful reminder that different audiences can have completely different priorities.
What I'd take from it
Before designing the navigation, write down who actually visits the site.
For example:
Donors want evidence and an easy way to give.
People needing support want information quickly and without unnecessary barriers.
Volunteers want to know where they're needed and what is involved.
Partners may want evidence of reach, credibility and organisational capacity.
Journalists may need statistics, reports and contact information.
Trying to funnel every one of those people through the same generic homepage journey rarely works.
5. Girls Who Code — lead with the mission, then prove the scale
Girls Who Code has a strong visual identity, but what interests me more is how comfortably the website combines brand personality with serious evidence.
Its current strategic-plan content, for example, reports 860,000 girls, women and nonbinary people served since 2012 and 425,000 college-aged or post-college-aged alumni. Donation calls to action sit alongside programme and impact information rather than existing as an isolated fundraising layer. Girls Who Code
The result feels like an organisation with an identity rather than a generic charity template.
What I'd take from it
"Nonprofit" doesn't have to be the visual identity.
A children's organisation, environmental campaign, local community group and medical charity shouldn't all look interchangeable simply because they share the same tax status.
Your organisation can have personality.
In fact, a distinctive identity can make the mission considerably easier to remember.
What do the best nonprofit websites have in common?
Looking across these sites, I don't think there is a single nonprofit design style worth copying.
There is a common way of thinking, though.
The strongest sites answer a few important questions very quickly:
What does this organisation actually do?
Why should I believe it makes a difference?
Where does the money go?
How can I help — or get help?
What should I do next?
That sounds simple, but plenty of websites bury those answers beneath mission statements, organisational history, oversized menus and pages written around the organisation rather than its visitor.
Show impact rather than just talking about it
One recurring pattern is specificity.
charity: water publishes project and impact numbers. Kiva lets you see individual borrowers. DonorsChoose lets you fund individual classroom requests. Feeding America helps people find support in their own area. charity: water
Each makes a large mission smaller and more understandable.
A local nonprofit doesn't need sophisticated technology to do the same thing.
A simple section showing:
142 families supported last year
37 active volunteers
8 community projects completed
can sometimes communicate more than several paragraphs about "making a meaningful difference in our community."
Specificity builds credibility.
Don't make the donation button do all the work
Making Donate bright, sticky and impossible to miss doesn't fix an unconvincing website.
Before someone gives you money, they may need to understand the problem, see evidence of your work, trust the organisation and know what their contribution is likely to support.
The CTA matters.
Everything leading up to it matters more.
That's why I would treat nonprofit conversion design as a journey:
understand → trust → see impact → act
rather than:
land on website → DONATE NOW
Make the website useful even when someone isn't donating
This may be the biggest lesson.
A genuinely useful nonprofit website can become part of the organisation's work.
It can connect someone with food, match a donor with a classroom, let somebody fund an entrepreneur or show supporters exactly what their contribution helped achieve.
You don't need Kiva-level infrastructure to apply that principle.
A smaller organisation could have:
an events calendar
downloadable resources
volunteer registration
programme applications
a searchable directory
member resources
local support information
project updates
impact reports
The question I'd ask isn't just "How can the website get us more donations?"
It's also:
"What could this website make easier for the people we exist to serve?"
Accessibility isn't an optional nonprofit feature
There is also a less glamorous part of nonprofit website design that deserves attention: the site needs to work for as many people as reasonably possible.
Readable typography, sufficient contrast, descriptive link text, sensible heading structure, keyboard navigation, useful image alt text and forms with clear labels aren't decorative improvements.
They're part of making the organisation accessible.
And if your website provides important services or information, poor accessibility can become more than an inconvenience.
You probably don't need to copy any of these websites
This is where "best website" articles can go wrong.
You see a beautiful charity: water page and decide you need enormous photography. You see an interactive platform like Kiva and decide you need custom functionality. You find an animated nonprofit website and suddenly everything needs to move.
That's backwards.
Start with what your organisation actually needs people to understand and do.
A small community nonprofit may be better served by a relatively simple website with six excellent pages, convincing evidence, accessible information and an easy donation process than by an expensive award-chasing design.
The design should follow the job.
A simple checklist for a better nonprofit website
If I were reviewing an existing nonprofit site, I'd start here:
Can a new visitor explain the mission after looking at the homepage for a few seconds?
Is there visible evidence of real impact?
Can someone understand where their donation goes?
Are the main audiences given obvious routes through the website?
Can somebody donate, volunteer, join or request help without hunting through the navigation?
Does the website work properly on a phone?
Is important information accessible and readable?
Are real people, projects and outcomes doing more of the talking than generic stock imagery?
Does the site feel like this particular organisation rather than a nonprofit template?
Is there a clear next step on important pages?
You don't necessarily need more content or more features if several of those answers are "no."
You probably need better priorities.
The best nonprofit website is the one that gets out of the way
The examples above are very different organisations with very different websites.
That's precisely the point.
There isn't a universal formula for nonprofit web design.
The common thread is that the website makes the organisation easier to understand, its impact easier to believe and participation easier to act on.
That's ultimately what I'd aim for when designing one.
Not simply a more impressive website.
A more useful one.