This document provides guidance on building an effective WordPress website for nonprofits. It recommends WordPress due to its low cost, large community support, and plugin library. The top priority for a nonprofit website is helping the organization meet its mission. Storytelling through posts, pages, images and videos can showcase how the organization impacts lives. Custom post types and plugins can help manage events, board members, news stories. Hiring an expert is key to setup, maintenance and updates to ensure the site functions properly long-term. Themes, plugins, and third-party integrations are suggested to provide needed functionality while keeping the site simple and cost-effective.

1. The Recipe for a
Dynamite Nonprofit
WordPress Website
Andy Stitt
WordPress consultant for nonprofits
Deliberate Media Solutions

2. Why WordPress for
nonprofits?
• Solid software that doesn’t cost a fortune
• Community generous with time and resources
• Large library of plugins

3. #1 goal of any nonprofit
website
It must help the organization meet its mission

4. 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?

5. 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 :)

6. 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

7. 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”

8. Storytelling on your
WordPress website
• Use Posts and Pages to tell stories
• Media Library for pictures
• Easy to embed videos within Posts and Pages

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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.

12. Solution to all three
problems
Hire someone who knows what they’re doing

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Third party software
integration
• Constant Contact and Mailchimp
• Salesforce and CiviCRM
• Gravity Forms extensions to integrate with this
software

19. Resources
• NonProfitWP
• The Landscape of WordPress for Nonprofits
• New WordPress for Nonprofits podcast launching on
September 19

20. Resources
• Philly GiveCamp
• Baltimore Techies for Good
• Philly NetSquared

21. My Own Projects
• Math Corps Philly
• Neuroblastoma Children’s Cancer Society (in
progress)
• Jazz With Aloha

22. Stay in touch
• Twitter: @andywpdev
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewstitt
• Email: andy@andystitt.com
• deliberatemediasolutions.com