Charity website design goes wrong in three predictable ways, and none of them is bad design. Charities buy before they have decided what the site is for. They pay for something they turn out not to own. And they end up with a site nobody on the team can update without going back to the person who built it.
All three are avoidable, and all three are settled before a designer is appointed rather than after.
If you are weighing up a rebuild and want a second opinion before you spend anything, that is what our digital and tech support is for.
First, check whether you need a new website at all
“We need a new website” almost always starts as something more specific. Worth naming which:
The site is slow. That is usually hosting or unoptimised images, and it is a fix.
Nobody can update it. That may be a training problem, an access problem, or a platform problem – only the last needs a rebuild.
The donate button doesn’t work properly on a phone. That is a page and a payment flow, not a site, and it’s covered in what to fix first in digital fundraising.
The content is out of date. That is a writing job with no supplier attached.
It looks dated. This is the only one that genuinely points to a rebuild – and even then, ask who it looks dated to, and whether they are the people you need to reach.
The other reason to rebuild is structural: the platform is no longer supported or has become a security risk, or the site’s shape actively prevents the thing you need people to do. Those are real. Aesthetic dissatisfaction on its own rarely justifies five figures.
Three decisions a designer cannot make for you
Before you approach anyone, settle who the site is primarily for, what single action you want that person to take, and how much reassurance they need before they take it. A funder doing due diligence and a supporter sharing a post need very different things. Our piece on digital foundations works through those questions properly.
Add a fourth that gets forgotten: who will update this site, how often, and with how much confidence. That answer constrains the platform more than any design consideration. A system nobody on your team can operate becomes a liability the moment the person who commissioned it moves on.
Turn up to a designer without those four answers, and you will pay them to make the decisions for you, in their interests rather than yours.
What belongs in the brief
Be specific about the things that cost money later:
Your primary audience and the one action, stated plainly. A rough sitemap, even if it’s a list on paper – arguing about page structure mid-build is expensive. Who supplies the content and by when, which is the single most common cause of overrun. Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA written in as a requirement, not an optional extra. Mobile performance, with a target rather than a promise. Training and handover for named members of your team. And the integrations that must work on day one – your donation platform, your email tool, anything you already rely on.
Ask for ongoing costs as a separate line: hosting, domain renewal, licences, plugin subscriptions, support. A quote that shows only the build price is not showing you the cost of the website.
Not sure if the quote in front of you is reasonable?
Most trustees are asked to approve a website spend without anything to compare it against, and the expensive part is rarely the number at the bottom. A free Charity Consultation will tell you what the quote is missing.
What the charity must own
This is where charities lose the most and notice the latest.
The domain must be registered to the charity, with a charity email address as the administrative contact. Not the designer’s account. Not a trustee’s personal address. Domains registered in a supplier’s name, or tied to an inbox nobody can access after someone leaves, are recovered slowly, expensively, or not at all.
The hosting account should also be in the charity’s name and paid for by the charity, even where the supplier manages it.
You need administrator-level access to the site itself, held by at least two people, and you should log in and confirm it works before the final invoice is paid.
Keep your own copies of content, images and any licences attached to them – particularly stock photography, where the licence often sits with the designer rather than with you.
And the analytics property should belong to the charity, so your own history doesn’t leave with your supplier.
None of this implies bad faith. Suppliers close, get ill, retire, or stop replying, and volunteer web helpers move house. The question to ask of every arrangement is what happens to it if that person is unavailable next month.
Questions worth asking before you sign
What happens if we want to move to another supplier – what do we take with us? Who owns the design and any custom code? What will this cost annually from year two? Can our team edit a page without you, and can you show us that now? Who is responsible when the platform releases an update that breaks something? Is accessibility included in this quote or excluded from it? And can we speak to two charities of about our size that you have built for?
That last one matters more than a portfolio. A site built for a £5m charity with a communications team tells you very little about what your team will be handed.
If search visibility is part of the pitch, treat it as a separate purchase and understand what you’re buying – the difference between a site built to be findable and an ongoing SEO retainer is covered in charity SEO.
Where the money usually goes that shouldn’t
Bespoke design when a well-chosen template would have done the job. Features that get specified in the enthusiasm of a kick-off meeting and never used – member portals, custom event calendars, bespoke donation forms replacing a payment platform’s own page, which is usually a downgrade in both security and conversion.
Underspending on hosting is the other direction of the same mistake, and it costs more than it saves.
The most common omission is budgeting nothing for after launch. A website is not a capital purchase that then sits there. Without a small annual figure for updates, hosting, security and someone’s time, it degrades quietly until the next rebuild becomes unavoidable, and the cycle repeats.
After it goes live
Name one person internally who is responsible for the site. Not a committee, and not “the person who set it up” if that person is a volunteer who may not be around next year.
Put a review date in the diary, and make the first review about whether the site is doing the one job you specified, rather than about how it looks.
A website that works costs less over five years than one that impresses for six months. The difference is decided in the fortnight before you appoint anyone.
If you want the brief written and the quotes assessed by someone who is not selling you a website, that is a defined piece of work, and a one-off digital project covers it.
