Having a well-functioning website is essential for worldwide business success, yet around 29% of businesses don’t have one. This is surprising considering that a new website is created every few seconds. For those companies that do have a website, there’s a strong likelihood that they have used WordPress to help them create it with it being the most used tool for businesses who are creating their website.
The rise of WordPress is mostly due to it offering the best UX/UI for customers coming to your website, as it will give them the most streamlined experience. This is vital for businesses, as 88% of customers will not return to a website that they have a bad experience browsing. While it’s easy to understand the benefits that building a WordPress website has for profit oriented companies, what about Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)?
This guide will explore WordPress for NGOs worldwide and help you understand the benefits that it gives them, as well as why it’s considered essential for their success. Continue reading for more information.
What’s an NGO?
NGOs are independent, typically nonprofit organizations that operate outside government control, which means they tend to focus on certain issues ranging from social to environmental to humanitarian. Rather than generating profits with their products or services, they usually will raise money for charities or similar entities to help others. Receiving funding from various sources like donations and grants allows NGO businesses to continue to function. While starting a profit organizations require you to gain the relevant visa or British Citizenship in the UK, NGOs don’t require these and can be started by anyone.
Why Use WordPress For Your Nonprofit?
WordPress is an open source platform, so it’s completely free to use and adaptable depending on the budgets available to your NGO. There are so many themes and plugins that don’t cost a single penny and can be used to create a successful website that ranks well on Google. Even if NGO business owners don’t have prior WordPress experience or knowledge, they can easily figure out the interface to optimally manage and update their websites. This reduces the reliance on external developers that can sometimes cost a lot of money and take a big chunk of your budget.
Saving resources is at the heart of nonprofit companies, so having a free tool to help them create their website has great benefits when it comes to this. It can also save a lot of time, as a WordPress website can be created within a few hours. The flexibility of WordPress is beneficial for NGOs, as you can easily tweak the design and functionality to make your website unique to others which is great for branding.
The Benefits of Using WordPress as an NGO
Cost Effective
WordPress being free to use is a huge bonus for NGO businesses, so all setup costs are eliminated and you don’t need to worry about any excess fees. If you do need any extra plugins or themes, these can come at low prices so you won’t be worrying about your finances going down too much.
Accessibility
Having user-friendly tools to create your website makes it very easy to learn, so it can be done in a small time frame. The Content Management System (CMS) on WordPress means it can be designed for managing content efficiently, making it simple to add blog posts, news updates, project information, photos, videos and other crucial content.
Flexibility
With there being many different themes and plugins at your disposal, it offers maximum flexibility for creating your own WordPress website for an NGO. There are even plugins specifically designed for non-profits, offering features like donation buttons and volunteer sign-up forms.
Support
WordPress has a massive global community of users, developers and designers so there is always support when it comes to using WordPress for novice users. This means there’s a wealth of online resources available if you encounter any issues. Whereas other tools won’t have these available, which can hinder your website creation process.
SEO Friendly
Ranking highly on search engines is very important for generating more traffic for a website with more users coming onto your website if it’s on the first page of Google. This is great for creating high-converting landing pages. Powerful plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math make it easy to optimize your content for relevant keywords, improving your NGO website’s visibility.
Security
The WordPress core and plugin developers regularly release updates to address security vulnerabilities, so NGO businesses can be rest assured that none of their private information will be at risk. This is one of the biggest issues online with many cyber criminals looking to steal this information. However, WordPress is continuously working to prevent this.
Final Thoughts
The platform’s inherent flexibility and robust support system ensure that NGOs can adapt and evolve their online presence without constant reliance on expensive external expertise. NGOs are not just building a website with WordPress; they are investing in a sustainable digital infrastructure that can grow with their organization.