Program impact was buried three clicks deep, inside PDFs no one opened. We rebuilt the site around the people served — and the monthly giving line moved for the first time in three years.
Youth-serving nonprofit · 18 staff · Serving 1,400 kids annually
The old site treated stories as an afterthought — a blog category no one visited. The homepage led with a mission statement, a three-column "What We Do" block, and a donate button that landed on a generic form.
Meanwhile, the program team had a folder full of remarkable stories from the kids they served. None of them made it to the pages donors actually read.
We mapped every page against three donor types: someone who just heard the org's name, someone deciding whether to give once, and someone considering a monthly commitment. Every page needed to earn its place in that journey — or come off the map.
Program pages now open with one specific young person's story, told in their own words when possible. Impact numbers appear below the fold, as evidence for the story — not as a wall of stats readers scroll past.
Every story ends with a purpose-built ask: sponsor a semester, cover a summer program week, fund a mentor's training.
We rebuilt the donation flow around monthly giving as the default option. Preset amounts tied to specific outcomes. Suggested monthly gift shown alongside the one-time amount at equal weight. One-page checkout. No surprise ask on the thank- you screen.
We shipped the site with a simple submission template program staff use after each week of programming. New stories rotate in every three weeks. No writing marathons. No begging the ED for approval every time.
Six months after launch, recurring monthly gifts were up 62% year over year — the first meaningful movement on that line in three years. Average time on program pages more than doubled. Bounce rate on the new donation page dropped 41%.
The development director now sends the site's story pages as her first touch with major-gift prospects — something she never did with the old site.
“The site finally sounds like the room feels when you visit our program.”
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