Why should my nonprofit be using WordPress? After all, we have a site up and running; why should we switch? That’s a question that any nonprofit might ask.

 

Since its introduction in 2003, WordPress has grown to become the leading full-featured website management tool on the internet today. Starting as a blogging platform, this content management system has successfully evolved into a web host for millions of businesses, organizations, and individuals worldwide. With over 50,000 WordPress websites added daily, it is fair to say this website hosting system has earned its bragging rights.

 

Here are 4 reasons why your nonprofit should be using WordPress.

1.   It’s easy

As you know, your nonprofit’s website is an extremely important and powerful part of your organization. It is where your volunteers find out about potential opportunities, prospective followers discover the charity committed to issues they care about, and, of course, how donors decide where to invest their money.

With many other important tasks to accomplish, you and your staff don’t have the time to learn HTML coding and programming. This is where WordPress comes in. Your nonprofit needs a site that leaves you headache-free when editing content, uploading pictures or changing themes.

The WordPress platform is user-friendly, fairly intuitive, and easy to maintain. With its digital maturity, there are numerous videos, tutorials, and guides that can get you started in minutes. WordPress is designed for anyone- not just developers or designers. Therefore, whenever you need to change, update, modify something on your nonprofit’s site there’s no need to pick up the phone and call your web developer. It’s easy enough that you can do it yourself!

 

2.   SEO Ready & Mobile Optimized

The infamous buzzword(s)- SEO, or search engine optimization, is likely at the forefront of your mind when thinking about your nonprofit’s website. Let’s face it, in today’s digital world it’s unavoidable. SEO has the potential to drive large amounts of visitors to your organization’s website, raise awareness that your organization exists, and ultimately turn supporters into donors. Sounds pretty great, right?

Although using WordPress doesn’t mean an automatic top page rank on Google, it does offer a great starting point. WordPress sites are text- based and written using “standard compliance high-quality code” making it very easy for the Google robot to crawl. In turn, leading your website to rank and index frequently so that those who are looking for your cause can easily find your nonprofit.

In addition to being search engine friendly, WordPress is mobile optimized. Today, more than ever individuals are surfing the web from their phones- 51% of people who visit your website do so on a mobile device. Therefore, it is imperative that your website is optimized for a mobile device.

Luckily, with WordPress you don’t have to worry about that. Many WordPress themes are designed to be mobile responsive allowing your visitors to see your page on any device, and allow your nonprofit to manage your page from anywhere!

 

3.   Dynamic

WordPress’s many features, options, and possibilities allow your nonprofit to customize your site to appear and function how you choose.

  • Flexible: WordPress can build web pages that are simple to complex and everything in between. It allows you to modify and play around with layouts and applications, creating the perfect website for your nonprofit.
  • Integration: To give your nonprofit that additional boost, WordPress integrates with some of the most popular online platforms. There are thousands of themes and plugins that your organization can choose from. From free to premium themes, your options are endless- colors, fonts, styles. Same goes for plugins, there is one for anything and everything: Stripe/ PayPal, translations, YouTube, MailChimp, etc.
  • Evolution: Due to their top-notch development team, WordPress is constantly growing, updating, and evolving to keep up with the fast-paced digital world. This also applies to your nonprofit, as you grow, WordPress grows with you. Their constant updates for your plugins and themes make managing your site simple as you are always up-to-date with the latest software.

 

4.   Secure and Safe

It isn’t just a coincidence that WordPress is used and trusted by many major companies (IBM, BBC, ESPN, The New Yorker, etc.) around the globe. WordPress has been developed with security as a top priority. With the latest version of WordPress always available online, keeping your version up-to-date is a must in protecting your web page. These constant updates for plugins as well as software are to keep your website safe and prevent hackers. Better yet, you can set up an automatic update so you don’t even have to worry about remembering!

 

A few other bonus security tips to keep in mind::

  • Avoid using “Admin” as your username- this is just an open invitation for hackers.
  • Create a complicated password- yes, this may seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes we forget. Also, make sure to change them often.
  • Carefully select plugins and themes- especially the free ones. Make sure to check the rating and the source.

 

 

WordPress gives your nonprofit the freedom and capacity to promote your mission, increase your number of donors and supporters, and successfully have an online presence. Whether you or your nonprofit website designer are the ones taking on the challenge, don’t fret- it will be done with little to no fuss.