Start with your audiences and actions

List the people who visit and the single action you most want from each. This list becomes your navigation and your homepage priorities.

If people seeking help are a core audience, give them a route from the top of every page. Supporters will scroll; someone in difficulty may not.

Tell the story with evidence

Supporters give to causes they understand and organisations they trust. Show what the problem is, what you do about it and what changed as a result, using real stories with consent and real numbers from your own reports.

Keep impact claims specific and traceable to your annual report or evaluation. Vague statements such as changing lives are easy to write but give a donor nothing to hold on to.

Make your governance easy to find as well. A short page with trustees, your latest annual report and accounts, and how to raise a concern reassures funders and larger donors before they get in touch.

Design a donation journey that converts

The donation page is the most important page on most charity sites. It should load fast, work well on a phone and ask for as little as possible.

• Suggested amounts with a short line on what each amount does

• A clear choice between single and monthly giving

• A Gift Aid option with plain wording, shown before payment

• Familiar payment methods such as cards and digital wallets

• A thank-you page that confirms the gift and suggests one next step

If you use a third-party fundraising platform, check how its fees work. The Fundraising Regulator's guidance for online fundraising platforms expects platforms to show donors how fees are calculated before asking for payment details, and notes that Gift Aid normally adds 25p for every £1 donated.

Get Gift Aid declarations right

Gift Aid can add a meaningful amount to every eligible donation, but only if the declaration is valid. HMRC's guidance on Gift Aid declarations says it must describe the gift and include the charity's name, the donor's full name and home address with postcode, and a statement that the donor has paid at least as much Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax in that tax year as will be claimed, and agrees to Gift Aid being claimed.

Build these fields and the wording into your donation form, and record the declaration with the donation. HMRC says declarations must be kept for six years after the most recent donation you claim on, so make sure your platform or CRM can export them.

Show your registered status and follow the Code

Under section 39 of the Charities Act 2011, a registered charity whose gross income in its last financial year exceeded £10,000 must state that it is registered, in legible characters, on notices, adverts and other documents that ask for money or property, and on invoices and receipts. The Act does not mention websites by name, but online appeals and donation pages ask for money, so the simplest approach is a clear statement in the site footer.

Most charities also show their registered charity number next to that statement, which lets supporters check you on the public register. Charities registered in Scotland or Northern Ireland have their own regulators and should check the rules that apply to them.

Fundraising is also governed by the Fundraising Regulator's Code of Fundraising Practice, whose current version took effect on 1 November 2025. It includes standards on processing donations and on fundraising involving people in vulnerable circumstances, both of which shape how donation pages and follow-up messages should work.

Build for accessibility

Many charities serve people with disabilities, older people or people in crisis, so an accessible site is part of the service. GOV.UK guidance on accessibility requirements for public sector websites says charities are exempt from the public sector regulations unless they are mostly financed by public funding, and that the exemption does not cover charities providing services that are essential to the public or aimed at disabled people.

Even where the regulations do not apply, WCAG 2.2 AA is the sensible standard to build to. W3C's summary of what's new in WCAG 2.2 covers practical points such as larger tap targets and accessible logins, which matter on donation and sign-up forms.

A worked example: a small charity's monthly giving page

Imagine a local charity with a few staff and most income from grants. It wants to build a base of monthly donors to reduce reliance on any one funder.

The new monthly giving page leads with one short story and one number from its last annual report. It offers three monthly amounts, each linked to something concrete, with a Gift Aid tick box and the full declaration wording beside it.

The footer carries the registered charity statement and number, and a link to its complaints policy. After giving, donors see a thank-you page and receive a welcome email explaining how to change or cancel their gift.

Make it easy to run

Charity teams are small and busy, so the site must be easy to update. Choose a platform where staff can add news, events and stories without a developer, and where templates keep pages consistent.

Connect forms to your CRM or fundraising system so data does not need re-typing. Check that your privacy notice explains what you collect, why and how long you keep it.

Agree who owns each part of the site, from service pages to appeals, and set a simple review cycle. A page with out-of-date opening times or a closed appeal does more harm than having no page at all.

How The Think can help

The Think is a small branding and web design studio. We design brands, write copy and build fast, accessible websites in Framer, which charity teams can update without code.

We can plan your audiences and journeys, connect a donation platform you already use, and build to WCAG 2.2 AA. Read more on our charity website design page.