Summary

The report answers 3 questions:

• What are prospective donors and volunteers looking for on non-profit websites when they're thinking of giving money?
• What Web design factors influence which of several similar organizations gets the donation?
• How do certain Web design decisions make potential supporters turn away from a non-profit website?

This work contrasts with most other advice on non-profit design, which is based on asking people what they like, as opposed to watching them while they're online. What people say and what they do often differ dramatically.

The report contains 116 guidelines for improving the design of non-profit and charity websites, in several areas:

• Presenting information to entice prospective donors to give money.
• The actual donations process, after a user has decided to give.
• Giving non-monetary (physical) items.
• Volunteering.
• Selling products on a non-profit organization's website.
• Representing a nonprofit in social media.

> See sample page spreads as thumbnails
> Jakob Nielsen's summary of the first study
> Jakob Nielsen's summary of the second study

Non-profits, Charities, and NOGs Tested

Type of Organization	Websites Tested
Arts, Culture, Humanities	Corcoran Gallery of Art National Gallery of Art New Hampshire Children's Museum New Hampshire Historical Society Pro Portsmouth Inc. Wentworth-Gardner & Tobias Lear Houses
Animals	Cocheco Valley Animal Shelter Defenders of Wildlife Kitty Angels MSPCA Angell NEADS, National Education for Assistance Dog Services Paws with a Cause Wildlife Alliance
Development and Relief Services	Acumen Fund Global Links Heifer International Hope for Haiti International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas New Israel Fund
Education	Children's Scholarship Fund "I Have A Dream" Foundation Southern New Hampshire University Saint Anselm's College Specialist Schools and Academies Trust University of New Hampshire
Environment	Appalachian Trail Conservancy The Conservation Fund Environmental Defense Fund Resource Renewal Institute Sustainable Conservation
Health	Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis Alzheimer's Association American Cancer Society American Heart Association Beverly Hospital Brain Aneurysm Foundation Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Lymphoma Research Foundation Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis
Human Services	4-H Adoption Exchange American Red Cross Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Boys & Girls Club of America Child Advocates The Friends Program Goodwill Habitat for Humanity New Hampshire Food Bank Seacoast Family Food Pantry of New Hampshire Stuffed Animals for Emergencies Team Hoyt
Public Benefit	Bread for the World Institute NARAL Pro-Choice America United Way Waterstone
Religion	The Interfaith Alliance Foundation Mission America Coalition

Comparing the Editions

If you already own the 1st edition of this report, should you buy the 2nd edition?

The answer depends on whether you work on additional aspects of a non-profit organization's website, besides soliciting donations. Our findings regarding monetary donations are substantially the same in the new edition as in the original research: users' behaviors don't change that much in a few years. Thus, do not buy the 2nd edition if all you care about is monetary donations and you have the 1st edition.

On the other hand, if you work on some of the additional issues covered in the new research, then we do recommend buying the new edition.

Comparison of the editions:

The 1st edition of this report was entitled "Donation Usability: 58 Design Guidelines for Improving the Donation Process and the Usability of Essential Information on Charity and Non-Profit Websites." Because of the broader emphasis after our new research, the report title was changed for the 2nd edition. (The new title is "Non-profit and Charity Website Usability: 116 Design Guidelines for Improving the Usability of Essential Information and Processes on Charity and Non-Profit Websites.")

Table of Contents

224-page report with 220 color screenshots.

1. Executive Summary
   • User Research
   • What Donors Want
   • What Kills Donations
   • Integrating Local Chapters with the National/International Site
   • Donation Process: OK
   • Non-Monetary Contributions: Bad
   • Volunteering Process: Good
   • Top Priority: Clear-Spoken Information
2. Research Overview
3. Why Usability Matters
4. Online Donors: Why and When They Make Donations
5. Critical Content on Non-Profit and Charity Websites
   • Information People Wanted to Know Before Donating
   • Information That Persuaded People to Donate
   • Biggest Deterrents When Considering a Donation
   • Site Elements That Built Trust
   • Homepages Left Much to be Desired
6. Design Guidelines
7. Homepage
8. About the Organization
9. Leadership, Sponsors, and Endorsements
10. News & Events
11. Chapters and Affiliates
12. Social Media and Interaction
13. Asking for Monetary and Non-monetary Donations
    • General Guidelines
    • Monetary Donations
    • Non-monetary Donations
14. Attracting Volunteers
15. The Donation Process
    • Donations vs. E-Commerce Transactions
    • General Guidelines
    • Data Collection
    • Submitting and Verifying Information
    • Confirmation Page
16. Selling Products
17. Maintaining a Relationship with Donors and Volunteers
18. Site-Wide Guidelines
19. Websites Tested
20. Methodology
    • Tasks
    • Questionnaire
    • Participants

What You Get

• Checklist of 116 specific design recommendations: review your website and your online donation and volunteering processes for these 116 items, and you will discover several things that need improvement.
  • The average website typically violates about half of our usability guidelines. You might have the one perfect site in the world that does everything right, but the odds are against you. It is safest to score your design against a checklist of usability guidelines to make sure you don't do anything wrong.
• Description of how donors behave when using a wide variety of nonprofit sites, including extensive quotes (often colorful, because they were frequently annoyed). Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the sites we tested.
• The differentiating factors that caused site visitors to give their donations to one nonprofit instead of another in the same sector: both attractive features and donor-repellants are covered, based on the actual behavior of people while they were deciding where to give money.
• 220 color screenshots of nonprofit pages with descriptions of why they worked well for donors or caused them problems in usability testing.
• $100,000 of user research with donors at 0.2% of the cost; find out how real people behave when they use real nonprofit websites.
• Test methodology description, allowing you to run your own user tests of your own design.

Who Should Read This Report?

• Anybody who is responsible for the design of a nonprofit or charity organization's website.
• People in charge of the organization's communications strategy or Internet strategy.

Running a similar usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites would cost more than $100,000.

Please help us continue publishing low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.

Remember that we don't get any grants or outside support for our independent research, so we depend on your honesty in buying the report to generate the funding for further work.

Download Report (from eSellerate) $188 for the PDF file (224 pages) $378 for site license to make copies