What the site is for
A nonprofit website does three jobs. It turns a stranger into a donor. It turns a contact into a long-term ally. It makes staff work easier. Anything that does none of those is decoration.
That rule cuts whole categories of spend: the redesign every two years, the CMS that does everything, the custom design system only one freelancer can maintain.
What to budget
These are my floors, from the same list as the pricing page. Hosting, domain and tools usually add $50 to $300 a month.
| Offer | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Audit and scoping | From $500 | A written plan and fixed quote. Credited to the build. |
| Landing page | From $2,500 | One page, designed and built, accessible to WCAG AA. |
| Website | From $4,500 | A full site in English and Spanish, designed and built. |
| Custom web app | From $5,000 | Accounts, payments and your data, in one working product. |
A bigger budget buys integrations: CRM sync, member logins, recurring giving with custom rules. It does not buy a better-looking site.
Accessibility is the donation flow
If your donation form fails for screen reader, keyboard-only or low-vision donors, you are turning away people who want to give. Most sites do: the WebAIM Million 2026 (opens in a new tab) found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of the top million home pages, and missing form labels on 51%.
Build to WCAG 2.2 AA. US and EU rules mostly cite 2.1 AA today, and 2.2 AA covers it. The minimum:
- Real labels on every field, with errors tied to the field
- Text contrast of at least 4.5:1 (WCAG 1.4.3). Low contrast was on 83.9% of the home pages WebAIM tested.
- Focus states you can see
- A gift you can finish with VoiceOver and a keyboard. Try it yourself.
Picking a CMS
| Tool | Fits when | Skip when |
|---|---|---|
| Framer or Webflow | Staff edit pages without a developer | You need logins or a database |
| Sanity or Lovable | Complex content, accounts, member tools | A brochure site would do |
| WordPress | You already run it and staff know it | You are starting from scratch |
| Squarespace | A small brochure site | You need anything past that |
For Altitude Real Estate I built on WordPress with live MLS listings, and the team edits pages without a developer.
Donation flows that convert
Use a real payment processor such as Stripe, Givebutter or Donorbox. Default to monthly giving with a one-click switch to one-time. Pre-fill amounts from what your donors already give.
Test on a phone first. Mobile was 52% of nonprofit site visits in M+R Benchmarks 2026 (opens in a new tab). Only 8% of mobile visitors to a donation page gave, against 11% on desktop. At small nonprofits, it was 4%.
The change that pays back fastest: cut the flow from five steps to two. Take the card and the email. Ask for the rest later. Offer Apple Pay and Google Pay so a phone gift needs no typing.
Common questions
- How long does a nonprofit website take?
- A focused 5 to 10 page site takes 2 to 6 weeks. Content is usually the bottleneck: copy, photos and donation decisions take longer than the code.
- Do you offer pro bono work?
- No. Free work gets deprioritized by both sides. Nonprofits and orgs serving systemically barred groups can pay monthly. Same price, smaller payments.
- Can you move us off Squarespace or Wix?
- Yes. I rebuild on a CMS your staff can maintain and set up redirects so search traffic carries over. An audit ($500, credited to the build) gets you a fixed quote first.
By Andrés Sepúlveda Morales. Top Independent on Contra, rated 4.99 (opens in a new tab) by clients and collaborators, and a speaker on AI in English and Spanish.