7 Easy Steps to Self-create a Charity Website in Nigeria

Besides 7 easy steps to create a charity website in Nigeria, you’ll learn 4 must-dos before you start building a nonprofit website.

4 Must-dos Before You Create a Charity Website in Nigeria

1. Define Mission – Why & How Your Charity Exists

Clearly state the purpose of your charity like who it serves and how. Do you want to protect animals/environment or serve the suffering humanity? Your mission could be:

Raising public awareness and promoting education
An initiative for social/cultural development
Advancing a religious cause
Rescuing and protecting animals
Helping out the sick and the disabled
Supporting environmental protection and conservation
Launching disaster relief and peace missions
Provide help to the needy
Artistic assistance to members of the public
Promoting sports activities, etc.

Your mission statement will be helpful in registering your charity with CAC and in the solicitation for donations.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Your target audience could be the local Nigerian community, or you might be planning to collect donations worldwide. To target a global audience, you’ll need a payment gateway of international reach like PayPal on your NGO or charity website.

3. Get Incorporated for Tax Exemption and Other Benefits

In addition to entitling your charity for tax exemption, incorporation entails various other benefits like:

Transparency and donors’ trust
Reaching out to United Nations agencies for funds
Right to acquire fixed assets and properties,
Get access to credit (apply for loans, etc.),
Protection from personal liability, and
Name preservation, etc.

Also, to open a bank account and start receiving donations, your NGO needs to get registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria (CAC).

4. Reserve a Good, Unique Name for Your Charity

While you plan to create a charity website in Nigeria and raise online funds, don’t forget to reserve a good, unique name with the CAC Nigeria. Besides, a good, unique name for your nonprofit will help you to get accepted for incorporation by the office of the Corporate Affairs Commission.

7 Easy Steps to Create a Charity Website in Nigeria & Boost up Fundraising

1. Plan How You Will Do Fundraising on Your Charity Website
2. Pick Out a Charity WordPress Theme to Style Your Site
3. Set up a Recurring Donation System – Consider a Free Plugin
4. Get a Gateway with Preferred Payment Options for Each Donor
5. Get Secure Hosting and Install SSL Certificate
6. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
7. Run Social Media Campaigns – Most Charities Do

Use these 7 easy steps to build a charity website and start accepting donations in Nigeria from local and global donors. Best practices to boost up online fundraising are also listed.

1. Plan How You Will Do Fundraising on Your Charity Website

It might seem undesirable, but don’t be tempted to skip this step. A pre-panning regarding how you will raise funds for your cause will save you from future complexities and help you collect enough funds in the given timeframe. Your planning would involve:

How much money do you want to collect?
Your target audience (local or global community).
A payment gateway to provide each donor with preferred payment options.
Boost fundraising through automated recurring donations.
How you will raise awareness of your cause and attract volunteers/donors.

Your planning would involve: To see which payment gateway is best for your location, check out the world’s top 15 donation processing platforms.

2. Pick Out a Charity WordPress Theme to Style Your Site

Converting visitors to volunteers, donors, and lifetime supporters requires a lot more than just creating a charity website. To convince potential donors to support your cause, your nonprofit website must showcase:

A mission statement
Targets achieved (with stats, pictures, videos)
Achievements/awards/success stories
Upcoming events (with countdown)
Various ways to support (donate, send a gift, buy products)
Campaign management
A volunteer management system
Donors’ appreciation
Reviews and testimonials
A news blog, etc.

While getting all this done might incur huge costs, you can pick out a charity WordPress theme with all the built-in systems and functionalities, like Lifeline2. Using 500+ theme options and 50+ shortcodes, you can quickly build a charity website with personalized look, feel, and functionality.

3. Set up a Recurring Donation System – Consider a Free Plugin

Mostly fundraising organizations look for long-term or lifetime supporters who are willing to make recurring donations. You will need a sophisticated recurring donations management system to accept payments from such individuals and organizations. But make sure, your recurring donation system also includes the features like:

An option for donors to set an amount they can easily afford for recurring payments
Defining/choosing a recurring frequency
Various styles for donation forms
A donation button (to be placed anywhere)
Supports all the popular payment gateways, etc.

You can consider installing a free plugin for recurring donations system on your charity website.

4. Get a Gateway with Preferred Payment Options for Each Donor

Often neglected by fundraising organizations, a local payment option can serve as a big factor to boost up fundraising. It’ll increase conversion and promote quick payments. Donors usually like to donate using a local payment gateway they are already using for their routine transactions. Complexities attached to an unfamiliar processor would cause them to either delay the payment or look for other charities to contribute to. The following are the major payment processing providers you can use to accept donations in Nigeria.

5. Get Secure Hosting and Install SSL Certificate

If you are going to build a charity website to raise funds online, it is very important to arrange secure hosting for it. Any negligence and malpractice, in this regard, might cause loss of collected funds and jeopardize sensitive financial information of donors. And one thing more – don’t forget to install an SSL certificate on it to safeguard users’ precious data. While it involves sizable annual costs, you can get an SSL Certificate for your charity website free from the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group.

6. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines

A search engine optimization will bring and boost up organic traffic to your charity website, thus increasing both donors and donations. For this, you have to be very careful from the very beginning. A responsive and SEO optimized charity WordPress theme will do more than 80% of the job. Top 10 techniques for search engine optimization include:

1. Use a lightweight charity WP theme.
2. Improve page speed – a critical factor for SEO.
3. Write high-quality, SEO content.
4. Do internal and external linking.
5. Get backlinks for your nonprofit website.
6. Promote on social media and do extensive sharing.
7. Use the right keywords in your images.
8. Consistently publish unique content (in the blog section).
9. Only include meaningful and readable URLs in posts and pages.
10. Don’t forget to write meta descriptions.

7. Run Social Media Campaigns – Most Charities Do

Most charities use social media platforms to raise awareness about their cause, promote charity events, and drive traffic to their nonprofit website. To cash in on the power of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and Pinterest, etc. you should also integrate various social media platforms on your site. Or, you can buy a theme to create a charity website that’s social media enabled.

Conclusion:

Usually, it isn’t that simple to build a charity website in Nigeria and start accepting donations from anywhere in the world. But choosing and doing the right things at the right time can make everything easy and rewarding.