A donor who has decided to give you money can still be lost in the ninety seconds it takes to work out how.
Two readers, two jobs
A trust website serves people who might give, and people who need what you do. Those are different visitors with almost nothing in common, and most charity sites are built entirely for the first. A trust registered here will usually have its Societies Registration or Trust deed number, its 12A and 80G, and sometimes FCRA, and a donor checks for them in that order.
The person who needs help is often on a cheap phone, on a poor connection, looking for a phone number and an address. If your site is heavy with photographs and slow to load, you are failing the people the organisation exists for while impressing the ones who fund it.
What a donor checks before giving
- Your 80G registration, so the deduction is real
- Your registration number and what kind of body you are
- Where last year’s money actually went
- Who runs it, with names
- A donation method that finishes in under a minute
Publishing accounts is the whole argument
Indian donors have been disappointed often enough to be suspicious by default. A trust that publishes its annual report, its audited figures and a simple breakdown of spending raises more than one that publishes photographs of smiling children, because the second one is what every organisation does, honest or otherwise.
It is uncomfortable, and it is what separates you from the trust that publishes nothing. If administration took nineteen per cent, say nineteen per cent and explain what it bought.
Donations that complete
Most donation forms lose people at the point where they ask for a PAN, an address and a purpose before taking any money. Take the money, then ask for what you need for the receipt.
UPI matters more than cards here. A UPI ID displayed plainly, alongside a proper payment page, catches the donors who will not fill in a form at all.
What it costs
A trust site with programme pages, an annual report section and a donation page is a Starter or Business plan depending on size: ₹12,000 or ₹30,000 to build. We discount this work for registered charities, so ask.
Prices do not include GST.
Volunteers and the people you already have
Most trusts underuse the supporters they already have. A page that says exactly what help is needed this month, in specifics rather than a general appeal, converts far better than a "get involved" page that asks people to imagine their own role.
Two drivers on Saturdays. Somebody who can teach English on Tuesday evenings. Three hundred notebooks before June. Specific requests get answered; open ones get read and forgotten.
Grant applications look you up
Institutional funders and CSR departments check your website before a meeting, and they check for different things than an individual donor: governance, board members, audited accounts, and evidence that the programme you described has been running as long as you said. A trust with a thin website loses grants it had already half won in the room.