// NOT FOR PROFIT WEBSITE DESIGN
Not for profit website design, built to a fixed price
Not for profit website design for Australian charities and community organisations working to a fixed grant budget, a board approval cycle and a real accessibility obligation. One number agreed before we start. You own the site and the domain, with no lock-in.
// WHY IT IS DIFFERENT
A charity site carries loads a small business site never does
A tradie signs off on their own website in an afternoon. You answer to a board or a management committee, and a decision has to survive a meeting and a set of minutes.
Your funding is granted for a period and has to be acquitted, so an open-ended monthly retainer is the wrong shape for the money you actually hold. Next year's budget is not guaranteed either, which makes being locked into a builder you cannot leave a genuine risk.
You are also regulated in a way a business is not. If you are registered with the ACNC, the details on your site should line up with the ACNC Charity Register. If you hold DGR endorsement, your donation page can say gifts are tax deductible. If you do not, it must not hint that they are.
And you are talking to two groups at once with different questions: donors and funders on one side, service users and volunteers on the other. A single homepage aimed at everyone reaches nobody.
// WHAT'S INCLUDED
What a not for profit website design project includes
Websites start from $1,500 for a single page, and a full multi-page conversion website starts from $2,800. The full price list is public, so you can put a real number in a funding application without ringing us first.
A donation path built for your status
The donate flow, the wording and the receipt are built around whether you hold DGR endorsement, so the page never says more than it should.
Volunteer sign-up as its own path
Volunteers are a separate conversion with separate questions. They get their own page and their own short form, not the donation form with a different heading.
Accessible by construction
Built to WCAG guidelines from the first line of markup: strong contrast, real text, keyboard operation, visible focus and labelled forms.
Plain language, no sector jargon
Your programs written so a service user, a family member and a grant assessor all understand them without a glossary.
Fast on a phone with one bar
Hand-coded and edge-hosted, so the site opens quickly in a community centre, on a remote connection, or on an old handset.
Programs and eligibility laid out clearly
What you run, who it is for and how to access it, on the page instead of buried in a downloadable PDF.
// ACCESSIBILITY
Accessibility is an obligation here, not a nice-to-have
The people your programs serve are far more likely than the general population to include someone with a disability. That is often the whole point of the organisation.
The Disability Discrimination Act applies to information and services delivered online, and the Australian Human Rights Commission's web access advisory notes point to WCAG as the practical benchmark. Funders are starting to ask about it in reporting too.
So we build to WCAG guidelines from the start rather than bolting on an overlay widget at the end. The same discipline is on show on our NDIS website design page, built for providers whose visitors arrive with a wide range of access needs.
To be straight with you: we hold no accessibility certification and we are not lawyers. We build carefully and we tell you what we checked. If a funder wants a formal WCAG conformance audit signed by a specialist, that is a different job and we will point you at it.
- Colour contrast that passes WCAG AA, checked rather than eyeballed
- Real text instead of words baked into images, so it can be read out and resized
- Every link, button, menu and form usable with a keyboard alone, with a visible focus ring
- Form fields with proper labels, not placeholder text that vanishes when you type
- Headings in order, so a screen reader user can skim the page the way you can
- Alt text on meaningful images, and none on decorative ones
- Text that still works when a visitor scales it to 200 percent
- Motion and animation that respect the reduced-motion setting
// TWO CONVERSIONS
Donors and volunteers are two different conversions
Most charity sites have one path and it points at the donate button. Volunteers are the other half of your capacity, and they need a different page, a different set of questions and their own measurement.
// PATH ONE
Give
- One-off and recurring giving, both obvious, not one hidden in a dropdown
- Suggested amounts tied to something real your organisation does
- A receipt that carries the right details for your endorsement status
- A thank-you page that can be tracked, so you know what the site raised
// PATH TWO
Volunteer
- What the role actually involves, in plain words, before the form
- The real time commitment, so you stop fielding people who cannot do it
- Screening spelled out up front: police check, working with children check, inductions
- A short form someone can finish standing up on a phone
Both paths get their own tracked conversion. That means you can tell your board which one the website is producing, instead of guessing from total traffic.
// DGR AND ACNC
Your endorsement status decides what the donate page can say
This is the compliance detail a generic web designer will miss, because it never comes up on a plumbing site. It is the first thing we ask about.
If you hold DGR endorsement. Eligible gifts of $2 or more are tax deductible to the donor. The page can say so plainly, the deduction should be easy to understand rather than buried, and the automated receipt needs the correct details on it. Done well, this lifts average gift size on its own.
If you do not hold it. Nothing on the page may imply a donation is deductible. Not the heading, not the reassurance line under the button, not the small print, and not the emailed receipt. Copy pasted from another charity's site is the usual way this goes wrong.
If you are ACNC registered. Your legal name, ABN and the basics on the site should match the ACNC Charity Register. A careful donor or a grant assessor checks the register, and a mismatch reads as carelessness at best.
We ask about your status at the start and build the donation flow to match it. We are not tax advisers, so we do not advise on getting or keeping DGR endorsement. Confirm the status on ABN Lookup or with your accountant, tell us, and we build to that.
// AD GRANT READY
Built so the Google Ad Grant is not blocked by your website
Google Ad Grants gives eligible nonprofits up to US$10,000 a month in Google Search advertising. The ads are free. Qualifying is not automatic, and your website is part of what gets assessed, so a thin or broken site quietly costs you the largest marketing budget you will ever be offered.
Substantial, honest content
The grant expects a working site with real content about your mission and programs. A one-page placeholder or a link tree is the kind of site that gets an application knocked back.
Conversion tracking that works
The account has to record conversions. We wire the tracking during the build, so donations and volunteer sign-ups are measurable from the day the site goes live.
Specific landing pages
Each ad needs a page that answers the search. We build a page per program rather than pointing every keyword at the homepage and hoping.
Google also wants the domain in your organisation's name with a valid HTTPS certificate. You own the domain and we serve everything over HTTPS as standard, so that part is already handled. We do not apply for the grant on your behalf: eligibility is Google's decision and the policy is Google's to change. If you want the account itself run once the grant is approved, that is scoped separately as Google Ad Grant management.
// HOW IT RUNS
A process that survives a board meeting
Built around the way decisions actually get made in a not-for-profit: approved by a group, paid from a defined pool of money, reported on afterwards.
Scope
A short call about your programs, your funding period and who has to approve the spend. Then one fixed price in writing, itemised enough to sit in a grant application.
Approve
Your board or committee gets one document with one number to vote on. No hourly estimate to argue about, no range that moves after the meeting.
Build
We hand-code it and put it on a private staging link, so committee members can look through it in their own time instead of in a ten-minute agenda item.
Review
Changes come back to us in one consolidated round, collected from everyone at once, so the site is not pulled in two directions by two reviewers.
Hand over
We put it live and hand over the accounts. You own the site and the domain, so a lean funding year is a budget decision, not a crisis.
Those speed numbers are measured on webblend.au itself, not promised for your build, because your content and your donation platform affect the result. Web Blend is based in Darwin and builds for charities and not-for-profits alongside trades and service businesses around Australia. Have a look at recent builds to see how we work.
// QUESTIONS
Straight answers before you ask
Not sure how this fits your funding period, your board, or your DGR status? Ask us directly and you will get a straight answer, including when the answer is no.
Get in touchHow much does a not for profit website cost?
Websites start from $1,500 for a single page, and a full multi-page conversion website starts from $2,800. You get one fixed number in writing before anything starts, which is what makes it usable in a grant application or a funding acquittal. There is no lock-in: once the build is paid for, the site and the domain are yours.
Do you understand DGR and ACNC requirements?
Enough to build the donation flow correctly and to ask the right questions before we start. If you are endorsed as a Deductible Gift Recipient, we build the donate page and the receipting to reflect that eligible gifts are tax deductible. If you are not endorsed, we make sure nothing on the page, in the small print or in the automated receipt implies that they are. We are not tax or legal advisers, so your endorsement status and your public statements stay your call. Confirm the status on ABN Lookup or with your accountant and we build to it.
Will the site meet the Google Ad Grant requirements?
We build to the standard the grant expects: substantial content about your mission and programs, working conversion tracking, specific landing pages instead of one catch-all homepage, and HTTPS on a domain your organisation owns. We do not apply for the grant on your behalf, because eligibility is Google's decision and the policy is Google's to change. Running the account after the grant is approved is a separate service, scoped separately.
Our funding is granted for a fixed period. Does that work?
It suits how we price. One fixed number agreed up front against a defined scope, so the spend lands inside the funding period and there is a clean line item for the acquittal. No open-ended retainer still running after your reporting date.
Our board has to approve it. How does that work?
You get a written scope with a single price, which is the format a board or committee can actually vote on. During the build the site sits on a private staging link so members review it when they have time, and their comments come back to us together as one round of changes.
Is the site accessible?
We build to WCAG guidelines from the start: contrast, real text, keyboard operation, visible focus, labelled forms and headings in a sensible order. We hold no accessibility certification and we will not pretend otherwise. If a funder needs a formal WCAG conformance audit, that is a specialist job and we will say so rather than sell it to you.
Do you only work with charities in Darwin?
We are based in Darwin and build for not-for-profits anywhere in Australia. The work runs on calls, email and a staging link, so where your office is makes very little difference to the build.
// READY WHEN YOU ARE
Get one number your board can vote on
Tell us what your organisation does, whether you hold DGR endorsement, and when the funding has to be spent. We will come back with a scope and a fixed price you can take to the next meeting.
Get a fixed price