WordPress For Nonprofit Websites
Organic Themes has had a hand in helping thousands of nonprofit organizations launch their websites with products like our NonProfit and Organization themes. Now we are taking nonprofit websites a step further with our latest venture — GivingPress.
GivingPress is a complete WordPress powered website solution designed for nonprofits. The service features premium cloud hosting, WordPress installation, the custom GivingPress Pro theme, and hand-picked plugins specific to the needs of nonprofit organizations.
Our mission is to provide professional websites for nonprofits that are focused on the good of the world, so they can spend less time managing their website, and more time making a difference. Nonprofits can start customizing their site and accepting secure donations within moments of receiving a GivingPress website.
Why Create GivingPress for Nonprofit Websites?
Jeff and I have volunteered our skills to multiple nonprofits as web designers, consultants and technology advisors. The NonProfit Theme was born from our work with organizations. The popularity of the theme led to the realization that nonprofits are in serious need of professional websites.
We exhibited GivingPress at the NTEN16 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Jose earlier this year. Our goal was to find out if there was a need for GivingPress among nonprofit organizations.
There was. Our booth received a lot of attention.
Most small to medium sized nonprofits have trouble finding reliable web designers. We often heard the story from nonprofits that paid thousands of dollars for a website, only to have their web designer skip town and stop returning their calls. Most nonprofits don’t have tons of money to spend on a website, but they still need an expensive SSL certified website to accept donations.
Next time you’re ordering a latte from the local Starbucks, keep your ears open. You’ll probably hear a web designer meeting with a potential nonprofit client. Too often inexperienced web designers agree to build a nonprofit website at a discounted rate because they need the experience. The design and development process drags on for several months. The designer begins to feel the time spent on communication, design and development is unfair for the amount they are being compensated. In their defense, the organization may be requesting too much functionality and have endless design revisions from the committee. The project probably started with such enthusiasm. Expectations were set so high, and it wasn’t properly communicated what could and should be accomplished at a discounted rate within a set time.
Most freelance web designers have been in this position early in the game. It’s easy to feel under-appreciated and lose interest in a nonprofit project with no end in sight — especially when it isn’t paying the bills. However, the nonprofit organization is left confused. They don’t understand why development on their website has come to a crawl. In the end, they feel burned by the whole experience.
The problem has been an imbalance of time, cost and expectations. We created GivingPress to solve this problem. We provide SSL certified WordPress powered websites that accept donations. GivingPress sites feature a highly customizable and professionally designed template that is out-of-the-box-ready. The responsive layout molds to any mobile device — meaning more access and more donations. It’s all securely hosted within the lightning fast AWS cloud environment. Our customer service will assist you along the way, and your new website can be launched within a short time at an affordable price. Problem solved!
The GivingPress Pro Theme
The GivingPress Pro theme is the most robust theme we have ever developed. It’s highly customizable using the native WordPress Customizer, featuring endless color options and multiple layouts. The theme was designed to be as simple or as robust as needed. A GivingPress website site will look great with tons of content, or only a few pages – meaning the site can grow with your organization.
For examples of what can be achieved using GivingPress, we have created demos for a variety of nonprofit organizations:
In addition, GivingPress Pro features several page templates and custom post types for showcasing staff members, displaying projects and creating custom slides. The theme utilizes all the latest WordPress functionality, and is continually updated.
The GivingPress Lite Theme
If that wasn’t enough, we created the GivingPress Lite theme as another way to help nonprofits. GivingPress Lite is an entirely FREE WordPress theme available for download on the GivingPress site and within the WordPress theme directory. It’s an ultra simplified version of the GivingPress Pro theme, and makes an excellent starter solution for nonprofit websites.
What Does GivingPress Mean For Organic Themes?
We are more committed to Organic Themes than ever. We love Organic Themes, and will continue producing quality WordPress themes and improving our existing products.
After nearly 7 years of business with Organic Themes, Jeff and I stepped back and took a hard look at what we we had created and where we wanted to go. Creating awesome WordPress themes is all good, but we really wanted to make a difference. We wanted to build something to help the world. What could a couple WordPress dudes do? Using our existing skills and knowledge of WordPress themes and web hosting, combined with our experience with with nonprofit organizations — the answer was clear. We needed to create better nonprofit websites at an affordable price.
We have been building and working on GivingPress for over a year. We soft launched the site nearly 6 months ago and started accepting our first customers. Now we’re launching new nonprofit websites all the time! If you’re looking for a website for a nonprofit, GivingPress is your solution.
