Children of Faith Missions hired me to redesign their outdated website and create a new and easy-to-use website that better communicates their mission, helps new and existing donors stay up to date with news and activities, and makes it easier for donors to contribute.
With a new robust online donation system and a website strategy centered around growing their email list and nurturing relationships with existing donors and subscribers, Children of Faith grew their email list by 127% in the first year, which directly translated to a 97% increase in online and recurring donations.
The opportunity
Children of Faith Missions is a non-profit children’s home serving more than 120 orphans, semi-orphans, or neglected children in Visakhapatnam, India. With outdated content and a compromised setup, they were in immediate need of an updated website that helped new and existing donors understand their mission of providing a safe and stable home and future for every child they brought in.
Like many small non-profits, Children of Faith’s fundraising organization in the U.S. is run by a small but passionate group of volunteers. Left to manage the website on their own, the site had fallen out of date and become difficult to use, and they rarely communicated with their email list. Online donation options were limited to generic PayPal buttons, which provided little control over the donor experience and limited their ability to follow up in meaningful ways or integrate donor information with their CRM.
Creating meaningful connections with donors to drive support
My work with Children Of Faith started with creating a comprehensive outline for their website’s content detailing how visitors move through the site to find critical information and the different ways volunteers and donors can support the organization.
The website’s content was updated to emphasize the impact of donations and show how funds are being used. As part of a push to keep donors actively engaged, Children Of Faith dedicated themselves to a regular twice-monthly publishing schedule which added new stories to the website and ensured monthly newsletters kept donors up to date.
Our website, thanks to the updates suture that Patrick provided for us, allows us to communicate and stay connected with all different interests of our donors and cater to the different needs that people have when they come to our website. The blog particularly allows us to stay very current. Setting up projects and different ways of donating have helped us appeal to the different types of donors we want to reach.
– Virginia Ross
Children of Faith Missions Board Secretary
An updated brand with streamlined donations and support they could count on
The site was rebranded and redesigned with a colorful and playful feel that emphasizes happy, healthy, cared-for children enjoying their day-to-day lives. To make updating and publishing easier for the staff, we took advantage of WordPress’s native drag-and-drop page editor and created ready-made patterns that could be dropped in place.
An updated, on-site donation system that doesn’t rely on expensive third-party providers allows Children Of Faith to make the donation process easier and offer multiple payment methods, personalized donation suggestions, and multiple recurring donation options. To streamline a previously manual process, the new online donation system automatically sends out donation receipts and integrates with their donor CRM.
For speed and security, we moved their website to faster hosting located closer to their donors and moved them to a dedicated website care plan so their small staff could focus on donors and content production and not have to worry about, upkeep, maintenance, backup, or security.
Working with Patrick Boehner has made a big difference to our organization with our online presence. Before Patrick helped us with our website, it was very “dated” and didn’t really reflect the energy and importance of our non-profit organization. As with many non-profits, our budget was tight and our bureaucracy slow, but Patrick was patient and creative. He brought us great ideas for making our website colorful and engaging and for finding new, more efficient ways to connect with our donors.
– Virginia Ross
Children of Faith Missions Board Secretary
The impactful results
With an updated website that put their mission, values, and impact front and center, Children Of Faith Missions was able to use a straightforward and manageable approach to triple their donor communication, grow their mailing list by 127%, and drive a 97% increase in online donations.
127%
The year I shifted my business to focus on creating results-driven websites for experienced businesses with a mission.
97%
A focus on connecting to with their existing donor base drove an increase in online donations.