How to create a charity website in WordPress

Decide what visitors must find quickly: your mission, current campaign, donation option, impact evidence and contact details. Prepare these core pages: Home, About, Campaigns or Projects, Donate, Get involved, News and Contact.

Keep one main action visible, usually Donate. Do not make visitors hunt through a crowded menu or rely on a donation button buried in the footer.

For a manual build, use a block theme if you want to edit the header, footer, templates, navigation and global styles from Appearance > Editor. The Site Editor is available when a block theme is active. With a classic theme, use Appearance > Customize where the theme provides that screen.

Set two or three brand colours, a readable body font and consistent button styling. Avoid themes that depend on several bundled page builders if staff need to maintain the site later.

Create the homepage with a hero section, a short mission statement, a primary Donate button, one featured campaign, impact numbers, a small project grid, testimonials or partner logos, and a final call to action. Use Groups, Columns, Cover, Image, Buttons and Query Loop blocks to assemble the sections.

This manual route is fine for a small charity with a simple site and one donation page. Its drawback is time: you must create the visual system, responsive spacing and campaign layouts yourself, and a theme change can require rebuilding parts of the design. Use heading levels in order and keep the page title as the H1 where appropriate.

Go to Pages > Add New and create the pages in your plan. Add a clear Donate page even if you also place donation buttons on the homepage and campaign pages.

Set your Home page under Settings > Reading by choosing A static page, then select the page you built. Add Home, About, Campaigns, Get involved, News and Donate to the main navigation. Block themes use the Navigation block; classic themes may use a menu screen or a theme-specific menu location.

WordPress core provides the page editor, not a complete donation checkout. Install a donation plugin or embed a hosted donation form, connect the required payment gateway, create a one-time donation form and add recurring giving if the charity needs it. Place the form on the Donate page and link to it from the header, homepage, campaign pages and footer. Donation plugins commonly provide forms, donor records, campaigns and gateway integrations.

Make a test donation before launch. Check the payment confirmation, receipt email, mobile layout, failed-payment message, recurring cancellation process and where donor records appear. The common Friday problem is a form that looks correct but has an unconnected gateway or an expired webhook, so test an actual transaction in the provider's test mode and then repeat it in live mode.

If you want the charity layout without designing every section yourself, use AidUs. It is built around charity, nonprofit, NGO, fundraising and campaign presentation layouts, with responsive templates that give you a starting point for the homepage, projects and donation calls to action.

Install and activate the theme, import or select a suitable starter layout if supplied, replace the demo logo and content, set your colours and fonts, then connect your chosen donation plugin. Keep the same checks as the manual route: mobile navigation, accessibility, page speed, donation confirmation and live payment testing. Choose AidUs for a charity site rather than starting with a general-purpose theme because its layout decisions already match fundraising content.