7 Common Charity Website Problems and How to Solve Them
28 September 2026
A Digital Dispatch by Sian Jamieson, Partnership Lead
Charity websites have a lot of jobs to do. They need to explain your work, support service users, encourage donations, recruit volunteers, promote events, publish resources and sometimes manage memberships too.
And often, all of that is being managed by a small team with limited time and budget.
Websites also grow alongside organisations. New pages, campaigns, services and tools get added over time, until something that once worked perfectly well becomes difficult for visitors and frustrating for the people managing it.
At Pooka, we work with charities, nonprofits and membership organisations on exactly these kinds of problems. Here are seven we see regularly, and some practical ways to tackle them.
1. Your website has grown without a clear structure
A website might start with a perfectly sensible structure. Five years later, projects, campaigns, resources and services have been added and the original logic has disappeared.
The result is often that the website ends up reflecting the history and internal structure of the organisation, rather than the needs of the people using it.
How to solve it
Start with your audiences rather than your existing website. Who uses it? What do they need? What are the most important things they should be able to do?
Then look at your content and navigation through their eyes.
This is why we put so much emphasis on Discovery processes at Pooka. Before thinking about design or technology, we need to understand the organisation, its audiences and what the website actually needs to achieve.
Quick check: Ask someone outside your organisation to find or do three important things on your website. Don’t help them. Where they get stuck can tell you an awful lot.
2. Nobody can find the important stuff
Even if your navigation technically makes sense, important information can still be difficult to find. Pages might be buried several clicks deep, buttons use internal terminology, or lengthy introductions get in the way of what someone actually came to do.
For a charity, that matters. Someone might be trying to access support, donate, attend an event or understand an important issue.
How to solve it
Start with the user’s question. Instead of asking “Where should this page sit?”, ask “What would somebody be looking for when they need this?”
Use clear navigation, meaningful headings, obvious calls to action and sensible links between related content. And be prepared to prioritise. Not everything needs equal prominence.
3. The website is difficult for your own team to manage
A website can look fantastic to visitors and still be a nightmare behind the scenes. If only one person knows how to update it, editors are frightened of breaking things, or every new page requires a developer, the website isn’t really working for your organisation.
How to solve it
Treat the editing experience as part of the design. When we build in WordPress, we create reusable components that give teams flexibility without expecting them to become web developers.
The aim isn’t unlimited freedom. It’s useful freedom, making it easy to create the content you genuinely need while the website keeps everything consistent.
Training matters too. Knowledge about how your website works shouldn’t disappear when somebody leaves.
Quick check: How many people in your organisation could confidently publish a new page tomorrow?
4. Accessibility has been treated as a final check
Accessibility shouldn’t be something remembered three days before launch. Colour, typography, navigation, page structure, interactive elements and content can all affect whether someone can actually use your website.
For charities especially, accessibility shouldn’t simply be a compliance exercise. It’s about making sure the people you exist to support can access your digital services.
How to solve it
Build accessibility into the whole process. WCAG 2.2 is an important framework and the current legal standard to consider when working through design choices such as proper colour contrast ratios, semantic heading structures, meaningful alt text, descriptive links, keyboard navigation, video captions and clear language.
And remember: accessibility doesn’t end at launch. The people adding content need to understand it too.
5. Your website and your other systems don’t talk to each other
Your website might sit alongside a CRM, email platform, membership database, event system, donation service, and probably a few spreadsheets. When those systems don’t communicate, staff end up doing the connecting manually. Every day. And that’s a waste of their time, and their talent.
How to solve it
Look at the whole digital journey. What happens after someone completes a form? Where does their information go? What happens when somebody becomes a member, books an event or makes a donation?
This is one reason we work with both WordPress and CiviCRM. Connecting your public-facing website with the systems managing contacts, memberships, events or fundraising can remove a surprising amount of administration.
But don’t integrate systems simply because you can. Start with the problem you actually need to solve.
6. Years of plugins and quick fixes have caught up with you
WordPress is incredibly flexible, but that can make it tempting to solve every new requirement with another plugin. Over time, websites can accumulate abandoned plugins, duplicated functionality and custom fixes nobody quite remembers.
That can make them slower, harder to maintain and in the AI age, considerably less secure.
How to solve it
Start with an audit. What do you actually need? Is functionality duplicated? Is everything still supported and updated? Could WordPress itself now do something you previously needed a plugin for?
Then establish who is responsible for ongoing maintenance. Websites aren’t static products. That’s why we see hosting, maintenance and support as part of the relationship rather than an afterthought.
7. You’re trying to fix everything at once
New website. New CRM. Donation system. Events platform. Member portal. Online shop. Interactive map. And could it make the tea?
Ambition is good. Trying to solve every digital problem at once usually isn’t.
How to solve it
Prioritise. Separate what the website must do from what it could do.
We often use Discovery to create a roadmap. Some functionality belongs in phase one. Some can come later. And occasionally, an idea turns out not to be necessary at all.
For charities with limited budgets, that matters. Spend money on what will make the biggest difference now, focussing on laying a solid foundation for future development. In the long run, this will be much better value for money, and give your team a system that they can rely on.
A good digital partner should be comfortable telling you when not to spend money.
Not sure what your charity website actually needs?
If some of these problems sound familiar, you don’t necessarily need to jump straight into a website rebuild. You might need to take a step back first and work out what’s working, what isn’t, what your audiences and team actually need, and what it would realistically cost to put it right.
That’s exactly what our Discovery Phase is designed to do. We work with you to understand your organisation, audiences, content, systems and priorities, then turn that into a clear roadmap for what comes next. Including an indicative scope and budget.
And importantly, Discovery can be a standalone piece of work. You don’t have to commit to Pooka building the website afterwards; you’ll come away with a much clearer understanding of what you need, whichever route you choose to take.
Get In Touch
Think your website could do with a rethink? Talk to us about starting with Discovery.
