What Your Charity’s Board Needs To Know About WordPress

22 September 2025

A Digital Dispatch by Paul Galinsky, Director

Wordpress

Let’s be honest. Most websites look fine on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you’ll uncover clunky navigation, accessibility failures, and content editors so fiddly the comms team avoids updating them altogether.

At Pooka, we think websites should put people first: Accessible, easy to manage, and ethical. A good website isn’t just a shiny shopfront. It’s the digital engine that drives your campaigns, your fundraising and your supporter engagement. And for third sector organisations, there’s a core platform with the power to tick all those boxes: WordPress.

This post sets out why WordPress is the most practical, future-proof option for charities and third-sector organisations, with clear talking points that your board will value when making the case for a new site.

Why your website matters more than you think

Boards can sometimes see websites as a “design project.” Something to look professional and keep up appearances. But for small comms teams juggling fundraising, campaigns, and reporting, the website is so much more. It’s:

A credibility check: The first place funders, journalists, and supporters go.
A digital hub: The central point for events, campaigns, sign-ups, and donations.
An accessibility lifeline: A vital route for disabled, rural, or time-poor audiences to connect with your mission.

An outdated or inaccessible website isn’t neutral. It costs you reach, donations, and trust. And there are legal ramifications there too.

Talking point for your board: “Our website isn’t just cosmetic. It’s our main channel for fundraising, supporter growth, and visibility, and an accessibility lifeline.”

A human-first, legally compliant approach

WordPress is an incredible foundation for websites. Its core block editor allows a wonderful mixture of free-form ‘block-built’ pages, and simple ‘template’ pages, that your team will find a joy to work with.

In a modern WordPress site, you won’t need clunky theme builders, and you’ll be able to lay out content with a human-first approach: This means delighting people that care about your charity, not shoe-horning in content because it’s the only way that you can.

But delighting visitors is about more than what’s seen on the screen. It’s alarming, but many web developers in 2025 know very little about website accessibility. The fallout of this is painful, particularly for charities. One in five people in the UK live with a disability, so when your charity’s website falls short on accessibility, it’s often the people who need your services that are the ones excluded.

With a well coded WordPress site, you can be confident in adhering to the Equalities Act 2010 and the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. And at Pooka, we go the extra mile in our design processes and training, to ensure that your team will be confident in reaching those one-in-five people, who would otherwise be left behind.

Finally (and stay awake for this) Data Protection is an enormous issue. Ultimately it demonstrates how seriously you consider the people who interact with you. Your charity’s website, Cookie Banner and Privacy Policy, should demonstrate your organisation’s compliance with GDPR and PECR, as well as potentially the DUAA. If any of those acronyms leave you or your board in a cold sweat, you should probably speak to Pooka’s Data Privacy Specialist.

Talking point for your board: “Our team and our charity need to meet key legal requirements online. Our website developers need to guide us, train us, and give us a platform that’s empowering, and compliant”

Your supporters deserve a long term approach

As a charity, you likely have values and motivations that go far beyond the drivers of most private companies. You care deeply about who owns your data, and about the long term. And so do the donors and funders that enable your work, and your website, to exist.

Sustainability: choosing tools that won’t drain your budget year after year
Control: ensuring your organisation owns its content, rather than being locked into a single supplier.
Future proof: using a platform that remains malleable and won’t need to be torn down in five years.

WordPress is open source, built by a global community, and it’s flexible. You don’t need to pay for a licence. In fact, if you’ve got the skills, you can code it yourself and never pay a penny.

In reality though, you probably want a slightly different approach. A system that stays up to date, secure, and doesn’t have any hosting headaches. A system that just lets your team focus on your campaigns, stories and fundraising. Working with a good WordPress developer typically means just that: A simple hosting fee to take the tech-headaches away, and an occasional further charge when you’re ready to develop something bold, exciting and new.

A well built WordPress site is an incredibly solid foundation that will last for years, and won’t creak around the edges after six months. It will come with full training, and will ensure that your campaigns are able to be communicated effectively from day one, to day 1001.

And that’s largely because a good WordPress site is built on highly editable code, with data that’s truly yours. That’s got to be better than being locked into a proprietary system like Wix or Squarespace.

Talking point for your board:
“We need a platform that’s open, accessible, ethical and represents value to our supporters for the long term.”

Why WordPress is the right choice

WordPress now powers over 40% of the web. It isn’t a fad. It’s a sign of reliability and trust. For charities, it offers:

Flexibility. From a simple blog to a complex membership site, WordPress adapts.
Accessibility. Meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards by working with developers who understand your legal responsibilities. (Like Pooka!)
Compliance. Working with developers and privacy specialists (again, like Pooka!) you can ensure that you’re GDPR compliant.
Cost-effectiveness. No expensive licences. Your organisation owns the site.
Future-proofing. With a huge developer community, WordPress evolves with technology.
Integration. Works with fundraising, membership, and CRM tools (like CiviCRM, WooCommerce, Mailchimp and much more).

Other CMS platforms like Drupal or Joomla are declining in use. WordPress, meanwhile, keeps innovating, with new features like block editing that make life easier for non-technical staff, and a vibrant road ahead, embracing translations, multiple user editing, AI and beyond..

Talking point for your board:
“WordPress is the most widely supported, cost-effective platform for charities. We should be building a site that empowers us today, and evolves as we grow.”

Benefits for small charity teams

Most charity websites are managed by comms staff who already have five jobs in one. WordPress helps lighten the load:

Easy to train on: New staff or volunteers can pick it up quickly.
Simple SEO and AIO: Respected plugins like Yoast help keep your website on the map in the AI age.
Friendly to non-technical users. Content updates feel more like using Canva than coding.
Plays well with others. Plug-ins let you connect newsletters, event sign-ups, donations, and databases.
Scalable support. Agencies like ours can provide training and ongoing support, but day-to-day updates stay in-house.

Talking point for your board:
“WordPress will let our team manage content confidently in-house – reducing reliance on external contractors and saving money.”

Making the case to your board

Here’s a practical checklist you can lift directly into your proposal or board paper.

A new WordPress site will:

✅ Align with our mission: open, ethical, accessible.
✅ Reduce long-term costs: no licence fees, more in-house content-creation.
✅ Increase reach and engagement: stronger SEO, smoother social integration.
✅ Improve supporter trust: secure, GDPR-compliant, user-friendly.
✅ Future-proof our investment: adaptable for campaigns, membership, e-commerce, or fundraising.

And here’s the clincher: WordPress is already familiar to many people. It won’t feel like a risky leap for trustees – more like joining a trusted, proven global community.

Final word

With WordPress, your organisation gets a digital home that’s flexible, ethical, and built to last, a site that truly serves the people you’re here for.

If you’d like to explore what that could look like, please get in touch.

FAQs: WordPress, Worries & Wobbles — Answered!

1: Isn’t WordPress just for bloggers?

Not anymore! WordPress powers over 40% of the web, from charities to membership sites, e-commerce, and campaign hubs. It’s flexible enough for a simple news page or a full-blown digital hub that integrates events, donations, and CRMs like CiviCRM.

2: What about the scary legal stuff?

Accessibility and data protection aren’t optional extras — they’re legal requirements. A properly built WordPress site helps you meet the Equalities Act, GDPR, PECR and more. With the right developer, you get training and tools to stay compliant while keeping supporter trust.

3: Won’t we just need a new site in five years?

Not with WordPress. Because it’s open source, you’re not locked into one supplier or pricey licence fees. Updates and community support keep it future-proof. A well-built site grows with your charity — so instead of tearing it down, you’ll simply refresh and build on strong foundations.