NONPROFIT PLANNING GUIDE
Nonprofit Website Redesign: What to Include in Your Brief
A nonprofit website brief should define who the site serves, the actions people need to take, the content and integrations involved, and who will keep it current. Start with those decisions before choosing a design or platform.
A website redesign often starts with a familiar observation: the site feels dated, the pages have become difficult to manage, or someone on the team has found a website they like better. Those are useful signals, but they don't explain what the new site needs to accomplish. Before comparing designs or asking for proposals, it helps to put the actual problem into words.
Your brief gives everyone a shared starting point. It should explain who uses the site, what those people need to do, and where the current experience makes that difficult. With those decisions documented, you can have a more useful conversation about content, platforms, and cost instead of trying to estimate a project from a homepage mockup.
Start with the people using the site
Your website may serve people seeking help, volunteers, supporters, referral partners, and staff. Each arrives with a different question, so begin by describing the tasks that matter to each audience. Someone looking for a program needs to understand eligibility and access, while a prospective volunteer needs to know what the role involves before filling out an application.
Let's say your organization has added an evening program, but the website still describes its original daytime service. A visual refresh would leave the most important problem unresolved. Your brief should identify the information that needs to change, the person responsible for confirming it, and the route visitors should take to find it.
Work out what content you actually need
Build a page inventory before committing to a page count. Record what exists, whether it's accurate, and whether the page should be kept, combined, rewritten, or retired. This is also a good time to find duplicate information that staff have been updating in several places, because moving that duplication into a new design simply carries the maintenance problem forward.
For program pages, agree a consistent set of practical details: who the service is for, where and when it happens, what someone needs to know before contacting you, and what happens next. Assign reviewers who can confirm those details. Participant stories and photographs need their own permission and approval process, which should be included in the schedule rather than left until the week before launch.
Describe the connections behind each action
A form can look simple on a page while creating several different tasks behind the scenes. Does a volunteer inquiry arrive in a shared inbox, create a CRM record, or enter a review queue? Who receives it, and how does the person applying know that the submission worked? Put those details in the brief so the proposed work covers the full journey.
Be specific about your existing donation, registration, and relationship platforms. Linking to a hosted donation page is different from embedding a form or connecting records between systems, and each needs a different amount of implementation and testing. Include confirmation messages and failed submissions in the review, because those are part of the experience too.
Choose a site your team can maintain
The right CMS is one your team can use for the updates it actually makes. Ask who will edit program details, publish news, replace images, and add events. Then use those tasks to assess WordPress, Webflow, or a custom site backed by a CMS such as Sanity, alongside the integrations and support each approach requires.
Include accessibility expectations in the same conversation. Readable text, keyboard navigation, descriptive links, useful image descriptions, and clear form labels belong in the brief, along with an agreed testing approach. Document training, hosting, backups, account ownership, and maintenance responsibilities so your team understands what happens after handoff.
Protect useful paths and measure meaningful actions
A redesign changes how people find their way around, including people following older links. Identify important existing URLs and agree redirects where a page moves or is replaced. Useful program content shouldn't disappear simply because the navigation has changed, and someone arriving from a community partner's website should still have a sensible next step.
Choose a few actions to measure, such as completed volunteer applications, program inquiries, or event registrations. Those measures help you evaluate whether the new experience supports its intended purpose. Keep personal and sensitive form content out of analytics, and make sure the reporting has an owner who will review it after launch.
Bring the right information to the first conversation
You don't need a finished specification to speak with a website partner. Bring your current URL, your main audiences and programs, examples of what's difficult today, and the tools you already use. Add timing, budget constraints, and the people who need to review the work so the conversation reflects the conditions your team is actually working within.
At Sync, the discovery call and sales assessment are free and help define a proposed scope. Detailed planning, copywriting, design, development, integrations, and handoff are agreed as project work before it starts. A useful brief makes that agreement clearer for everyone and helps you compare proposals that cover equivalent work.