Website Maintenance for Nonprofits: An Easy-to-Use Checklist

We see it all the time. An organization spends a ton of time perfecting its website through an extensive redesign process only to leave it untouched, gathering metaphorical dust in the months and years after launch. Website maintenance for nonprofits isn’t the most exciting work for folks (outside of our team!), but it’s incredibly important to the longevity of your website.

Keeping on top of website maintenance ensures your site is updated, secure, and stable. In other words, you’ll have a site that’s relevant and user-friendly for your audience, and you can avoid things like security breaches or the site going down for long periods of time.

The following tips detail everything you need to know to maintain and update a WordPress website.


This section will provide an overview of website maintenance for nonprofits.

Overview of Website Maintenance for Nonprofits

Owning a website is similar to owning a car: regular and preventive maintenance is required to ensure it’s secure, reliable, and stable.

What is nonprofit website maintenance?

All public and popular open-source CMS platforms, such as WordPress or Drupal, have periodic security holes and bugs, and there are always ne’er-do-wells actively looking for exploits (along with conscientious community members looking to close those holes).

Whenever WordPress core or a plugin needs a patch – regardless if it’s for added security, compatibility, or functionality – WordPress will notify all administrators on the administrator interface.

If plugin updates aren’t updated in a timely manner, your site could get hacked or could break.

While you can run plugin updates and WordPress versions yourself — much like many people change their own oil, headlights, etc. — sometimes it’s worth having the peace of mind to have an experienced expert perform those upgrades for you.

But maintenance is not just confined to code updates. It’s important to keep your website updated with accurate information, content, images, and functionality.

Why is maintenance important for the health of your website?

Simply put, it’s a lot easier and a lot less stressful to perform regular maintenance than it is to deal with outages, site slowness, hacking, or site errors.

Keeping your site updated is important for many reasons:

  • Security – As mentioned above, security is the most important reason for keeping your site updated. If a plugin has a vulnerability, you are opening your entire website data to potential hackers. If you store any sensitive information in your database, this could be a major issue and cause concerns for your organization.
  • Stability – When performing website updates, you always want to be on the most recent version to avoid compatibility issues. These updates will ensure that your website is more stable and running the latest and most up-to-date code. If your website is running older code, the website may start running slower, have more server outages, and possibly crash your site regularly.
  • Relevance – Website maintenance isn’t all about security and stability, it’s also about providing relevant and reliable information. If your website content is outdated and isn’t showing the dynamic work of your organization, then visitors and donors will likely be turned off.
  • Reliability – Keeping your website regularly updated means that your site will be more reliable for your users. Be proactive about maintenance for fewer unexpected outages.


In this section, we'll go over our checklist for nonprofit website maintenance.

Nonprofit Website Maintenance Checklist

Now that you understand what website maintenance is and why it’s important, you can use this simple checklist to work through your website and make updates as needed.

Use this nonprofit website maintenance checklist to audit your own site!

Does everything work?

Many organizations will just test their full site once after launch and assume that it will continue working in perpetuity.

In all platforms, code is constantly changed through regular development additions, plugin updates, or even platform updates to use more reliable code.

It’s important to regularly check your website and ensure everything is functioning properly, especially after upgrades are performed.

We always recommend checking your key functions to ensure that it continues to work, such as donation forms, menus, videos, search, and other interactive features.

This type of review can be done manually by visually reviewing the website, but can also be programmed through unit tests and other testing platforms. We like the platform Ghost Inspector to create automated tests on your website.

Donation and Registration Forms

Forms are the lifeblood of your website. If users cannot complete forms to contact you or donate, then you will lose valuable supporters.

We encourage you to regularly test all forms on the website to ensure that:

  • Forms display correctly
  • Information can be submitted
  • All notifications and confirmations work as expected
  • Any integrations with third-party CRMs work correctly

Menus and Links

While it’s often easy to identify when a menu isn’t working correctly, it’s harder to know when links are broken on menus and elsewhere on the site.

As a site grows and evolves, the content will grow and evolve with it. Often, links and pages need to change and are no longer relevant to your site. When you remove a page from the site, it can create a 404 link.

404 pages are bad for SEO, as it tells search engines that your site is not being maintained. We recommend two WordPress plugins to address this problem:

  • Broken Link Checker. This is a plugin for WordPress that identifies broken links on the website. While it does a fantastic job at this feature, it is very resource-intensive and can slow down your site. We recommend that you activate this plugin only when you’re using it to remove broken links. Alternatively, there are a variety of free broken link scanners such as Dr. Link Check, Broken Link Checker, and Dead Link Checker that don’t run on your WordPress site.
  • Yoast SEO Premium. Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that lets you configure your site to be more SEO-friendly. One of the many amazing features of the premium version is that it will automatically create redirects any time you change a page URL. This plugin ensures that you don’t have broken links by fixing them before they become a problem.

Videos and Other Interactive Elements

Interactive elements, such as video hero images, animations, maps, and online forums, are among the most common elements of a website to break during maintenance updates. Moreover, what is dangerous about these features is that it is often easy to miss when this functionality breaks.

Setting a regular schedule for when to check this functionality is key. When possible, create automated unit tests or use a platform like Ghost Inspector to ensure key functionality is always working.

This also goes for third-party tools, like Google Maps. Recently, Google made a change requiring a credit card to be on file to display maps correctly. If you haven’t updated your payment information on Google, then you will see an alert displayed on your map.
Is your information current and accurate?

Is your information current and accurate?

The website could be functioning great, but if your content is out of date, donors and supporters will be less likely to engage with you and your website.

Here are some areas where donors expect to see the most updated content.

Project Status and Impact

The most important thing to any donor is if you are making an impact. Your content needs to show the donor what you are doing with their money and how it is making an impact.

On your website, you can provide regular updates about core programs and projects. This doesn’t have to be too involved, but sometimes just a sentence or two about a project status can go a long way in ensuring that donors know how you’re spending their funds.

Tax Status and Form 990s

The often-forgotten tax information is a must for any nonprofit organization. This is often the first stop on a website for donors, foundations, and grant seekers. Delays in providing this information to donors can also impact the perceived professionalism and trustworthiness of the organization.

Since tax information can come out at any time, it’s often a good idea to include updates on your 990 page that lets donors know when the next form will be available. This transparency can be really helpful.

Contact Information

We’ve all had the frustrating task of attempting to find contact information on a website, but failing to find the right information.

Every website should have a clear and simple path to contact the organization. Not only should this include a contact form, but also how to connect via address and phone number.

If you have multiple offices, list them all. If you have multiple staff that field incoming requests, make sure all those individuals are represented.

Are your visual elements appearing correctly?

This is often the easiest item to check: Is everything displaying correctly?

Images

Creating images for the modern web is difficult. Visitors might be looking at your site on a seemingly infinite number of screen sizes, which makes it difficult to find images that look great for all users.

Adding images to your website depends a lot on how your theme is built. While you should talk with your developers about your specific image requirements, we often recommend finding images where the focal point is in the center or middle of the image. If the image is then cropped or changed based on the screen size, users will still be able to see the focus on that image.

In addition, you want to ensure that all images are contributing to your visual brand.

Videos

As long as you’re embedding videos from a third-party site like YouTube or Vimeo, then you shouldn’t have many issues. However, we always check to ensure that all videos are still active on a regular basis. In addition, sometimes embed code from Youtube can include fixed dimensions, which can create a bad experience for mobile visitors.

Consistent Branding

If multiple people are working on a website together, it’s inevitable that the branding will start to move away from your tested brand.

When building your website, add guardrails that will prevent other administrators from going off-brand. You can define colors and fonts so only those choices are available to use by others on your team.

If that isn’t possible, create a robust review process to test all new pages before they go live.

Is your site safe?

As mentioned, security is the number one priority for website maintenance.
If your site is vulnerable, you are potentially allowing hackers to access your customer and donor data.

HTTPS Certificates

This is commonplace these days, but all websites should have a secure certificate. In addition, your website should enforce SSL, making it impossible for visitors to access the insecure version.

HTTPS is an encryption method that securely connects your site visitor’s browser and your web server. This small change on your website makes it harder for hackers to eavesdrop on the connection.

Nearly all modern hosts offer a free SSL certificate, typically with just a click of a button. To enforce SSL, we recommend you use the Really Simple SSL plugin. This great plugin does a few simple things, including:

  • Checks to ensure there is an SSL certificate
  • Sets up WordPress to use HTTPS in URLs
  • Sets up redirects from HTTP to HTTPS
  • Finds URLs in your content still loading from insecure HTTP sources and attempt to fix them.

There are other methods of enforcing SSL via code, but those require developer skills. If you’re interested in that approach, check out this great article from WPbeginners.

Hosting Security

As mentioned, most modern hosting platforms include a free SSL certificate as part of your hosting fees. In many cases, this is as simple as clicking on a button.

Many hosts provide this, including:

  • Liquid Web
  • Pantheon
  • Dreamhost
  • SiteGround
  • WPEngine
  • GreenGeeks

Donation Form and Payment Processor Security

All modern payment processors offer excellent security to ensure your data is encrypted and safe.

If your donation forms are hosted through a third-party donation management platform, such as EveryAction, Blackbaud, Salsa Labs, Engaging Networks, Eleo, Bloomerang, DonorBox, ActBlue, or another nonprofit-specific service, then you are already in good shape.

If you are using an integrated service, such as PayPal, Authorize.net, or Stripe, you need to make sure that your frontend forms are secure and that data passed through to the processor is done in an encrypted manner.

Most services, like PayPal and Stripe, will now link you directly to their site for processing, instead of allowing you to process on a potentially less secure site. Let’s face it, as much as you can invest in security, PayPal is likely to invest more.



In this section, we'll cover some nonprofit website maintenance best practices you can use to improve your own site.

4 Website Maintenance Best Practices

This is a lot of information about website maintenance and it’s hard to know where to start. Here are a few best practices to begin with.

This image lists some nonprofit website maintenance best practices.

1. Keep a consistent checklist and schedule for checking in on these things.

If you are taking on maintenance yourself, you’re going to need a plan. We know this is a ton to tackle on a regular basis, and we’re not recommending a full audit of your website every week. But creating a manageable maintenance schedule for your team can help make sure you’re not missing opportunities from supporters with key pages and features on your website outdated or broken.

Using the checklist above as a starting point, create a long checklist for everything you need to check on your specific site. This will include the frontend elements that you want to ensure are working and displaying correctly, but also the backend functions to make sure you can still edit everything.

Don’t forget to include SEO, accessibility, performance scans, and mobile responsiveness in your checklists. It’s not uncommon for one small change to impact these areas without knowing.

2. Have a process for alerting your webmaster to any critical errors.

A bug on your website is really stressful. We immediately start trying everything we can think of to fix it, but in reality, you just need a plan with a designated person who can fix it.

Make sure you know what is supposed to happen when you find a critical error on the site. Do you need to call your web developer – even if it’s after work hours – or do you log a ticket in a support system?

Whatever the approach, make sure everyone knows the process and what expectations are in this situation.

3. Have a plan for what to do when the site goes down.

Websites go down all the time with causes ranging from problems with the servers that your site is on to something on your site causing downtime. This can be a supremely panic-inducing fact of the internet, but rest assured that downtime can be solved. And, with the right approach, downtime can be solved with minimal stress!

Some issues are easily remedied once properly identified. Others may take more time and troubleshooting before they can be fully resolved. As we mentioned, websites go down for little and big reasons all the time. If you notice your website seems to go down repeatedly, try to keep track of patterns and report these issues to your host or technical support!

Step 1: Describe your downtime (and make sure you’re not alone).

Are you seeing an error message when you should be seeing your homepage? Is there no error at all, just a blank white page of nothingness? Did you recently change a setting or plugin that might have somehow caused this downtime?

Your first goal is to make sure you can clearly describe what is happening. Even better, check your site through a few different devices and networks (and ask a friend or two to help!). This helps you to rule out an issue with your own network.

If you’re in panic mode and all your friends are busy — we get it, this has definitely happened to us — then visit Down For Everyone or Just Me to see if the rest of the internet can access your site.

Step 2: Ask for help.

If you can’t fix your site’s downtime on your own, of course you’ll need to ask for help. Hopefully, you have a handy list of technical support contacts to consult, but if you’re not quite sure where to turn, start by reaching out to your web host.

Most of the time, downtime is caused by or can at least be corrected by your web host. This is one reason reputable web hosts have 24/7 support hours.

Step 3: Describe the urgency.

It may seem like downtime should always be an emergency, but when you’re working with a technical support contact who sees sites go down all the time for various reasons, it’s helpful to (calmly and politely!) describe how urgent your downtime is for you.

Context such as “We’re in the middle of a fundraising drive” or “We just sent out an email and are expecting a lot of event signups” not only helps with troubleshooting but will hopefully also help with assigning priority.

Sometimes, your report of downtime is simply added to a list of other affected sites, but depending on the situation, you may be able to request priority treatment and move your report to the top of a support queue.

Step 4: Keep communicating.

Oftentimes, there’s not a lot that can be done while you wait for your site to come back up, but you’ll likely still need to communicate with your supporters and stakeholders to let them know how you’re working to resolve your downtime.

  • Create a communications plan that lists who needs to be alerted about website emergencies, including a list of support contacts and backup team members who can help if others are out for the day. Even a one-page document summarizing your process will help as a reference during an emergency.
  • It can be hard to pinpoint an exact time when everything will be fixed. Try to at least provide (and stick to) a timeline for how frequently you’ll share status updates with your team.
  • Don’t worry if you want to check in again with tech support. Even if they end up not having many more details to share, it doesn’t hurt to check.
  • You can ask around. If you’re uncertain about a response that you receive from a support person or if you just don’t know what to do next, try reaching out to one or two other contacts. Important: Provide all the details that you have and that you let everyone know who else is also looking into your downtime. You don’t want to accidentally add too many cooks to your web kitchen and end up over-salting the internet soup.

It’s stressful when you don’t know what’s going on or when your downtime will end! Prepare your list of support and technical contacts and familiarize yourself with the variety of ways websites go down, and you’ll be able to confront any moment of downtime with more confidence and much less stress.

Need some support? Check out Cornershop’s multiple support options to help keep your website up-to-date and running smoothly.

4. Plan for your level of site traffic.

Nonprofits don’t always get a lot of site traffic, but if you have, you know that high traffic and lots of site visitors can be joy-inducing and terrifying at the same time.

Here are some things to check ASAP:

  • Is your site secure? Are you using security plugins like WordFence and third-party services like Sucuri or Cloudflare? Good attention is one thing, but you want to make sure that you’ve enabled monitoring and security features that help guard against spam traffic, too.
  • Does your web host scale resources based on traffic? Pantheon, DreamPress, and AWS all adjust for your site when they see traffic spike, but you’ll want to check with your host directly to confirm how and when this is done. Please note: If you’re on a shared hosting plan, your site will not scale for fluctuations in traffic.
  • Does your content cache effectively? With proper caching configured, you can reduce the load on your web host while still serving static pages as quickly as possible.
  • Do you have a CRM that can handle traffic spikes? Most nonprofits use a CRM platform like Salsa Labs, Action Network, EveryAction, ActionKit, Blue State Digital, Luminate Online, etc., to collect donations or petition signatures. Make sure all files on these forms are pointing to the CRM providers’ servers instead of your web server to reduce the load on your site from these forms.
  • Are you using a Content Delivery Network to its fullest potential? Services like CloudFlare can make a big difference to how quickly users see your site, as well as reduce load on your host. Out of the box, CDNs only handle images, styles, and script files. Make sure that you configure the service to help with more types of content as needed.


This section will explain how Cornershop Creative can help your nonprofit with website maintenance!

How Cornershop Creative Can Help With Nonprofit Website Management

Cornershop Creative can help your nonprofit with its website maintenance needs.

At Cornershop Creative, we support hundreds of nonprofit websites to ensure they are secure, stable, and performing well. Additionally, our team can help maintain and manage your organization’s website, too.

With the Cornershop support packages, you receive:

  • Regular updates to WordPress and all plugins
  • Daily offsite backups
  • Uptime and security monitoring
  • Visual comparison tool to ensure that updates don’t break the display of your site
  • Discounted development rates

And best of all, you get Fast Tasks. With these tasks, you can contact our team with any issues you’re experiencing. We’ll take care of any small bugs or issues on the site, answer your questions, add content, or just be a resource for your team.

Website maintenance is a big job, but it’s absolutely necessary to make sure your website performs well for your supporters now and into the future. With these tips, you can provide your audience with the best experience and allow them to find the information they are looking for without frustration. And, if you need a hand, we’re always here to help.

Need more tips on nonprofit website management We have lots! Check out these resources:


By

Ira is the cofounder of Cornershop Creative. With more than twenty years of experience, Ira is an expert in nonprofit online communications and digital fundraising. Ira has worked with hundreds of nonprofit organizations to improve their websites, increase engagement, and bolster fundraising support. Ira oversees all operations at Cornershop, while working with clients to effectively meet their goals. Prior to founding Cornershop, Ira previously worked in communications and fundraising with Firefly Partners, Free Press, Grassroots Campaigns, the Fund for Public Interest, and American Jewish World Service.