10 WordPress plugins key to a successful nonprofit website

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Are you looking for the best and the most functional WordPress plugins for your nonprofit website?

Nonprofits dedicate their resources and energies towards making the world a better place. They not only create awareness about topics that need to be discussed but also drive forward positive changes. A lot of this happens because of the donations and funds the nonprofit organizations receive. A fully optimized and user-friendly website is sure to help with that. So what features are a must-have for your website?

In the era of digital marketing, a functional website to drive revenue and funds is an absolute necessity. Here are our favorite WordPress plugins for nonprofit websites.

WordPress for Nonprofit Websites

WordPress is one of the best marketing tools for such purposes, especially for nonprofit organizations. They often need to work on limited budgets and don’t have enough resources to dedicate professional teams to optimize their sites.

That is where WordPress plugins come in, as they make it increasingly simpler to generate more funds and increase both awareness and engagement of the site. There are plugins for various purposes, from donation forms and payment methods to email collection and event calendars.

WordPress plugins can be one of the best digital marketing tools for all- from NGOs and nonprofit organizations to charities alike.

Let’s take a look at the top 10 WordPress plugins for nonprofit websites.

Gravity Forms

There’s sure to be a form on your nonprofit website. Often it can be on your contacts page, and you could also have another option by listing your email. But an onsite contact form is handier and makes it easier to contact than sending carefully constructed emails.

Forms are not only used to collect contact information but also used when you need to compile a list, often connecting to a donor database or mailing list service.

Be it of your volunteers or patrons, donors or visitors. Forms are incredibly useful when allowing people to set up accounts, conduct surveys and polls, receive queries from users, and more.

Gravity Forms allows you to do all that and is one of the best form plugins on WordPress to generate simple and complex forms. Gravity Forms is a paid plugin that has a nonprofit discount available for qualifying entities.

Gravity Forms is, by far, our favorite tool to create custom donation forms, accepting online donations from basically all third-party payment processors, such as PayPal, Square, Stripe and Authorize.net.

The plugin also includes conditional logic, making it a breeze to have if/then configurations and to route follow-ups like notifications and confirmations to the write people inside your organization.

The Events Calendar

Be it offline or online events, it can be hard to keep track of the dates without an organized system. The Events Calendar is one such WordPress plugins that make it easier to post about and inform of the events hosted by your nonprofit organization.

It is an interactive calendar of sorts and is incredibly user-friendly with smooth navigation across all devices. Networking and fundraising events are at the core of many nonprofits, and keeping track of the invites, RSVPs, and online ticketing can all be managed using The Events Calendar.

The Events Calendar also comes with a feature add-on with Google Maps location data and iCal calendar exports with flexible views. There are both free basic and paid pro versions available.

Not using WordPress? The Events Calendar also has a standalone calendar solution for those needing a more dedicated setup.

GiveWP

All nonprofit organizations and websites need donations to run on and widen their scale of impact. GiveWP is one such plugin that makes donations incredibly easy and convenient for nonprofits and the users.

With GiveWP, it is easy to set several campaigns for donations at once, and you can also share the progress with the site’s visitors and donors. It is also useful for the generation of tax-deductible receipts. This donation form plugin gives you the flexibility to set the donation limits and amounts for each campaign.

Conveniently, it is compatible with PayPal, Stripe and can process donations offline, too. The premium addons allow for additional payment methods as well.

TablePress

Adding tables is a way to showcase the site’s information and statistics in a more visually appealing manner. TablePress lets you do just that and also come with aesthetically pleasing tabling options.

There are simple drag-and-drop options for tables and has an interface and style pretty similar to spreadsheets. So you will not require any technical expertise in coding to use the simple plugin.

There are also additional javascript library options that add the features like paginations, sorting, filtering, and more.

TablePress makes it easier to display the donation, fundraiser, and campaign information neatly and compactly.

The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework has become our go-to WordPress SEO plugin.

The lightwork plugin doesn’t have the same bloat or sales-focus as Yoast SEO, making it a great tool for nonprofits.

The tools used in the plugin are developed for effective website optimizations that adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines very closely. This prevents any penalization your site might face since the plugin makes sure that metadata is optimized and that search engines are aware of your site’s footprints.

It also protects the site from any SEO attacks and is completely free. Of course, there are paid add-ons available.

The plugin is especially useful for nonprofits as the plugin ensures the site’s SEO friendliness without any manual framework needed by the owners. The feature for providing meta tags and optimizing metadata saves time that you can then dedicate to other tasks.

Wordfence

No site, even a nonprofit and charitable one, can be 100% safe from malicious attacks and hacking attempts. That’s why website security plugins are an absolute must. Wordfence is one such plugin that protects websites from various online threats.

The plugin comes with features that set up a firewall around your website and features malware scanning to detect threats.

It is much simpler to use than others and includes a user-friendly dashboard option. The plugin also protects the site against brute force attacks so that your passwords can be safe.

There is also a feature that provides insights and assessments of overall traffic trends and hacking attempts.

A plus point is that Wordfence alerts if there are any outdated themes and plugins around.

Updating themes and plugins is always a step that helps ensure security, so the plugin proves useful on various fronts.

There is also a country blocking option that allows the site owners to block any country where they might be getting rampant attacks from.

Through subscription options, you can also tap into Wordfence’s community of users to find out about the latest threats before they’re problems.

WP Accessibility

Accessibility of any site can largely affect site traffic. The WP Accessibility plugin automatically gauges and fixes a variety of common accessibility problems in WordPress overall. It then lays down solutions to improve the accessibility of the site for all users.

From colors and skip links to language direction and alt tags, WP Accessibility helps you hardness best practices on your website through its features.

With the WP Accessibility plugin, not only will the site’s visibility increase but also makes it even simpler to access.

Hustle

A good way to boost conversations, increase brand awareness and engagement is through emails. Emails can be very useful when generating conversion leads.

The Hustle email collection plugin, in general, helps to boost the site’s rates of conversion leads using exit popups, floating bars for social media icons, and signup forms. And it is free, so nonprofits can easily use the plugin without shelling any funds that could be put to better use.

The best part is that the Hustle email plugin is integrated and supported by all major email marketing platforms.

The plugin comes with customizable designs, themes and also includes geotagging. There are ways to control how your pop will be displayed and has features that allow you to build mailing lists for users.

Though the basic version is free, some upgrades can be made by switching to the premium version.

Advanced Custom Fields

WordPress web developers love Advanced Custom Fields as it allows you to supercharge a website with custom post types and new fields on posts and pages.

For most websites, however, it is something that is often best used by developers as it requires many settings and even some PHP code to properly work inside of most WordPress themes.

For most novice web designers or do-it-yourselfers, Guttenberg Blocks (and other WordPress page builders) have become the go-to for rapidly creating websites and adding functionality.

Ultimate Addons for Guttenberg

Speaking of Guttenberg blocks, a great way to add features to WordPress’s default page builder is a plugin called Ultimate Addons for Guttenberg.

Usually, building a WordPress site can often look like an intimidating task with many confusing features, but Guttenberg Blocks have made it an easy and hassle-free process.

With Ultimate Addons for Guttenberg, 23 new blocks features are added to your website and there are tons of customization available – like colors and fonts. It comes with free themes, and the whole plugin itself is free.

The various blocks include information boxes, testimonials, content timelines, and more, which can be very useful for typical nonprofit websites.

But Remember…

Plugins not only help you increase your site’s engagements but also helps with donations, funding, and more.

These top plugins for nonprofits should surely improve your website’s overall look, function, and feel.

But remember, plugins need to be updated or they can also become a security vulnerability for your nonprofit website. Make sure to enable Automatic Updates in WordPress and stay alert for important security updates.