Non-profits & community groups

Websites for Non-Profits

Websites for boards, associations, clinics and community groups that your volunteers can update themselves, that cost little to run, and that keep working when the board changes.

TALK ABOUT YOUR SITE

Recent community work

Amherst Island Community Medical ClinicYearly website costs, with hosting we donate
$600 → $0
Island RadioMore content, at 35% of the old running cost
8.8×
Amherst Island Agricultural SocietyCore site built and launched, run by the board
1 week
Loyalist Business AssociationMembers restored after a broken plugin update
39 of 39

Built for volunteer boards

What a Community Website Needs

A non-profit website is run by people with day jobs, on a budget that has better places to go. We design every site from scratch around that, so it stays current long after launch.

Volunteers Can Update It

Click any text or photo on a live preview, change it and publish. The site updates within seconds, so a board member can post an event without a developer or a manual.

Built to Outlast the Board

Your domain, hosting and accounts are registered to the organization, with role addresses like treasurer@ and a plain-language care guide, so nothing is lost when someone steps down.

Low Running Costs

No plugin stack to patch and no maintenance contract for a brochure site. Hosting plans are sized to your site, and for some community organizations we reduce or donate hosting.

Events, Markets and Rentals

Calendars that add recurring dates on their own, a page for every event with times, tickets and directions, and a homepage that moves forward as the season goes on.

Newsletters and Email

Sign-up forms that add subscribers to Mailchimp automatically, newsletters sent from your own domain so fewer land in spam, and email addresses that pass to the next volunteer.

Easy to Use on Any Phone

People look you up on their phones. We put what they need first, in plain language, and check every site for accessibility so it works for every age and ability.

Recent work

Community Organizations We Work With

Community health clinic · Next.js, Mailchimp

Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic

The clinic brings wellness clinics, blood work, foot care and equipment lending to an island community in eastern Ontario, and runs entirely on donations. Its WordPress site was hard to use on a phone and cost about $600 a year to maintain. The clinic serves our own island, so we rebuilt the site as volunteer work, with emergency numbers at the top of the homepage, a page for each service and a directory of local health services. We host it for free, manage the clinic's Google Workspace email and produce its newsletters.

Yearly website costs: $600 → $0
Services, events, donations and local health resources: 18 pages
Newsletter sign-ups, once typed in by hand: Automatic

Visit the clinic's website

Community radio · Next.js, Sanity

Island Radio

The station's WordPress site had become impossible to maintain, and 15 years of community broadcasts were locked away. We rebuilt it on Next.js with Sanity and moved the full archive, now more than 12,000 episodes, to cloud storage that listeners can browse from anywhere. New episodes are added automatically every day, at a fraction of the old running cost.

More content hosted: 8.8×
Of the previous running cost: 35%
Projected savings over ten years: ~$14,000

Read the Island Radio case study

Volunteer-run cafe · Next.js

The Back Kitchen

A volunteer-led cafe on Amherst Island had a basic Square ordering page. We built a community hub with an events calendar, a newsletter archive and a supporters page that thanks its sponsors, and kept the Square checkout customers already knew. Volunteers update events and news themselves.

With responsive mobile design: 11+ pages
Event categories, from concerts to markets: 8
Custom-built interface components: 40+

Read The Back Kitchen case study

Agricultural society · Next.js, Sanity

Amherst Island Agricultural Society

The society, with roots in the 1860s, opened a new timber-frame pavilion and, almost overnight, was running a weekly market, a music festival, an AGM and private rentals with nothing but a Facebook page. We built and launched the core site in one week, ahead of the first market of the season. The calendar adds every market date on its own, each event has its own page, and plain-language summaries of past board meetings show the community what the board decides. After a hands-on training session, the board runs the site itself.

To build and launch the core site: 1 week
Updated by the board, not a developer: 14 pages
Board meeting summaries published, back to 2019: 44

Visit the society's website

Business association · WordPress repair

Loyalist Business Association

The association, a volunteer-run non-profit in Loyalist Township, Ontario, lists 286 local businesses in its member directory. After a plugin upgrade, paying members started dropping back to free listings. We traced the cause, caught a vendor upgrade that would have sent 245 listings to the trash on our staging copy, and repaired the live site without losing a single listing. We also moved its site email to a service the association owns.

Members correctly featured again: 39 of 39
Listings kept: 286 of 286
Unexplained changes in a 72-hour watch: 0

How we repair WordPress sites

What our clients say

Keith MercerBoard Chair, The Back Kitchen

“As a volunteer-run cafe, we needed a partner who understood our limited resources but could still deliver professional results. Tim transitioned us from a basic Square website into a comprehensive community hub—event calendar, newsletter archive, sponsor showcase. His attention to detail and genuine investment in our success made all the difference.”

Eric TremblayStation Manager, CJAI 101.3FM

“Our old website had become a Frankenstein of outdated technology. Tim took a needs-based approach, documenting our requirements while understanding both visitor experience and staff workflows. When we launched, we immediately received positive feedback. He's amazing at leveraging modern technologies to bring custom solutions to life.”

How we work

Working With Volunteer Boards

Boards meet monthly, members change every few years, and nobody has time to learn a complicated system. We plan the project around that.

01
Start with the questions people ask
When is the next clinic? What do I bring? How do I get there? We build every page around the questions your community actually asks, so the answers are one tap away.
02
Launch when it matters
Markets, festivals and fundraisers don't wait. Our two most recent community sites had their core pages live in about a week, with more content added as the board sent it in.
03
Train the people who will run it
At launch we sit down with the board members who will manage the site and walk through real updates on the live site: events, photos, sponsors and news. Then we hand it over.
04
Keep it in the organization's name
The domain, hosting and accounts belong to your organization, not to us or a volunteer who might move on, and we leave a plain-language guide for whoever comes next.
05
Stay on call
Some boards run their site entirely on their own. Others keep us on for hosting, updates, email and newsletters. Either way, we are there when you need something bigger.

Giving back close to home

Supporting community organizations is part of who we are. The Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic serves our own island, so we rebuilt its website as volunteer work and host it for free.

Our hosting plans are flexible, and for some community organizations we reduce or donate hosting. Tell us what your budget looks like and we will suggest what fits.

Already have a site?

Care, Repair & Email

Not every project starts from scratch. If your current site is broken, inherited or hard to keep running, we can fix it and help you look after it.

Care

Website Care & Hosting

Flexible hosting for every budget, from free one-page sites to full websites, plus updates, content changes and help, with your site and email on one invoice.

Learn more Repair

WordPress Repair & Rescue

Broken after an update, or inherited from someone who moved on? We find the cause first, rehearse the fix on a copy and repair your live site without losing data.

Learn more Email

Business Email & Newsletters

Email on your own domain, with addresses like treasurer@ that pass to the next person along with their history, and newsletters that land in inboxes instead of spam.

Learn more

Yes, that's the point. We build on Sanity, a content editor with a simple, focused screen. Board members click any text or photo on a live preview, change it and publish, and the site updates within seconds. At launch we train the people who will run it on the real site, and leave written guides behind.

Nothing breaks. Your domain, hosting and accounts are registered to the organization rather than to a volunteer, email can use role addresses like treasurer@ that pass to the next person, and we leave a plain-language guide so a new board member can pick up where the last one left off.

Usually much less than a WordPress site, because there's no plugin stack to keep patched. Our hosting plans are flexible and sized to your site, and for some community organizations we reduce or donate hosting. The Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic was paying about $600 a year to maintain its old WordPress site; its new site costs it nothing.

We don't publish a rate card. Tell us about your organization and your budget, and we'll suggest a scope and hosting plan that fits. For some community organizations we reduce or donate hosting, and some of our work close to home is done as volunteers.

It depends on scope. Our two most recent community sites had their core pages live in about a week, with more content added as the board sent it in. A larger build with custom features takes longer. After a first conversation we'll give you a timeline you can plan around.

Yes. We moved Island Radio and the Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic off WordPress onto a modern stack that volunteers find easier to update and that costs less to run. If you'd rather keep your WordPress site, we repair those too.

Yes. We build event calendars that add recurring dates like a weekly market on their own, a page for every event with times, tickets and directions, rental pages with rates and booking details, and a homepage that shows what's coming up next.

Yes. We set up email on your own domain with addresses that outlast the board, manage Google Workspace, connect newsletter sign-up forms on the site to Mailchimp so subscribers are added automatically, and can write and produce the newsletters themselves.

Websites for Non-Profits