How to write a charity website brief

6 March 2025  |  Stuart Palmer

What is the best way to ensure you get the website your charity needs? We recommend spending quality time developing a detailed brief for your potential web design partners.

In our experience, there are several advantages to investing time in this process, including:

• Organising your own thoughts about what your website project needs to prioritise.
• Gathering internal stakeholders to get a 360 degree view of what your charity needs from your website.
• Clarifying your ideal visitor journey to help inform user experience (UX) design.
• Easily comparing agencies and quickly ruling out those who are unable to meet your specifications.
• Ensuring you and your chosen agency are on the same page, leading to an efficient development journey.
• Future-proofing. If they know your goals, your agency can build in critical features ahead of time.

A well-designed website can form the central hub of a charity’s marketing strategy, so spending a couple of days writing a brief will be time well spent. There is no set format for a brief, but like any piece of writing, taking a structured approach and using easy to read formatting will speed up the process.

For additional help, download our FREE Website Brief Template.

How to write a website brief: the 9 essential elements

Before you download our template (or start writing your own brief), here are the 9 sections we recommend you include:

1. Introducing your charity

   Here is where you can include an overview of what your charity does. What is your mission purpose? What vision do you have for the future? What are your short and long-
   term goals? Some useful numbers on turnover and staff numbers will also help an agency understand the likely scale of your website project.

2. Your existing website: performance, priority keeps and pain points

   If you already have a website, carry out an audit and pop the findings in this section. Is your website linked to Google Analytics or another source of visitor data? Note down some
   key performance metrics and insights. Is there anything your website does really well? Request that this be preserved during the redesign. And if there is something that isn’t functioning properly or is turning people away, make sure you highlight it here. Why did you decide to rebuild your website now? Answering this key question will often highlight some additional pain points you might not have thought about. For example, if you’ve been receiving a wave of complaints about a difficult donation process, this will need to be addressed as a priority.

3. Your new website: strategy and benchmarking

   Think of how your new website will fit within your charity’s overall marketing strategy. Who is your target audience? What are your priority goals (raising donations, attracting volunteers, managing events, etc.). Who are your main competitors and what are they doing? It can be helpful to include links to websites that you want your chosen agency to use as a benchmark.

4. Technical considerations

   For this section, think about what software and third party platforms your new website will have to play nicely with. This might include fundraising sites, payment gateways, customer relationship manager (CRM) software, accounting systems and email marketing platforms (e.g. Mailchimp). Is there a particular platform you want to build your website on (e.g., WordPress). Do you have login access to your charity’s domain name? If you’re not sure about any of this, don’t worry. A good agency will be able to clarify the process in simple terms.

5. Budget and timescale

   This is often the most controversial part of a website brief. Should you reveal your full budget upfront or play your cards close to your chest? Setting a budget range is often a sensible compromise. This will give agencies an idea of what they can realistically provide while giving them the motivation to stay competitive. Be sure to specify whether your figure includes VAT, and make sure you budget for post-launch work such as hosting, maintenance, digital marketing and further development projects. Is there a hard deadline by which your website must be live? State this in your brief. It is best to be flexible where possible to give your agency maximum time for research, problem-solving, testing and bug-fixing. On average, you can expect to wait between four and six months for a new website to be ready for launch.

6. The fun bit: the look and feel of your new site

   Spend some time browsing for websites that inspire you, even if they are not charity sites, and include some links to those. Specify what it is you like. Remember to avoid subjective preferences and focus on what your ideal donor, volunteer or fundraiser will respond well to. Include your brand guidelines (if you have any), and share any existing materials that represent your brand well. The more immersed an agency can get in your charity’s identity, the easier they will find it to translate this into a powerful, on brand website. Most web design agencies will be aware of the need to ensure a website is accessible to people with sensory disabilities and challenges, but this is a good place to spell this out.

7. How will you handle content?

   Once your website is live, it will need to be kept up to date with plenty of content. How will your charity manage this? Do you already have an in-house team that can provide quality images, videos and written text to do your new site justice? If not, consider budgeting for these services (some design agencies will be able to support you with this).

8. Ongoing maintenance and development

   All websites will need to be reliably hosted and receive occasional technical updates. You may also find that you want to make minor changes or even major developments as you receive feedback and data from visitors. Many agencies offer maintenance packages which may include hosting, updates and an agreed number of development hours. Are you looking for support with this or will you manage it all in-house?

9. Driving traffic through digital marketing

   A website will not automatically attract visitors without some level of digital marketing. Larger web design agencies will also offer services such as online ad management, search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing and more. Will you need digital marketing support or are you looking to manage this yourself?

Getting started

If the thought of writing a web design brief from scratch still feels a bit too overwhelming, here is a link to download our own handy Website Brief Template . Simply download it, save it to your device and go through the questions in your own time.

We’ve added a section at the end where you can set out exactly how you want each agency to submit their proposals. And when you’re ready to find an agency partner, don’t forget to send a completed brief our way!