Here is something I have learned from working with nonprofits for a long time: the biggest bottleneck on almost every website project is not the design. It’s not the platform. It’s not the budget, usually. It’s the content.
Specifically, it’s that writing for the web is a skill most people haven’t been explicitly taught, and the ways that feel natural to write—the ways grant writing, annual reports, and internal documentation have trained you to write—are almost the opposite of what works online.
This post is a practical primer. Not everything you need to know about writing, but the things that will make the biggest difference for your organization’s website specifically.
Write for the person in the moment, not the person with time
When someone reads a grant application or a policy document, they’ve chosen to engage with it. They have some reason to be thorough. That’s not how people read websites.
People scan. They read the first line of a paragraph and skip to the next one if it doesn’t hook them. They’re looking for the answer to a specific question, and everything that isn’t that answer is friction. This isn’t a flaw in modern attention spans—it’s how websites have always worked, and designing your writing around it isn’t dumbing down. It’s being useful.
Practically, this means: your most important information goes first. Not after context, not after setup, not after you’ve established credibility—first. The journalism term for this is “inverted pyramid.” The takeaway is at the top; the supporting detail follows. If someone reads only the first sentence of every paragraph on your page, they should still understand the key things you’re trying to communicate.
Cut everything that doesn’t earn its place
The single most common problem in nonprofit website copy is that it’s too long—not because there’s too much to say, but because everything is padded with language that sounds substantive but isn’t doing work.
Some specific things to cut:
Mission statement boilerplate. “We are committed to providing comprehensive, wraparound services to empower underserved communities to reach their full potential” is a sentence that could be on thousands of organizational websites. It communicates almost nothing specific about what you do. Replace it with a plain-language description of your actual services and the people you actually serve.
Passive voice and nominalizations. “The provision of services is facilitated by our team” should be “our team provides services.” “Implementation of the program was conducted in partnership” should be “we ran the program with a partner.” Passive constructions create distance and make writing feel institutional. Active constructions are clearer, warmer, and shorter.
Qualifiers and hedges. “We strive to,” “we endeavor to,” “we work to ensure that”—these are usually filler. If you do something, say you do it. If you aim to do something, say specifically what that means. Vagueness doesn’t protect you legally, and it doesn’t make you sound more humble. It just makes you harder to understand.
Transition padding. “As mentioned above,” “as we can see from the above,” “in conclusion”—these are word count, not communication.
Use the language your clients actually use
This is the one that nonprofit communications most consistently gets wrong, and it matters most for organizations serving communities that have historically been alienated by institutions.
Sector jargon is real and pervasive: “wraparound services,” “trauma-informed,” “capacity building,” “empowerment,” “holistic approach,” “communities of color,” “BIPOC,” “LGBTQIA+.” Some of these terms have genuine specificity and meaning. Many of them have become organizational shorthand that means something to people inside the sector and very little to people outside it.
If someone is looking for help with housing and they don’t know what “housing navigation services” means, they might not realize that’s what you offer. If someone is looking for mental health support and they don’t know your organization uses trauma-informed approaches, they might click away before they find the thing that would actually help them.
Write the way your clients actually talk about their situations. If they say “help paying bills,” say that. If they say “find a place to live,” say that. You can use more specific language in context once you’ve established what you do in terms people recognize.
Short sentences. Short paragraphs.
This one sounds like style advice but it’s accessibility advice. Long sentences are harder to process for people with cognitive disabilities, people reading in a second language, people under stress, and people on a mobile screen trying to find information quickly.
A paragraph on a website should be two to four sentences, usually. A sentence should communicate one idea. If you find yourself writing a sentence with three clauses connected by “which” and “and,” break it into two sentences.
This does not make your writing simplistic. It makes it readable. The clearest, most intelligent writers are almost always the most economical.
Read it out loud before you publish
This is the fastest quality check available. If you stumble reading it aloud, your readers will stumble reading it silently. If it sounds stilted, formal, or weird spoken, it will feel that way on the page too.
Reading aloud catches: sentences that are too long, language that’s too formal for the context, repetition you didn’t notice, and places where the logic doesn’t quite follow.
If it sounds like something a real person would say to another real person—warm, clear, and direct—you’re in good shape. If it sounds like a document, you have more work to do.
You don’t have to do it alone
One underused option: draft something rough and have someone else (a staff member, a board member, a volunteer) read it as if they know nothing about your organization and tell you what questions they still have. The gaps they identify are the gaps your visitors will hit.
Another option: bring me in to help. Writing web copy is one of the things I do with clients, and even just a conversation about what you’re trying to communicate can unlock something that was stuck. Get in touch and we can figure out what kind of help would actually be useful.