Create a campaign website to inform, educate, gain donations, volunteers and participants for fundraising events and generally increase support for your cause.
The website is the main resource to publish data, quotes, videos and offer templates so people can write to their MPs. The cause could be political or it could be about children who need help, animal causes or those vulnerable such as refugees.
Elements to a campaign website
The website can request newsletter sign ups, can offer details of events, links to petitions for people to sign, videos and podcasts and Twitter feeds with real time discussions and information. It can request donations, find volunteers and advocates and even sell branded merchandise.
Any campaign can have a website or landing page
It doesn’t matter what topic it is, whether you are campaigning to remove cladding from buildings, campaigning against fly tipping or campaigning to raise money for the Church roof, a website is a platform to share all the details to the world.
Here are some examples of campaigning websites and campaign themes for ideas on for your campaign.
1. Salisbury for Europe
The Salisbury for Europe website was designed to attract and gain support for the Remain campaign in Salisbury.
The website contains a list of newsletters, a list of leaflets of events, social media feeds and details about the campaign that is of interest to readers.
Salisbury for Europe is now part of the Wiltshire Alliance for Europe Campaign.
2. Good wish theme
This bold template comes in 8 different designs all with customizable layouts.
The events page can be displayed as a calendar or a list of events with an inbuilt giving plug-in to take donations. This theme has two builder options: WP Bakery or Elements for you to pick your preferred website builder.
The site displays the donations values which is nice and encourages more donations. The sign up to newsletters and testimonials modules are nicely designed so you can you could actually sell t-shirts or promotion material as it comes with e-commerce.
3. Charity Crowdfunding
A crowdfunding website campaign can raise awareness of a particular issue that people may not be aware of. The website can also raise much needed funds.
My friend recently lost her brother and is crowdfunding for the widow and her baby nephew for some financial help.
The website can gain much needed volunteers and cash and generate a lot more interest then if you were to use a Crowdfunding platform.
The theme is a nice design with mega menu option, blog, events and the donations can come through PayPal (free), Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Other features include a shop for selling merchandise, multilingual, lots of icons, mobile responsive, Google fonts, slider revolutions and unlimited colours.
4. European Movement
The European Movement supports 100 community groups across the UK working and campaigning to uphold European rights, standards and values here in the UK. The Executive Committee is chaired by Andrew Adonis and the President of the patrons is Lord Heseltine.
Dorset for Europe is one of the local Communities in our area and they do a lot of work to promote the actions of the present Government against our rights as EU citizens.
5. Liberty
This WordPress website is strong and bold and immediately draws you to join their campaign as soon as you reach the front page.
The website has a stand alone donations page and join us page are both on an external domain, so this website is linked to another website for the technical functionality.
I find the actual design to be a little stark and I would make it a bit softer in terms of font. It feels very impersonal and dominant.
6. Defund the BBC
This website to defund the BBC is a perfect example of what you can do if you feel something needs to change.
Funding the BBC with TV licenses then prosecuting those that do not pay is not a popular process with many and this group have decided to take it on.
They have even created some merchandise which is not just about raising funds, but getting the message out there and use WooCommerce to sell their wares. They use Gofundme.com to collect donations so this is an external link.
7. Mike Cox Liberal Democrat
This website is a campaign for Mike Cox the local Lib Dem for Christchurch and East Dorset.
The website is created in Nation Builder specifically used for the campaign functionality of gaining donations, sign ups, volunteers, news, events and more.
The website builder is not one I would choose for a campaign as the website builder is hard to work out and rather clunky with specific settings but it does have some very good built in features such as donations and subscribe.
8. Never more needed
Another nice campaign website made in WordPress for flexility and simplicity.
The message is clear, Charities have been at the forefront of helping communities through the crisis and will continue to do so once the Virus is under control.
Charities play a vital part in picking up the pieces and supporting the most vulnerable during challenging times. However, they have lost their fundraising channels due to Covid so they also need the Government and MP’s to review legislation to help this sector.
There are lots of resources for people to help and good use of hashtags for social media promotions.
Summary
Create a campaign website to gain more support for your cause with a dedicated self hosted website as it gives you a platform to highlight issues, raise awareness, promote fund raising events, host webinars and write a lot more about your cause.
A Campaign website will be the main point of reference for everything you are doing with links to other partner sites. You can take donations, gain supporters and volunteers and publish what every you feel is relevant and pressing.
With so much turmoil and so much dissatisfaction I would urge you to create a website to campaign about a cause close to your heart and let people know the what, the why and the actions needed for change.
Get in touch if you would like some help.
