+486% Online Donations and a 25% Drop in Bounce Rate for a Grassroots NGO
The Challenge
The Maasai Girls Rescue Center (maasairescue.org) is a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to helping disadvantaged, at-risk, and orphaned Maasai girls in northern Tanzania. The organization offers a path out of child mortality, extreme poverty, FGM, and child marriage for girls and their communities.
Their website wasn’t telling that story. Information architecture was unclear, the bounce rate sat at 78%, and returning organic users averaged just 7.8% month over month. Online donations were low. The site wasn’t converting visitors into donors or volunteers, and the organization was leaving significant fundraising potential on the table.
Key Results
| Bounce Rate | 78% | -24.72% improvement |
| Online Donations | Baseline | +486.74% |
| Avg. Time on Site | Baseline | +19.64% (2:23) |
| Returning Users MoM | 7.8% | +30.26% |
The Approach
The strategic framing was simple: the site needed to stop functioning as an informational brochure and start functioning as a storytelling and conversion platform. Donors don’t give to organizations. They give to missions they believe in and people they trust. Every design decision was made in service of that principle.
That meant clarifying what the site was actually about within the first few seconds of a visit, eliminating content that wasn’t earning its place, and restructuring the information architecture around the two actions we most wanted visitors to take: donate and get involved.
The Process
Discover and Define — I began with website traffic analysis and search query research to understand how users were finding the site and where they were dropping off. Stakeholder interviews helped surface organizational priorities that weren’t reflected in the existing content. Competitive research and keyword analysis informed both the content strategy and the structural decisions that followed. From the research I developed personas representing the two primary audiences: prospective donors and prospective volunteers.
Develop — With all data, objectives, and personas compiled, I brought stakeholders into a collaborative working session to develop use cases, extract requirements, and prioritize content blocks using a mobile-first approach. This produced an agreed wireframe that balanced organizational goals with user needs and technical feasibility.
Design and Measure — The final design was built on WordPress using UX design principles throughout, with accessibility and visual storytelling as the primary design drivers. I also established a new social media team structure to support ongoing content creation and donor engagement beyond the site launch. Google Analytics and site performance measurement tools were integrated to track outcomes and inform future iterations.
What Made It Work
Story before structure. The original site led with organizational information rather than emotional connection. Restructuring the content hierarchy to lead with mission and impact rather than about pages gave visitors a reason to stay and engage.
Eliminating noise. Traffic analysis revealed that a significant portion of the site’s content was generating visits but no engagement. Removing underperforming content tightened the user journey and reduced friction on the path to donation.
Mobile-first execution. The majority of nonprofit donor traffic comes from mobile. Designing the experience around that context rather than retrofitting a desktop design improved usability for the audience most likely to convert.
Work With Me
If your organization has an important mission but a website that isn’t reflecting it or converting the people who find it, let’s talk about what’s possible.
Let’s connect →