Charities are often in the spotlight whether it be in the news or advertisements. Both local, national and international charities fight hand over fist to become more prominent in the press. Usually, Charities do very well with printed advertisements, radio adverts and TV slots but when it comes to the web many websites are let down by very poor design.
Smaller charities are often supported by local companies and offered free services in return for some press coverage. Larger charities however can offer money in return for an outstanding website. You’d think that many design agencies working with a charity would do their utmost to prove their worth and show their skill set in return for free press, from the research which we did of a wide range of UK and International Charities this is not the case.
In this showcase, you will find a variety of charity websites with informative beautiful design. The following designs are 10 of the best Charity websites out there.
Red Nose Day has an awesome, clean, hand drawn style.
“In schools, offices and homes across the land, everyone wears – you’ve guessed it – the latest Red Nose and does whatever tickles their fancy to raise cash. You name it, they do it!”
The BBC Children in Need charity has always been a Pudsey Bear related charity. One day every year in the UK is Children in Need day, this culminates with a huge TV show on the evening for around 6-8 hours often raising £20 million + and often millions more after the event. The design for Children in Need from the BBC incorporates the TV show into the website.
Barnardo’s is another very cleanly designed website, structured to provide information and showcase whichever campaign they are working on at any one time.
The WWF is pretty simple, they say what they do and tell you how you can help.
Asthma UK provide a lot of information on their homepage. It’s colourful and informative.
Hand Drawn and designed with the Children in mind. Action for Children is another clean and informative design and structurally built to provide the information where necessary.
One of the largest and well known charities in the UK, the Great Ormond St. website lends itself towards being very visual with the bright blue contrasting against the usual Great Ormond St. purple.
Most people know Oxfam, and from what I can tell they’ve recently undergone a redesign. Not the best of the bunch but certainly above par in comparison with most charity website designs.
Being one of the only websites in this showcase which is left aligned, it is not uncommon to still find most charity websites done this way. Unicef and other large charities can still be found at that side of the webpage.
The WRVS is quite small in comparison to the other showcase websites, however the use of color to section of parts of the website is well done. The WRVS brand was revitalised some years ago and has grown in the public eye because of their work with the UK Armed Forces.
Ooooh..but I miss The Salvation Army and its virb profile.
Have you seen the children 1st website, a Scottish based charity, pretty nice.
http://www.children1st.org.uk
Design is of great importance to charity websites. We have been creating templates for charities to use for free: http://www.charitywebsites.net/ These include some well known charities such as Salvation Army and RSPCA. Its a popular service, but difficult to get templates that everyone likes.
Hi All,
I really think that a website created to help the Gomel Weenies deserves to be on this list!
http://www.chernobylheart.org.uk
It is simplistic, simply lovely, and I am proud to have designed it!
Take a look ans spread the word
Hi,
Just being very dull and non technical here – but what do you mean by ‘left aligned’?
I am in the process of setting up a charity and am starting to think about communications
Cheers
ken
Hi Ken,
By left-aligned, the design sits to the left of the browser instead of the centre.