Not every feature deserves a place on your site. Use these three filters to identify what best serves your organization and audience.

You’re brimming with optimism as the website project kicks off. Your organization’s new site is going to rock. Your team is flowing with ideas that will make your work really shine. The board approved a decent budget, and you’re ready to put things in motion. But soon, the momentum starts to slow. It’s one delay after another, as the initial optimistic timeline starts to slip. The website plugins are more complicated than expected, and the team needs to hire additional expertise. The budget nearly doubles, and the launch date slips from September to January.

This scenario is all too common in website development. Everything looks easy on the whiteboard. But complexity compounds fast. Each new feature doesn’t just add time – it multiplies integration headaches, testing scenarios, and maintenance burdens. 

Modern web and AI tools make it easier than ever to create any kind of anything you can imagine. The sky’s the limit… until the weight of all those features drags you back down to earth. Every additional feature on your website creates risk for your budget and timeline. 

It’s easy to say “yes” to everything, but saying “no” to all but the essential features will save you money and headaches. This article offers a practical framework for identifying which features will actually serve your organization and your audience.

Endless possibilities of the modern web

Before we talk about how to choose, let’s look at what’s possible. Understanding the full range of website functionality helps you make informed decisions about what’s right for your site. Here’s a general overview of common features for nonprofit websites. 

Essential fundamentals include security and backups. Most content management systems like WordPress offer a range of options to keep your site secure from malware, brute force hacking attempts, and other security risks. You’ll also want to conduct regular backups of your site, as sometimes code updates can break your site. 

Building on those essentials, most websites incorporate optimization functionality. This ranges from search engine optimization (SEO) plugins that help you structure your site content to make sure it’s findable, to functionality that helps your webpages load faster through caching and other technologies. You can also add various analytics tools to help you assess the performance of your content and site overall.

Other important features focus on engagement and conversion. This includes basics like contact forms and newsletter signup fields, as well as event calendars and registration. Many nonprofits need to make it possible for supporters to make donations directly on the site or register as volunteers. Other sites might even have member portals for sharing private information.

There are many kinds of functionality to improve your content and user experience. If you have a lot of visual content, you might want to add photo galleries, sliders, or embedded video. You might need to provide a robust search tool, advanced content filters, or an interactive database tool if you have a large content library. And since many nonprofits operate in a range of geographic locations, you might need multi-language support.

And we can’t forget social sharing and community features. At the least, you’ll want people to connect with your social media accounts. You might also want to make it easy to share your content. You might integrate live chat or chatbots to answer common questions. Some organizations benefit from providing a forum to build and maintain community.

But here’s the key question: Just because you can install this functionality, do you have the resources to configure and maintain it?

Saying “yes” to everything often derails projects. The more you have to build (and test), the longer it will take to publish your site. It’s often better to simply get something — a Minimum Viable Product — out into the world faster. Also, every new piece of functionality introduces the potential for security vulnerabilities. And too many front-end features can create a cluttered experience that leaves your visitors dazed and confused.

The key is knowing which features deserve your limited time and money.

Three filters to choose what’s right for your site

These three filters help you cut through wishful thinking and focus on features that will actually deliver value.

Filter 1: Audience and goals alignment

This filter asks a simple question: Does this feature serve both our organizational goals AND our audience’s actual needs? Features that only serve one or the other rarely justify their cost.

Start by asking: What specific goals does this feature help us achieve? Which audience segments actually need this to accomplish their goals? If you can’t answer both questions confidently, the feature probably isn’t essential. 

For deeper insights, it also helps to conduct a comprehensive audience analysis. This will allow you to design pathways and interactions for each audience group that satisfy both their goals and yours.

Key questions to guide the alignment of our goals and audience needs:

• Will this feature help visitors take an action essential to your organization’s success? (donate, sign up, contact us, register)
• Can you name specific people from our target audience who need this feature to accomplish their goals? 
• If you removed this feature, which audience segment would be blocked from accomplishing something important?
• What evidence do you have to support your answers above?

Example of this filter in action:A multi-stakeholder coalition wanted to build a member portal to make it easier for partners to share planning documents, research, and other resources. While they agreed that this feature would be helpful, only a few members expressed strong interest in the approach. They concluded that sticking with Google Drive would serve the same purpose with minimal setup, freeing budget for other priorities.

Filter 2: Time and money burden

The second filter assesses the true cost of each feature: Do you have the expertise, time, and budget to build and maintain it? These costs add up significantly over time. During site development, we need to plan, design, test, refine, test again, squash bugs, rinse, and repeat. Once the site is live, every feature needs ongoing updates, security patches, and further refinement.

Key questions to assess whether you have the resources to support this feature:

• What are the upfront costs to build this feature? (development, design, testing)
• What are the ongoing costs to maintain it? (updates, hosting, support contracts)
• Who on your staff will own the maintenance of each feature? 
• Do they have the expertise to manage those tasks, or will they need outside support?

Example of this filter in action: A watershed conservation organization wanted automated event registration with payment processing. Scoping out the requirements, they realized that it would require significant upfront costs, and ongoing maintenance required monthly developer support they couldn’t afford. They switched to a simple calendar with Eventbrite links.

Filter 3: Technical risk assessment

The third filter assesses the ways each feature can create unexpected headaches. Every new feature introduces potential security vulnerabilities and other risks. Most features use third-party plugins. Reputable, actively maintained plugins get regular security updates. But abandoned plugins or custom code without dedicated developers create security vulnerabilities that put your entire site at risk. Similarly, features that depend on external platforms (payment processors, CRM integrations, map services) inherit those platforms’ stability issues and API changes. 

Key questions to assess the risk and potential headaches of each feature:

• Is this plugin actively maintained with recent updates?
• Does this feature depend on external platforms that could break, change pricing, or shut down?
• If this feature fails, what’s the impact? (Annoying vs. site-breaking vs. security risk)
• Can you implement a simpler, lower-risk alternative that accomplishes 80% of the goal?

Example of this filter in action: An animal welfare nonprofit hired a developer years ago to build a custom donation plugin, which worked fine for a while, until the developer went out of business. The plugin hadn’t been updated in over a year, creating a major security risk. Rather than rebuild custom functionality, they switched to an actively maintained WordPress plugin with a monthly subscription — trading cost for security and peace of mind.

Once you look at your features wish list through the lens of these three filters, you’ll be on your way to building a site that works for you and your audience.

Some final notes on functionality

This three-filter process takes effort upfront, but it pays off. The upfront work is minimal compared to the cost of fixing and maintaining a bloated website. Once you eliminate the inessential, you can focus your time and resources on what really matters.

While websites (and the world) grow more complex by the day, you don’t need to jump on the complexity bandwagon. Simple and clear often wins.

As a general guideline, start small and build from there. What is the minimum website feature set that will deliver value to your audience? You can always take a scaled approach to delivering new features. Launch sooner with the minimal version of the site. See how things work, and then add more features over time — as needed.

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