What was wrong with the old site?
The problem was not how it looked. The nonprofit, Village 32, did not control its own website. The hosting, the domain setup, and the contact form lived in accounts the organization did not hold, so even a small change meant asking someone else. Every page also loaded the same heavy bundle, which made the site slow and hard for search engines to tell apart.
Who should own a nonprofit's website?
The nonprofit. That sounds obvious, and it is routinely not the case. If you cannot log in to your hosting, your domain, and your form tool, you do not own the site. You are renting it from whoever does. The first job on this project was not design. It was moving everything into accounts Village 32 controls.
What did we build it with?
Astro, hosted on Cloudflare. Astro builds each page ahead of time as plain HTML, so there is very little code for a visitor's phone to chew through. Cloudflare serves it from servers close to the visitor. Both are boring in the way you want infrastructure to be.
What changed for visitors?
The first load went from 2.2 MB to 275 KB. Pages appear faster, which matters most on a phone with a weak signal. The site also scores 100 on Lighthouse SEO, so search engines can read it.
What changed for the founder?
She owns it now. The domain, the hosting, and the forms all sit in the nonprofit's accounts, so nobody can hold the site hostage again. The next phase is an admin panel so she can post events and update pages without calling anyone.
What would we tell another nonprofit?
Before you redesign anything, check three logins: your domain, your hosting, and your contact form. If you cannot sign in to all three, start there. A beautiful site you cannot edit is the same problem in a nicer coat.
We build websites for organizations like this. See more of our site work or get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
Why Astro for a nonprofit website?
Astro builds each page as plain HTML ahead of time, so the site is fast, cheap to host, and has little to break.
How much faster was the new site?
First load went from 2.2 MB to 275 KB, and the site scores 100 on Lighthouse SEO.
Who owns the new site?
The nonprofit. Hosting, domain, and forms sit in accounts the organization controls.