Missions don’t stall – so why should the website?
Every second spent in struggling with a rigid, outdated platform like Drupal is a time lost in advancing your cause. What was once a strong solution now obstructs growth, agility, and impact.
With over 43.4% of websites across the world choosing WordPress, it’s no surprise that the platform is built for modern engagement and is powerful and flexible.
Just look at CNN Brasil. After migrating to WordPress VIP, they became the country’s third-largest news portal, doubling their audience and enhancing newsroom efficiency- all while enjoying faster performance, tighter security, and speedy feature rollouts. The shift from using proprietary tools to using open-source tools and WordPress plugins changed digital friction into momentum.
Meanwhile, the jump from one Drupal version to the next remains a heavy lift.
Migrating from Drupal 7 to 10?
That’s often a full rebuild, which is costly in terms of time and effort.
As reported on Nonprofit Tech for Good, over 58% of nonprofit organizations worldwide use WordPress.org as a primary content management platform, making it the most widely used platform in the sector. The statistics tell a clear story: easy to use, affordable, and effective.
Clunky backends and expensive updates don’t belong in your mission strategy. So, does your website support your mission or is it holding it back?
It might be time to find out.
Hidden Costs of Clinging to Drupal
The main objective of mission-driven organizations should be making an impact rather than remaining trapped in backend complexity. Yet many nonprofits that are still running on Drupal, the platform that once was flexible, are now delivering roadblocks, costing more and leading to missed opportunities.
Let’s see how Drupal interferes with your website operations.
- Complexity & Cost
Managing a Drupal site feels like operating complex machinery with too many moving parts. Each update, new features, bug fixes, and security patches require specific developers—rarely cheap, never optional.
The estimated average salary of a Drupal Developer in the United States is $57.75 per hour. This level of dependency puts a lot of strain on both budget and patience.
- Upgrades Aren’t Simple
On Drupal, updates go beyond adding new features; they mean redesigning the entire website from scratch. Migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 is less of an update and more of a renovation.
The cost of migrating to Drupal can be significantly high; for instance, basic migration of the website can cost between $15,000 and $85,000, depending on the complexity of the website.
This hefty price tag can feel like a big burden since the migration process would also need dedicated technical resources and would cause major downtime, impacting your online presence and user engagement.
- Resource Strain
Maintenance problems and technical delays take a lot of time for the employees. Instead of focusing on storytelling, donor engagement, or service delivery, teams are stuck troubleshooting bugs and managing code. Every minute spent administering Drupal is a minute stolen from your mission.
Why WordPress Is a Game-Changer for Nonprofits?
Since nonprofit organizations are driven by mission and not money, everything they do, from tactical activities to fundraising, has to be conducted in a way that would best achieve impact.
One area where nonprofits can make an impact without spending a fortune is their organizational website. That’s the reason why nonprofits are choosing to hire top professionals to help migrate Drupal website to WordPress.
In today’s world, where web presence is critical, WordPress is a platform that serves as a game-changer for nonprofits.
Here’s why:
1. Ease of Use: Empowering Your Team
One of the major advantages of WordPress is its user-friendly interface, making it easier for nonprofit organizations to manage their online presence. Nonprofit organizations, often functioning with small staff and restricted funds, cannot afford to have every member tied up in technical web management.
But how can nonprofits enhance their impact without overwhelming their staff?
WordPress provides the solution, removing the technical restrictions and allowing staff at all levels to engage with the platform. Imagine your team making updates as soon as possible without having to involve a developer to make edits.
In the fast-paced nonprofit environment, speed and responsiveness are of the essence, and WordPress makes certain you do not lose out on any opportunity to engage with supporters, as well as respond to current events.
If your nonprofit organization is in need of a platform that can ramp up the agility of communications and online updates, the question isn’t whether WordPress is the right fit—it’s why you wouldn’t use WordPress.
2. Cost-Effectiveness: Save Money, Do More
When it comes to running a nonprofit organization, cost-efficiency is a priority.
WordPress excels in this area as it is a free, open-source software that does not charge high licensing fees and recurrent costs like most other closed-source CMS such as Drupal or Sitecore.
However, the icing on the cake is the true efficiency achieved through the WordPress plugins. Currently, over 50,000 plugins are available on wordpress.org alone, and this makes it easy for nonprofits to benefit from advanced functionality without the hefty price tag.
Looking to create a donation page?
WordPress plugins such as GiveWP can be used to receive one-time or recurring contributions. As of now, GiveWP is used by more than 100,000 fundraisers worldwide, which proves that it is one of the most popular WordPress donation plugins today.
Looking to boost visibility?
Yoast SEO makes it possible to optimize for search engines without the need for any expert assistance. According to the latest available data, Yoast SEO is installed and used on more than 10 million WordPress sites, making it one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins.
On the other hand, upgrading and maintaining a Drupal site costs perhaps tens of thousands of dollars.
3. Massive Ecosystem: Community and Support
WordPress is not only a software but a thriving ecosystem. It is a content management system that enjoys a huge amount of support from developers, designers, and content creators globally.
Furthermore, WordPress is updated quite often, so the website is always up to date with the latest security features and innovations. The WordPress foundation, from time to time, comes up with patches addressing various security issues, thus making your site more resilient to cyber threats.
4. Scalability: Grow with Your Mission
WordPress is famous for its scalability, a factor that is very important for nonprofit organizations that want to grow.
Whether you’re starting with a small informational site or scaling up to host thousands of donor profiles and event pages, WordPress is capable of handling the task.
One of the main attributes of this scalability is WooCommerce – an e-commerce plugin for WordPress. More than 10 million sites have downloaded WooCommerce, and it is used by 30% of all online stores, which makes it one of the most popular e-commerce solutions available.
WordPress Features That Fuel Impact for Nonprofits
For nonprofits, each cent and penny must be used wisely and for the greatest benefit of society.
WordPress has a range of tools specially designed to support your mission and connect with your supporters effectively without straining your budget.
Let’s explore why nonprofits worldwide are adopting WordPress to achieve better results.
1. Donation and Fundraising Tools: Simplify Giving
For a nonprofit organization, fundraising is the core business, and with WordPress, it is easy. Thanks to plugins such as GiveWP, you can design special donation forms, set up recurring donations, and keep track of the donors on your website.
To build up donors’ confidence and to make the process as easy as possible, GiveWP is compatible with reliable payment gateways such as PayPal. By the beginning of the year 2024, PayPal had been recognized as the world’s premier online payment platform, with over 432 million active users.
However, the advantages do not end at transactions. The GiveWP Email Reports add-on makes it easier for your organization to have timely and useful information on its operations.
Combined, these features enable your nonprofit to raise funds more efficiently and enhance its relations with donors in the most effective platform that’s built for growth.
2. Event Management: Organize with Ease
Organizing an event is an effective way of reaching the audience. For instance, it was estimated that nearly 70% of all charitable contributions in the United States are made by individuals, indicating the importance of fostering community involvement and support.
WordPress has plugins that help in managing event calendars, registration, and ticket sales on the website. This easy organization allows for easier management of logistics and improves the user experience for your attendees.
3. Storytelling Made Simple: Share Your Impact
Your story is the link between the supporters and your noble cause. Research reveals that 82% of nonprofits employ storytelling in their fundraising materials to elicit reactions from donors.
WordPress provides a variety of themes and features intended for creating engaging blog posts and media articles. There are numerous plugins that can integrate other functionalities such as image galleries, videos, and social media to enhance the storytelling and increase its effectiveness.
4. Accessibility and SEO: Reach a Wider Audience
It is important to make your website easily accessible and discoverable. Accessibility standards are built into every WordPress theme to make the site accessible to all. Other plugins, such as Yoast SEO, are very helpful in optimizing content for search engines.
5. Trusted by Nonprofits Worldwide
The success of WordPress can be evidenced by its popularity. Many nonprofits integrate WordPress content management since it is inexpensive and easy to use.
Addressing Common Concerns About Migration
Migration is always complex, no matter whether you undertake it to switch to a new platform, redesign your website, or transfer your content to another host. However, if the best tools are employed alongside a competent workforce, the exercise may not be anything but worthwhile.
For nonprofits, the stakes are high: your website is often the first impression for potential donors, volunteers, and supporters. Ensuring that your website migration goes smoothly is key to maintaining your organization’s online presence, credibility, and security.
Here are three of the most prominent issues concerning migration that nonprofits deal with and how WordPress address them.
1. Data Migration Worries: How a Professional Migration Preserves Your Content and Structure
When migrating a website, particularly for a nonprofit organization, it is crucial to keep the content and navigation intact. Data migration is not limited to copying files but also preserving and ensuring the availability of your website’s data, be it blogs, donation forms, volunteer application forms, and more.
The Problem:
The most common fear during migration is content lost or corrupted, which might result in broken links, missing pages, or loss of SEO ranking. According to statistics, 47% of users are willing to wait up to two seconds for a website to load. A faulty migration can result in these issues, potentially damaging the relationships with the donors and low engagement rates.
The Solution:
When you deal with a professional migration service, you know that content remains intact, and all the structural elements are preserved, from URLs to SEO tags.
For instance, WP Engine (WordPress hosting platform) provides a managed migration service that basically handles the task of migration while at the same time retaining all contents, images, posts, and pages together with their attributes.
This means your media files, pages, and posts will be seamlessly copied without any hitches.
2. Security: WordPress Security Myths vs Reality
Security is a huge concern for a nonprofit website because 43% of cyber-attacks are directed at small businesses and nonprofits.
Therefore, since donor information, volunteer information, and financial transactions are processed on your site, proper security measures need to be incorporated. However, most nonprofit managers frequently get caught up in myths about WordPress security.
The Myth:
“WordPress is inherently insecure.”
This is a common misconception. While WordPress is widely used as CMS, it is attacked by hackers because it is widely used – not because it’s inherently insecure.
The Reality:
WordPress is only as secure as the measures you have put in place. It is not vulnerable to hacking if updated frequently and with the right plugins. For instance, the Wordfence or Sucuri plugins create firewall protection in addition to malware scanning and brute-force attack prevention.
The Solution:
After migration, ensure your WordPress installation, including themes and plugins, is fully updated. Enable two-factor authentication for administrators, utilize secure socket layer (SSL) certificates for encrypted data transfer, and regularly back up your site.
By using reliable security plugins, you can lock down your site and prevent data breaches, ensuring that your donor and volunteer information remains safe.
3. Customization Needs: WordPress Can Be as Simple or Powerful as Your Nonprofit Requires
Customization is often a top concern for nonprofits exploring WordPress. Many wonder if the platform can truly accommodate their specific goals and operations. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 73% of people expect organizations to understand and cater to their individual needs and expectations.
Fortunately, WordPress has risen to the challenge. Its flexible architecture supports nonprofits of all sizes—from small community-based charities to global organizations—offering the tools and integrations needed to build tailored, mission-driven digital experiences.
The Problem:
Many nonprofits worry that WordPress’s templates may be too simplistic to support their complex operations—such as managing custom donation forms, event calendars, or integrating with external databases.
The Solution:
WordPress has a vast ecosystem of plugins and themes that allow for extensive customization.
GiveWP, a popular WordPress donation plugin, allows nonprofits to create custom donation forms that can integrate with payment processors like PayPal and Stripe, ensuring that you receive donations quickly and securely.
Similarly, plugins like The Events Calendar allow for easy integration of event management tools into your site.
Moreover, WordPress themes like Astra or Divi offer highly customizable designs that can be tailored to any nonprofit’s mission. With these tools, WordPress can be transformed into a powerful platform to meet any nonprofit’s needs—whether you’re managing events, accepting donations, or organizing volunteer opportunities.
Break Free from Limitations With WordPress
Your nonprofit’s mission is too important to be limited by outdated technology.
Thus, migrating to WordPress means saying goodbye to technical frustrations and hello to a platform designed for impact. With intuitive tools, unmatched customization, and a supportive global community, WordPress empowers your team to focus on what truly matters; making a difference.
From secure donations to seamless event management, every feature works toward amplifying your cause.
So why wait?
The future of digital engagement is flexible, affordable, and built for you.