The wrong decision will likely cost your organization more money in the long run. Not to mention diminished staff morale and possibly lead to higher turnover. It might even hurt the trust your community has in your organization.

Our founder has been on both sides of this equation. From the agency side, they’ve seen clients make the wrong decision and have to deal with delivery delays that affect their work and other projects. As a board member and volunteer, they’ve seen this process from our clients’ perspectives. There are many pitfalls for executive directors to avoid in order to make the right decision for their organization. They’ve also seen the knock on effects of making the wrong agency choice play out for many years after the initial website redesign project is completed.

There are a few factors to consider in addition to the basics like overall reliability, capabilities, and website platform and tools expertise.

Look for genuine nonprofit experience

There’s a difference between an agency that has done a handful of nonprofit projects mixed in with clients from other sectors, and one that has built its practice around working with clients exclusively in the nonprofit sector. While there are some similarities between all clients, nonprofit organizations come with unique challenges and dynamics.

Not least of all is the complexity of stakeholder landscape involved. Between boards of directors, donors, volunteers, staff, and communities they serve, nonprofit stakeholder engagement and management is just more complex. Add to this communication teams that consistently wear many hats with limited capacity before they take on the additional work of being engaged in a website redesign process. Project management with nonprofit clients requires more proactive engagement and agility.

The agency you work with should have experience with and process for working with these realities. An agency that works primarily with nonprofits will have developed an approach that accounts for this.

They’ll know how to run a discovery process that optimizes stakeholder engagement and builds buy-in. How to pace a project around the realities of working with teams already at capacity. And how to build a site that staff members can easily maintain after launch without requiring additional technical expertise.

When you’re reviewing an agency’s portfolio, look for depth of nonprofit experience, not just checked box of some past nonprofit clients.

Better yet, see if they’ve worked with nonprofits similar to yours (for example, activist groups) working within your issue area (for example, gender equity). Similar kinds of nonprofits working within similar issue areas will have further, nuanced similarities.

Ask how they approach accessibility

Depending on your location and organization size, accessibility might be a legal requirement. But even if it isn’t (or it isn’t yet), it’s also a question of value-alignment for most nonprofits. If your organization specifically serves people with disabilities, of course, having an accessible website should be your top priority. But even if serving people with disabilities isn’t central to your mission, if equity and inclusion are — then accessibility is an implied value that your organization needs to embody across all touchpoints with your audiences. To take it one step further, the more accessible your website is the higher its audience reach. So, having an accessible website is smart from the perspective of effectively serving your mission by reaching the widest possible audience. It’s both values-aligned and makes business sense.

Ask every agency you’re considering how they approach accessibility. A strong answer will be specific. It will mention WCAG compliance standards, explain how accessibility is integrated into the design and development process (not added in at the end), and, ideally, extend to how they train your team to maintain accessibility after launch.

An answer that heavily relies on tools that improve accessibility like accessibility plugins and overlays indicates a lack of true accessibility expertise. A vague answer that doesn’t go into details should also give you pause. An answer of “oh accessibility was a fad a few years ago but isn’t important anymore” is a red flag, run. (Yes, this is an actual answer an agency once gave to our founder in their role as a board member evaluating proposal submissions.)

An agency that treats accessibility as a genuine priority, rather than a checklist item, will save you significant cost and reputational risk down the road.

Ask about performance and security

Even if you don’t have IT-level knowledge of these topics, you can still ask great questions and get a feel for an agency’s level of care and experience with these important website aspects.

A beautiful but slow website will cost you visitors, event registration and attendance, donors and so on. And it will negatively affect your organization’s brand as a whole. A security breach can cost you audience trust not to mention carry legal consequences depending on the data stored on your website. These are real organizational risks that belong in the same conversation as budget and timeline.

Some great questions to ask are:

• How do you approach site performance, and what does a fast-loading result look like in practice?

• How do you handle security for client sites?

• What are your standards for software/platform updates, backups, and data handling?

• What’s your approach to third-party tools and plugins that might introduce vulnerabilities?

Thoughtful answers will be clear, principled, and easy to understand without advanced technical knowledge. An agency that welcomes these questions and takes time to answer them with care will likely answer other technical questions that will come up during your work with them the same way. An agency that treats these questions as afterthoughts is a liability.

Look for branding design capabilities

While you might be looking for a strong website design and development team, it can be extremely helpful to work with an agency that also has branding design capabilities. We’ve rarely worked on a website redesign project that doesn’t have at least some degree of branding design component. It might not be a full brand redesign but more of a light refresh or extension to what’s already in your brand package. If your organization has evolved enough to need a new website, it probably needs a brand update as well.

You can certainly work with a dedicated branding agency first, then bring their work to your web design agency. But this process can be significantly streamlined if both mandates are managed by the same team.

Ask directly:

• What are their branding design capabilities?

• How often do they take on branding projects?

• Do they offer full brand redesign services as well as light refreshing?

• Who will be the brand designer for your project and what is the agency’s relationship with them?

• What branded collaterals can they create?

• What does the branding design process look like in detail?

• How does brand design fit in with the web design process?

While not strictly required, working with a team that’s comfortable and experienced with branding design will offer more flexibility to the entire website design process. It also allows for your new website to more accurately communicate your organization’s evolution in a visual way.

Evaluate their process

Along with knowing that an agency can produce great work you also want to get an idea of what it’s like to be their client.

Ask about the steps that will get you to each deliverable. How many rounds of revisions are included? How do you give feedback and how are decisions made and documented? How are disagreements managed? What does handoff and training look like at the end of the project?

What you’re looking for is whether this will be a collaborative experience where you’re working together with your chosen agency with plenty of touchpoints built in. You’re also looking for an agency that isn’t afraid to disagree with you in a respectful and calm way, and will push back on your ideas when they have a better solution, rather than just saying yes to everything. Finally, you’re looking for one that treats the launch of your website as a beginning, not a finish line. Because your team will be managing and growing your website for years after its launch.

Pay attention to what working with them feels like

Speaking of working with your website for years to come, you might be working with your chosen agency well beyond the initial launch of your website. Even if you don’t, a standard website redesign is, at a minimum, a six-to-twelve month working relationship. You’ll be in regular meetings with the agency’s team, navigating feedback cycles and deadlines. And you will definitely have discussions about best approaches and solutions. This experience can be an invigorating process rooted in solidarity that leaves your team feeling heard, supported, and empowered. Or it can be daunting, draining, and demoralizing. A lot depends on how the agency communicates and shows up day-to-day.

This isn’t about finding your new besties. It’s about assessing if the agency’s team feels like a natural extension of your project team. Whether they are collaborative or transactional. Whether they are clear, open, transparent, and proactive communicators. Whether they’ll be your equal, invested teammates or just task-executors.

Pay attention to not just the answers they give you throughout the evaluation process but also to how they handle your questions. This is a preview of what it will be like to work with them.

Some practical things to look for are:

• Do they listen carefully, take time to understand your perspectives?

• Do they ask thoughtful questions?

• Do they take time to answer your questions fully, directly, and clearly?

• Do they follow-up with action items and/or notes after calls?

• Are they transparent when something is complicated or needs further review?

The way an agency behaves when they’re trying to win your business is usually the best version of how they’ll behave once they have it.

Understand who will actually be doing the work

Of course, this assumes that the people involved in the pre-project conversations with you are the same people you’ll be working with. This isn’t always the case. Many mid-to-large sized agencies will have senior staff lead proposal conversations, then hand the project off to junior staff. In order to evaluate whether an agency will be a good match for your team, you need to know who you’ll be working with day-to-day.

Ask directly:

• Who will be the designer on this project?

• Who will be the developer?

• Who will be the project manager?

• Will you be working with those people throughout, or will there be handoffs?

• Can you meet them before committing?

Smaller agencies tend to offer more continuity. The people in the room during the evaluation process are often the people building your site. That consistency matters. It means growing shared project understanding from the very start, without anything getting lost in handoffs.

Think about values alignment

Value alignment is just as important as budget, timeline, and process considerations. You will be making significant decisions together and relying on the agency team to guide that decision-making process.

An agency whose values align with yours will be more likely to ask the right questions. They will understand the stakes of getting it right for your community. And they will approach decisions with genuine care. The outcome is a website that doesn’t just state your values but also embodies them throughout.

To assess values alignment look at how an agency talks about their work, who they choose to work with, and what their clients and collaborators say about them. Speaking to references is a great way to get extra insight into an agency’s lived values.