Website Design for an NGO in Lebanon

An NGO website in Lebanon is donor-trust infrastructure, not a brochure. It has to convince three audiences at once — institutional donors doing due diligence, individual and diaspora givers deciding where their year-end contribution goes, and the beneficiaries and partners trying to find your programs — and it has to keep working after the consultant who ordered it has left. Furrsati's price list shows a small website at typically $350 to $900, a WordPress build at $700 to $1,800, website copy at $30 to $150 per page, and professional translation at $0.04 to $0.12 per word.

The timing matters: a large share of annual giving decisions — grant renewals included — land in the last quarter of the year, and a site that goes live in December is a site that missed the conversation. This guide covers what the site must carry, in which languages, and how to structure the build so your team can run it afterwards.

What an NGO website has to do

A commercial website sells; an NGO website proves. Every page is read by someone deciding whether to trust you with money, a partnership, or their community's data:

• Donors and grantmakers check governance: registration, board, annual reports, financial transparency, and whether your claimed impact is backed by something downloadable.
• Individual and diaspora givers check legitimacy fast: real photos of real programs, a named team, a working contact, and a donation route that does not look improvised.
• Beneficiaries and local partners check access: where you work, what programs run, how to reach you — often in Arabic, often on a phone.
• Recruits and vendors check stability: job openings, procurement notices, a sense that the organization outlives the current project cycle.

Design follows from this. The site should feel institutional without feeling cold, load on a Lebanese mobile connection, and put proof above promotion on every page.

The pages that carry donor trust

The minimum set that survives due diligence:

• Home — the mission in one sentence a donor could repeat, what you do, where, and the two buttons that matter: Donate and Contact.
• Programs — one page per program area: what it does, who it serves, where, and current status.
• About and governance — history, team with names, board, registration number, and partners. This is the page due-diligence officers open first.
• Impact and reports — annual reports as downloadable PDFs, figures with their year attached, and real photography. Claims without dates read as decoration.
• News — even four entries a year signal a living organization.
• Contact — address, map, phone, WhatsApp, and a form that lands in an inbox someone checks.
• Donate — its own page, never a corner of Home.

The words on these pages do as much work as the design. Furrsati's price list shows website copy at typically $30 to $150 per page, and if you publish beneficiary stories or handle sensitive program data in what you brief writers with, the guide to NGOs hiring freelance translators and writers covers consent and data protection properly; this guide does not repeat it. For the donation page itself, accepting cards online in Lebanon has its own guide — and most NGO donate pages also list bank transfer details, because institutional donors rarely give by card.

Which languages the site runs in

Your three audiences do not read the same language: beneficiaries and local authorities in Arabic, institutional donors and UN-adjacent partners in English or French, diaspora givers across all three. The guide to choosing website languages in Lebanon covers how to decide what gets translated fully versus summarised. Budget-wise, professional Arabic–English translation runs typically $0.04 to $0.12 per word on Furrsati's price list — an eight-page site is a contained cost — and impact stories deserve a human translator, because a machine-translated beneficiary quote is a trust liability dressed as a saving.

Rebuild or redesign

If you already have a site with history, the question is not aesthetic. A redesign keeps the domain, the URLs and whatever standing you have with search engines; a rebuild is right when the current site runs on a dead platform, cannot be updated by your own team, or does not work on phones. Before anyone touches an existing site that gets organic traffic, read how to redesign a website without losing Google rankings — losing a donor-facing page to a careless redirect costs more than the redesign.

Platform choice and domain

Two routes cover most NGOs:

• WordPress — typically $700 to $1,800 on Furrsati's price list. The reason NGOs choose it is the answer to "who updates the site after launch": your communications officer publishes news, edits program pages and uploads reports without a developer, once the handover includes training.
• A small custom website — typically $350 to $900. Right for organizations that need presence and proof but change content rarely; updates then go through whoever built it, so factor in ongoing care at typically $40 to $200 a month.

On the domain, .lb reads local and institutional while .com travels better with diaspora and international donors — the domain choice guide walks through the trade-off. And whoever you brief, the web developer hiring checklist is the document that separates real proposals from vague ones.

What it costs

From Furrsati's price catalog, as guides rather than quotes:

• Small website: $350 to $900 per project — a few pages, mobile-ready, contact and donation routes wired.
• WordPress website: $700 to $1,800 per project — a site your team can update, with the theme, plugins and training included as agreed.
• Website copy: $30 to $150 per page.
• Translation (Arabic–English): $0.04 to $0.12 per word.
• Ongoing maintenance and care: typically $40 to $200 a month, depending on what the site runs on.

A full trilingual rebuild of an eight-page site with professional copy and translation stays a four-figure budget — and usually the build is the smaller half of the project, while the words are the larger one.

Hiring and paying safely

Cut the work into milestones a program team can each verify: sitemap and brief agreed, design approved, content loaded in the primary language, other languages added, then launch with handover — access transferred to your organization's own accounts, and training for whoever will publish afterwards. Never fund "the whole website" as one milestone, and make sure the domain and hosting are registered to the organization, not to the freelancer, before launch day.

Furrsati removes the risk on payment. You post your project and compare proposals. You fund each milestone before work on it begins, your card is charged when you fund it, and Furrsati holds the money until you approve the work. If you do nothing, it is released automatically 10 days after delivery, and you get a reminder 2 days before; request a revision or open a dispute to stop that. The service fee comes off the freelancer's side, so only the card processing fee is added to your bill, and paying from your Furrsati wallet balance carries none. Freelancers verify their identity before they can withdraw. Payouts reach the freelancer inside Lebanon by OMT, Whish, bank transfer or USDT.

Your next step

Write the one-page brief first: audiences, page list, languages, who publishes after launch, and what proof material already exists (reports, photos, registration documents). Then find a WordPress developer on Furrsati if your team will run the site, or a small-website builder if it mainly has to exist and hold still. The words are their own line items: a website copywriter drafts the pages, and an Arabic–English translator makes them read natively in both.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an NGO website cost in Lebanon?

Furrsati's price list shows a small website at typically $350 to $900 and a WordPress build — the usual choice when your own team will publish updates — at $700 to $1,800. Professional copy adds $30 to $150 per page and translation $0.04 to $0.12 per word. The platform decision matters more than the sticker: WordPress costs more upfront and saves the per-update cost afterwards.

Should the site be in Arabic, English and French?

Publish in the languages your audiences actually read: Arabic for beneficiaries and local authorities, English or French for institutional donors, and whatever your diaspora donors live in. You do not have to translate everything into everything — the language choice guide covers full translation versus summary, and translation at $0.04 to $0.12 per word makes the core pages affordable in two or three languages.

Can we accept donations online in Lebanon?

Yes, and the donate page deserves its own guide-level treatment: card acceptance is covered in accepting online card payments in Lebanon, and most NGOs also list bank transfer details on the same page because institutional and diaspora gifts often move that way. The page should also state what the donor receives — a receipt, a report — in one honest line.

Who updates the site after launch?

Whoever you decide now, and it should shape the platform choice. A WordPress build hands publishing to your communications officer after training in the handover milestone; a small custom site usually goes back to its builder, with ongoing care at typically $40 to $200 a month. Put the training and the transfer of accounts into the brief before proposals arrive, not after launch.

Should we redesign our old site or rebuild it?

If the current site gets organic traffic — donors searching your name, grants pages ranking — redesign around it and keep the URLs; this guide covers doing it without losing rankings. Rebuild when the platform underneath is dead, when nothing works on phones, or when your team cannot update a single sentence without outside help.