An established Gainesville nonprofit had a WordPress website that was 6 years old, not mobile friendly, and had not been updated in over two years. The site failed Core Web Vitals on mobile, looked dated against the modern sites of comparable nonprofits, and had no donation infrastructure beyond a single static button linking to a third-party processor.

Donor communications were sent manually from the executive director's personal Gmail account with no list management, no automation, and no analytics. The organization had a strong community presence — but no digital infrastructure to match it. Online giving represented under 10% of total annual donations despite the nonprofit's active community engagement.

The board's development committee had identified the technology gap as a priority for the new fiscal year and tasked the executive director with finding a partner who could deliver both a website rebuild and a working email program at a budget that respected nonprofit constraints.

Simply IT rebuilt the website on a modern, mobile-first framework eligible for Microsoft nonprofit pricing — significantly reducing the cost compared to standard commercial development. The new site featured donation integration with proper recurring gift options, an event calendar tied to email signups, volunteer signup forms, and impact storytelling throughout.

The email marketing program was launched in parallel — a properly segmented donor list imported from the existing manual contacts, a monthly newsletter template designed to match the new brand, an automated 3-email donor welcome sequence, and event campaign automation tied to the website calendar.

Staff training was provided on managing both the website content and the email campaigns so the organization could maintain its own day-to-day operations while Simply IT handled hosting, maintenance, and quarterly strategic reviews.

Online donation volume increased 180% in the first year following the website launch, validating the investment in modern donation infrastructure with proper recurring gift options. The new mobile-first design also recovered the donors who had been failing to complete giving on the old non-mobile site.

The email list grew from 340 to 1,100 subscribers in 8 months — primarily through the new website signup forms tied to event registrations and content downloads. The monthly newsletter consistently achieved a 42% open rate, significantly above the 26% average for nonprofits.

Volunteer signup form submissions rose 95% in the first 6 months post-launch. The website was delivered at approximately 60% below standard commercial development cost through Microsoft nonprofit pricing eligibility. Simply IT continues to host and maintain the site and provide ongoing email marketing support.