Show donors the charity number before you ask for a gift

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Donors are told to check a charity before they give, so a registered charity's number belongs on the site in plain text, and gifts go through a secure page run by an established giving platform. After that, a charity, nonprofit or church site mostly needs to stay current: volunteer sign-up, events, service times and a Watch live link.

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Put the charity number where a donor can check it

The Canada Revenue Agency tells donors to check an unfamiliar charity on its List of charities before giving, and to make sure the payment page is secure. The list shows whether a charity is registered or has been revoked, annulled, suspended or penalized, along with its contact details, its activities and the financial figures from its last five T3010 returns.

The list can be searched by name or by the nine-digit business number, and when a donor cannot find a charity, the CRA tells them to ask the organization for its registration number or the name the CRA has on file. Your website can answer that before anyone has to ask. The CRA requires the full number on every official donation receipt; showing it on the website as well is for the donor's benefit. The registration number, nine digits, the letters RR and four more digits, goes in plain text in the footer, on the Donate page and on the About page, beside the registered name and a link to your CRA listing. If the name people use is different from the registered one, both appear. Google's Ad Grants website policy suggests the same: show the registration number or an annual report.

The About page then carries what a donor looks for next:

Your mission, in two sentences a stranger understands
The programs you run, each with its own page if people search for it
Your board or leadership, by name
Your annual report, with the main figures written on the page rather than only inside a PDF
How to reach the office, and the hours someone answers

Who issues the tax receipt, and who touches the money

Only a registered charity or another qualified donee, such as a registered Canadian amateur athletic association, can issue official donation receipts for income tax. An ordinary nonprofit or community group cannot, so its Donate page takes gifts without mentioning tax receipts, and I will not write one that promises them.

The Donate page is a page of its own, secure and used for nothing else, which hands the payment to an established giving platform. Neither I nor the website ever handles a donation: the platform takes the card, pays the money to your organization and handles the receipt. Its fees go to the platform, not to me, and they change, so confirm them on its pricing page before the board decides.

What goes into it:

CanadaHelps, itself a registered charity, offers donation forms a charity can place on its own website, with no upfront or monthly fee. In September 2026 the forms cost 3.75% of each one-time gift and 3.5% of each monthly gift, card costs included, and donors could choose to cover that fee on top of their gift. The tax receipt for a gift made through CanadaHelps is issued by CanadaHelps itself
If you use CanadaHelps, sign up for electronic funds transfer: donations then arrive in your bank account weekly rather than as one cheque each April
Zeffy accepts Canadian nonprofits that are not registered charities, as long as they have a bank account in the organization's name, which suits associations and community groups. For a registered charity it issues CRA receipts once you enter your registration number and an electronic signature
Zeffy charges the organization nothing. Instead, at the payment step, donors are asked for an optional contribution to Zeffy, which they do not have to give. Your donors will see that request, and the board should know it before choosing
A monthly option beside the one-time gift, because a board plans around steady income

Volunteers, events, service times and the livestream

Volunteer sign-up is a short form: name, how to reach them, when they are free and what they would like to do. It reaches whoever coordinates volunteers by email, with no accounts or passwords for anyone to manage. If you recruit for the same roles all year, each role can have its own page, so a search for that kind of volunteering has something specific to find.

Events get a plain list with the date, time, place, parking and whether the building is accessible. A public event at a real venue, such as a fundraiser dinner or a charity run, can also have a page of its own, because Google's events display only uses pages about a single event. That page carries Event structured data: the name, the start date, the venue and its street address. For events open to the public, that is what makes them eligible for the events display in English-language Google Search in Canada. Google's rules leave out members-only and online-only events, and say regular hours must not be marked up as events, so weekly service times stay as plain text. Eligible is as far as anyone can promise; Google decides what it shows.

For a faith community, the homepage leads with service times, the address and a Watch live link to the stream you already run on YouTube or Facebook, and past services link to the recordings rather than the site hosting the video. The music in that stream falls under the church's own licensing, such as CCLI's Streaming Licence, which extends a Church Copyright Licence to online worship; that licence is yours to hold, and a website cannot provide it. Keep the service times on your Google Business Profile identical to the site's, and when they change for a holiday or the summer, change both on the same day.

Does the AODA apply to your website?

If your organization has 50 or more employees, yes. Since January 1, 2021, Ontario's AODA has required businesses and nonprofits of that size to make their public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA, for content published after January 1, 2012, with live captions and pre-recorded audio descriptions exempt. Captions on recorded video are not exempt, which matters if you upload sermons, talks or event videos. The duty stays with the organization that controls the website, directly or through a contract, even when someone else builds it.

Under 50 employees the rule does not apply, but the same basics serve an older congregation and a donor on a phone equally: text with enough contrast, alt text on every photo, a site that works from a keyboard, and captions on video. The free audit runs Google Lighthouse, which includes automated accessibility checks among others, but that is not a WCAG 2.0 AA conformance review, and I do not offer one. If your organization has 50 or more employees, have an accessibility specialist review the site before launch.

What the board will ask: cost, ownership and Google Ad Grants

The prices are the published ones: a one-time $499 for one to three pages, $899 for four to six, or $1,399 for seven to ten, in Canadian dollars. There is no monthly bill unless you choose a Care plan, from $49 a month and cancellable anytime. Hosting is free, and the only running cost is the domain, $15 to $25 a year to the registrar. Before anyone approves spending, the free homepage preview gives the board a real page to look at, with nothing signed. I live in London and meet organizations here and in nearby towns in person; charities elsewhere in Canada work with me remotely.

When a volunteer registers the domain in their own account and later moves on, the organization can lose the address printed on every bulletin and poster. So the domain is registered to the organization, the site files belong to the organization, and edits can go through a Care plan instead of one person's spare evenings. If you already have an older volunteer-built site, its content can be carried into the new build and the address kept, provided someone at the organization can still log in to the registrar.

Google Ad Grants gives qualifying nonprofits up to US$10,000 a month in search advertising, and unused credit does not carry over. The organization has to qualify first: in Canada that means Google for Nonprofits access, open to CRA-registered charities and certain other nonprofits verified through Goodstack. Then the website has to meet Google's policy. The build covers the technical part: a domain you own, HTTPS on every page, fast pages and a donate link that reaches a working, secure page used only for donations. The rest comes from the content: a plain statement of your mission and what you do, a significant amount of original writing about it on web pages rather than in PDFs, and links that still work a year later. That is hard to show on a single page. Whether you are accepted is Google's decision, and I do not run Ad Grants accounts.

What each page is for

Page	The search it answers
Donate	donate to a London food bank, monthly giving, give online
Volunteer	volunteer opportunities in London, weekend volunteering
Events	community events this weekend, fundraiser dinner, charity run
Service times and Watch live	Sunday service times, what time is mass, watch the service live
About and charity number	[your name] charity number, who runs it, annual report
Programs	each program by name: after-school club, food hampers, ESL classes

Questions people ask

What will the board need to budget?

A one-time $499 for one to three pages, $899 for four to six, or $1,399 for seven to ten, in Canadian dollars, with free hosting on every plan. The prices are the published ones, so a treasurer can put a number in the budget from this page. The only running cost is the domain name, $15 to $25 a year.

Can our website take donations with tax receipts?

Yes, if your organization is a registered charity or another qualified donee. For a registered charity, the Donate page hands off to a platform such as CanadaHelps or Zeffy, which takes the payment, sends the money to you and handles the official receipt. I never handle donations. A nonprofit that is not a registered charity or other qualified donee can take gifts, but cannot issue tax receipts.

Who keeps the website up to date after launch?

A Care plan can do it for you. Care is $49 a month for up to thirty minutes of edits, such as new service times, event listings and photos, made within two business days, plus checks that the forms and the site are working. Care Plus is $99 a month for up to an hour. Both can be cancelled anytime.

What should a church website include?

A church website needs service times, the address and parking on the homepage, and a Watch live link to the stream you already run. After that comes a short page on what a first visit is like: how long the service lasts, what to wear, what there is for children and which entrance is step-free. Then how to reach the office, and when someone answers.

We already use CanadaHelps. Can the new website keep it?

Yes. The Donate page can link to your CanadaHelps charity profile or carry a CanadaHelps donation form on your own site. The form was the cheaper route in September 2026: 3.75% of a one-time gift and 3.5% of a monthly gift, against 4.5% and 4% through the profile page, with card costs included in all of them. Check CanadaHelps' pricing page for current figures.