The Short Answer

Donors check three things: that you are a real registered charity, that the money reaches the cause and what happens if something goes wrong. Most of those checks do not end on your website. They end on the register of charities, in your signed accounts and with the fundraising complaints route. A charity website earns a gift by sending donors to those records and agreeing with what they find there.

A donor who checks is not reading your homepage. They are comparing it with something you do not control.

The NGO website section checklist lists what each donor-facing section carries. This post is about the checks behind those sections, and where each one sends the donor.

How the Public Checks a Charity

The Charity Commission's Public Trust in Charities 2026 surveyed 4,681 people in England and Wales in January 2026 and asked how they would check that a charity was real. The register of charities was the most common answer, at 52%, down from 56% in 2025. Looking at the charity's own website came next, at 45%.

That is what people say they would do, not a measure of what donors did before a gift. It still describes the shape of the check. The website is one place a donor looks and the register is the other, and a donor who uses both is comparing them. The report's focus groups described the same routine in their own words: look the charity up online, check the register, check that it has a charity number.

So the question for the website is not how persuasive it is. It is whether what it says survives being checked.

Is It Real?

The register of charities shows what a charity does, its trustees, its income and expenditure and any action the Commission has taken against it. Charities registered in Scotland appear on OSCR's register and those in Northern Ireland on the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland's. Whatever your website says, the register is the version a donor can check without asking you.

The website's part is small and exact:

  • The registered name and number, as registered. In the footer of every page and on the donation page itself, not only on an About page the donor may never open.
  • A link to the register entry. A number is something to copy into a search box. A link takes the donor straight to the record and shows you expected them to look. I would put it beside the number wherever the number appears.
  • The statement that you are a registered charity on the pages that ask for money. It comes from section 39 of the Charities Act 2011, and it is narrower than most trustees assume: what UK charities must publish sets out who it applies to and what it does not require.
  • The same name at the point of payment. If the gift goes through a hosted payment page or a trading subsidiary, the page should say whose account the money reaches and why.

A mismatch is the finding. A trading name in the footer, a different spelling on the register, a number left over from before a merger: none is wrong in itself, and each costs a donor a moment of doubt the site could have answered.

Does the Money Reach the Cause?

In the same research, most of the money going directly to the cause was the most chosen driver of trust in a charity. It is the question a donor brings to your spending page, and it is the one most easily answered badly. How to build that page without misleading anyone is covered in where your money goes: from the accounts the trustees signed, for a named year, with the full accounts linked.

The check a donor can make here is a comparison. The register carries your income and expenditure for recent years, so a page showing an old year, or a ratio the accounts cannot reproduce, fails in front of anyone who opens both.

A donor asking whether the money reaches the cause is also asking whether it does any good. Outcome figures belong beside the method that produced them, so that the impact claim can be checked the same way as the spending.

What If Something Goes Wrong?

A careful donor looks for the way out before they go in: how to get a refund, how to complain and who to go to if the charity does not answer. The Code of Fundraising Practice, a regulatory code rather than statute, requires "a clear and publicly available fundraising complaints procedure" (rule 2.3.1). How to structure that procedure, and where a donor escalates it, is set out in complaints and speak-up routes.

For the donor, the useful version is two links in the right places. The complaints route belongs on the donation page and in the receipt, not only in the footer. And a short donor help page can answer receipts, Gift Aid, refunds and payment security before anyone has to write in. Every question answered there is one fewer email to a small team.

Is It Safe?

Where the work involves children, adults at risk or programmes overseas, a donor may reasonably ask how the charity protects the people it serves. The Charity Commission's safeguarding guidance says a charity's policies for protecting people should be "available to the public".

The donor's check is simple: is there a policy, is there a named lead and is there a way to report a concern that does not go through the person concerned. A page that answers those three, with a lead who is still in post, passes the check. A policy PDF with no route to report a concern does not. What the page has to let people do, and how to handle the report route, is in what a safeguarding page should let people do.

The Checks at the Form

The last checks happen on the donation form itself, and they are about the donor's own position rather than the charity's.

  • Gift Aid. HMRC's guidance sets what a declaration must contain, not its wording, and publishes no official form. A declaration is only valid if the charity has explained the donor's tax position, so that explanation has to reach the donor, on the form or beside it, rather than sit in small print elsewhere.
  • Contact. What the donor is agreeing to hear from you. The charity soft opt-in, which the ICO says commenced on 5 February 2026, still needs a simple way to refuse at the point the details are collected.
  • Monthly gifts. How to change or cancel without phoning, and the Direct Debit Guarantee, which gives the payer a full and immediate refund of any payment taken in error.

The mechanics of each field are in form design for nonprofit websites. How much the page can say depends on the platform, which the donation software comparison covers. What happens after the gift belongs to the thank-you page, and to the returning donor's journey: someone who has made these checks once will notice what has changed the next time.

One Set of Facts, Many Places

The facts a donor checks appear in more places than anyone maintains together: the register, the footer, the donation page, the hosted payment page, the receipt email and the thank-you page. They drift apart because different people own them.

Take a hypothetical case. The trustees file new accounts and appoint a new safeguarding lead in the same month. The spending page is the web team's, the safeguarding page belongs to operations and the receipt email, which links to both, sits in the donation platform's settings under a login nobody has used since launch. Nothing on the site is false. Two pages are now out of date, and a donor who puts the spending page beside the register sees the first of them at once.

The fix is a list rather than a redesign. Name the donor-facing facts (registered name, number, register link, the year of the accounts on the spending page, the complaints route, the safeguarding lead), give each one a source and an owner, and check the list whenever the accounts are filed or the donation platform changes.

A donor is not asking your website to be convincing. They are asking it to be checkable, and to agree with the record when they check. Persuasion asks for trust. A link to the record earns it.

Further Reading

What This Post Does Not Cover

This is about the website: what a donor can check on it, where it sends them and who keeps it true. It is written for charities in England and Wales, with the Scottish and Northern Irish registers noted. It is not legal or tax advice, and whether your Gift Aid declaration, marketing consent or registered-status statement meets the rules is a question for your own adviser. It does not cover fundraising copy or conversion, or the route a US taxpayer needs to give tax-effectively.