4 min read · 416 Strategy
Especially for organizations with multiple programs, audiences, or partnership paths.
Many nonprofits have grown beyond a simple, single-audience organization. They serve multiple populations, run multiple programs, and want to engage multiple types of supporters — donors, volunteers, church partners, businesses, and foundations. But most of their websites still assume a single visitor type. The homepage tries to serve everyone and ends up orienting no one. A "Start Here" page is the structural fix: a single entry point that helps every visitor type quickly find what's relevant to them.
A Start Here page is not a site map and not a tour. It's a brief orientation that answers: "What is this organization, and which part of it is relevant to me?" It typically includes a two-to-three sentence explanation of what the organization does, two to four audience paths (donor, volunteer, church, partner), a brief description of what each path includes, and a link that takes each visitor type to their most relevant content. In under 60 seconds, a new visitor should know exactly where to go next.
A Start Here page is especially valuable for: organizations with multiple programs that serve different populations, organizations that engage very different types of supporters (e.g., individual donors, churches, corporations), organizations that have grown significantly and whose old homepage structure no longer matches their current scope, and organizations that consistently get the same orientation questions in emails and calls. If you're spending time in every conversation explaining how the pieces fit together, a Start Here page is doing that work at scale.
A Start Here page doesn't need to be elaborate. Write two to three sentences about the organization. List your two to four primary audience types. Write two sentences describing what each type of visitor would find most valuable. Link to the relevant page or section. Add one image of real people from your work. That's it. Publish it. Link to it from your homepage navigation and from any outreach where someone might be encountering you for the first time. Then refine it based on what questions you still get.
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