Giving a first-time charity event something to point people at
The Endo Gala · Charity event for endometriosis awareness and research · theendogala.com
The Endo Gala raised £11,453.67 for endometriosis awareness and research.
It was a first-time event, which is a harder problem than it sounds. Nobody had been to one before. There were no photos from last year, no reviews, no reputation to trade on. Just an ask: buy a ticket for a thing that does not exist yet, or donate to people you have not met.
The actual problem: a stranger deciding in thirty seconds
Almost all the traffic came from social media, which means almost every visitor arrived on a phone, from a post, knowing nothing. They had one question, even if they would not have put it this way: is this real?
That is the question a first-time charity event has to answer before anything else. Not what the cause is, not what the evening involves. Whether the whole thing is legitimate enough to hand over money to.
Plenty of good causes lose people at exactly that point. The event is genuine, the team are working hard, and the online presence is a social media page and a payment link, which looks indistinguishable from something that is not genuine at all.
What the site had to do
It had to look established when the event was not. That meant treating it as a proper website rather than a poster: the cause explained clearly, the evening described, the people behind it visible, and the practical details easy to find.
Everything was built around two actions, buying a ticket and donating, reachable from anywhere on the site without either of them interrupting the story. Somebody who has just been convinced should never have to go looking for the button.
It was built mobile-first because the traffic was mobile, not as a box-ticking exercise. A donation page that is awkward on a phone is a donation page that does not get used.
Being straight about what a website did here
The money was raised by Molly Woodward, the team around her, the supporters who bought tickets, and the event itself. That is where the credit sits, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.
What the website did was narrower and worth naming precisely: it gave all of that something credible to point at. Every post, every share, every conversation with a potential sponsor ended at a link, and what sat behind that link decided whether a stranger took the event seriously.
That is what a website is for in a case like this. Not to do the work, but to stop the work leaking away at the moment somebody is deciding whether to trust you.
What it looked like
The design stayed deliberately restrained. A formal event about a serious medical condition does not want a busy website, and a charity site that looks expensive raises a different question in a donor's mind. Clean typography, plenty of space, a palette that suited the evening.
Results
- £11,453.67 raised for endometriosis research
- A first-time event with no track record given a credible online presence to point supporters and sponsors at
- Fundraising driven by Molly Woodward, the wider team, supporters and the event itself, with the website providing the credibility behind every link
- Built mobile-first, because nearly all the traffic arrived from social media on a phone
- One clear route from finding out about the cause to buying a ticket or donating
If you are running an event, a fundraiser or anything else that lives or dies on strangers trusting it quickly, the website is doing one job above all others: making you look like what you actually are. That is worth getting right before the ticket link goes out, not after.
The Endo Gala was a custom build. If you need something smaller, the Starter plan is a managed one page site from £20 a month, which is often exactly right for a single event.