[Blog](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog)/Strategy/Digital Infrastructure # We're Not a "Non-profit Agency". That's Exactly Why We're Good for Non-profits. Why Paper Crane works with non-profits, and how our private-sector CRO, software, and cost-cutting background helps them convert, own their tools, and grow. ![Headshot for Robert Simmons](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/dc73703d4de8e4c8ebcf6f903c1f59bf3b645228-400x400.png) [Robert Simmons](https://www.papercrane.ca/team/robert-simmons) Operations September 15, 2026·8 min read ![Paper Crane origami crane carrying a seedling, on a terracotta mound.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/efe3d8628c2c4bc6edf3ffa8e4cf5ed0278c4905-1820x1024.webp) Short version: we work with non-profits because it does more than make us feel good. We do it because it's the best work we get, and because a lot of these organizations are getting fleeced by the vendors they pay to help them. Okay yeah. This may sound like a strange thing for a website development and digital transformation agency for non-profits to open with. Our competitors all lead with “we amplify your mission.” Fine. But if you run a non-profit, someone has already sold you software you didn't need at a price they set the second they heard the word “grant.” What changes when the people supporting your brand and marketing spent years in the for-profit world getting yelled at about money? ## Why we do this work The selfish reason first: this work is easier to get out of bed for. Most of what we build now has meaning to it, and we know the hours we put in today land somewhere real, whether that is resources for people living with dementia, visibility for pancreatic cancer, or supporting cooperative housing across Canada. It is harder to burn out when your Tuesday moved something for someone. The other reason, Tara puts better than I can. > “I used to tell my teams, we aren't saving lives, it's only graphic design, as a reminder that any problem can be solved. As we grew, they asked, what if, in some small way, we could save lives? That is when our focus started to shift to organizations that are good for people and planet. When people ask me, why NPOs? I say because it is enriching to be able to use our powers for good.” ![Headshot of Tara McLaughlin](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/52d3eefb5945dd276604ad10b8dddb0f0aa4ac14-670x670.jpg) [Tara Collins](https://www.papercrane.ca/team/tara-collins) Creative Director ![A calm older woman in a blue shirt against a magenta background, beside the headline 'From a death sentence to a survivable disease' and a large '10% five-year survival' figure.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/2f60b07ac09c7df8c965a9f0b7a15adf758a80a5-4800x2700.png) Our rebrand for Pancreatic Cancer North America, built on Survival, Not Sympathy. ## What's broken Three things are true about this sector, and most agencies will skip past all of them while they quote you. ### Your donors leave and don't come back Average donor retention in 2024 was [42.9%](https://afpglobal.org/news/fep-data-q4-2024-highlights-growing-role-high-dollar-donors-driving-fundraising-performance). First-time retention was around 19%, so four out of five people who give once never give again. A recurring donor, meanwhile, is worth about [$405 over their lifetime against $161 for a one-timer](https://lfgandme.com/donor-lifetime-value-strategy/). A redesign that buys you a nicer homepage and ignores the machinery that turns a first gift into a monthly one is money spent on the wrong problem. ### The software bill climbs every year The thing that gets me most is the vendors that take advantage of nonprofits, eking out every penny they can because they know the money is grant or donation funded. Blackbaud is bolting a new [1.5% fee onto online donation forms in July 2026](https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/85632/online-donor-forms-and-new-fees), on top of its roughly 2.99% processing. Classy stacks [4%, then another 2.2%, then up to 3.2% to run the card](https://charityengine.net/blog/avoid-hidden-nonprofit-fees/). Hand over $100 and six or seven dollars evaporate before any of it reaches the work. Most people signing these contracts came to do good, not to argue SaaS pricing, and the vendors know it. As long as the number fits the grant line, plenty of them price straight to the ceiling. Nobody is twirling a moustache. It happens because [only 14% of the average nonprofit tech budget goes to software and 1% to training](https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/closing-the-nonprofit-funding-gap-in-the-age-of-ai), and nobody in the room has bought enterprise software before. ### You might not own your site Then there's ownership. Your developer moved on, or folded, or still has the passwords, and now changing a phone number is a hostage negotiation. You paid for the site. You got a login and a licence. [Three in four nonprofits plan to bring in outside tech help](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/lp/state-of-nonprofit-digital-engagement/report/trend-2) this year, which is a lot of faith to hand whoever picks up the phone. Easy test: ask whether every account and all the source code will be in your name, and watch how fast they answer. ## What a for-profit brain brings to nonprofit work We work with industries beyond non-profit. That's the point. We built B2C brands, e-commerce stores, and private companies that died if they spent more than they earned. That scar tissue is the most useful thing we carry into a room with a charity. We look at a donor the way we learned to look at a customer because, for years, a number told us whether we had eaten that month. > “These days every dollar is a competition or demand for your attention. I think it is such a gift and privilege to provide the tools and resources, essentially using our art and technology powers for good to enable the financial growth of organizations truly changing people's lives.” ![Wes Headshot](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/e393713a070900e148dd539430cf282b8d2a19bf-500x500.png) [Weston Jones](https://www.papercrane.ca/team/weston-jones) Business Development So: private-sector [strategy](https://www.papercrane.ca/services/strategy) and conversion habits, pointed at organizations that count success in lives instead of units. ## The whole funnel A brand is a starting line. The work runs from a stranger's first search to a supporter's tenth year, and we can build all of it. ### Getting found, by people and AI Two places matter now: search, and whatever ChatGPT or Google's AI summary says about you when someone asks. [AI search hit 9.2% of traffic against Google in early 2026](https://www.wix.com/studio/ai-search-lab/research/ai-search-vs-google) and it keeps climbing. Most nonprofits are invisible there because their pages aren't built for a machine to quote. The fix is boring. Clean headings, straight answers to real questions, proper schema. We [wrote a whole rant about why most “AI search” advice being sold right now is snake oil](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/geo-aeo-snake-oil): GEO, AEO, whatever the acronym is this quarter, it comes down to publishing something useful and marking it up right. Do that and you show up in both places without buying anyone's magic beans. ### Conversion is someone finding what they came for Most marketers hear “conversion” and think revenue. I think about whether the person found what they came for. Sometimes what they came for is a donation. A lot of the time it's a caregiver at eleven at night hunting for one specific resource, and decent site search plus a real answer means they find it without emailing a staffer who is already drowning. [Most people try to solve their own problem before they will talk to a human](https://www.heretto.com/blog/2024-state-of-customer-self-service-report), and a site that lets them hands your team back its afternoon. When it is a donation, friction is the whole fight. [Between half and seventy percent of started donations never finish](https://www.truesense.com/blog/importance-of-checkout-time-in-nonprofit-fundraising-why-every-second-counts), usually because the form is too long, wants an account, or punts the donor to some stranger's checkout page. [Cutting a form from eleven fields to four lifted completions by 120%](https://fundraiseup.com/blog/Optimizing-Donation-Landing-Pages/). Every field you delete is one less reason for someone who wanted to give to give up. ### Capture people into a CRM you own Someone raises their hand, and now you need to remember they exist. This is where the per-seat tax starts. Most nonprofit CRMs charge you more every time you add a staffer or cross some record count, so the bill grows right when things are going well. We think that model is dead, and we [said why at length](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/per-seat-pricing-is-dying). We would rather hand you something you own. We have put real work into a starter setup that lets us stand up a flexible CRM for an org and give them the keys, the same move we made when we [ripped out eleven SaaS subscriptions and replaced them with our own software](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/we-built-our-own-crm). I am not going to quote a build price in a blog post. I will say the bill does not behave like a subscription's does. ### Cutting costs by owning what you run The claim that sounds too good: we can usually make your software cheaper by making it yours. The [Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories](https://www.papercrane.ca/case-studies/help-for-dementia) had an AI resource assistant stitched together from three things that each cost money: a Pinecone database, a hosted chat interface, and the API tokens underneath. Chatbots like that run hundreds to thousands a month, and the Society was burning a couple grand a year keeping it lit. We rebuilt it, the running cost fell to almost nothing, and they own the code. ![A deep-blue banner with a white five-petal flower mark and the words 'Still building, side by side' above the address helpfordementia.ca.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/0d139969f741666d567d138892c1cf28a4233f97-3200x1428.png) Still building with the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and NWT, years after launch. The interactive tools went the same way. For the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative we built a balance scale: you pick the stressors and the good things in your life, work through a short quiz, and come out with resources chosen for your situation instead of a folder of a thousand PDFs to sort yourself. We built the Alzheimer Society a Resilience Scale on the same idea. Tools like these normally mean paying a licence forever. Theirs are paid for, live, and cost about nothing to run. And it is not only charities: we [swapped a regional district's pricey engagement platform for one they own at 95% less cost](https://www.papercrane.ca/case-studies/rdck-engage). Maintenance used to be the catch. AI mostly ate that. Keeping this stuff current is a few hours a year bumping libraries now, down from a standing retainer. ### Keeping people around [Monthly giving is already 31% of all online revenue and still growing](https://2025.mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising.html) while one-time gifts flatline. The supporter who stays for years beats any single campaign, and every step before them, the search, the clean donation, the CRM you own, is there to make staying easy. > “After working in-house marketing at a non-profit, I know how much time and energy goes into running a successful non-profit. It is important to me that organizations that do not have the same resources can still access the skills needed to succeed.” ![Headshot of Christy Seville](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/f747cea77e7bac1c91858178337c8406e8ab9f61-500x500.png) [Christy Seville](https://www.papercrane.ca/team/christy-seville) Strategist ## What working with us looks like You get the brand and the site. You also get the strategy under them, a CRM that does not bill you for growing, and a straight answer about what you are overpaying for. The part that matters: you keep all of it. We would rather be the number you call for ten years than the vendor holding your passwords for ten years. If you want the range, [our non-profit work](https://www.papercrane.ca/who-we-work-with/non-profit) is a decent place to start. ## Frequently asked Do we actually own our website and our tools when you're done? Yes. Domain, hosting, CMS logins, source code, all in your name at no extra charge. Ownership is how we work here. If an agency dodges this question, that is your answer. Why do donation-platform fees take so much of every gift? Because they stack: a transaction fee, a platform fee, and payment processing, each one a slice of the gift. Blackbaud adds a new 1.5% form fee in July 2026, and Classy's cuts can approach 10% before processing. On small and monthly gifts that stings. We will tell you what you are paying and whether you have to. We're small and grant-funded. Isn't a custom build overkill? No. Owning your tools drops the running cost, which counts for more on a tight budget. We scope to what you need and build so it stays cheap to run after we leave. What is GEO or AEO, and does my nonprofit actually need it? It is making AI answer engines like ChatGPT mention your org. It is the same work as good SEO: useful content, clean structure, real schema. You do not buy a product for it, you build the content properly the first time. Our previous developer disappeared. Can you take over an existing site? Usually. First we get you ownership of everything, then we work out what is worth keeping and stabilize it before touching the rest. An abandoned site running a live donation form is a fundraising problem before it is an IT one. ![Headshot for Robert Simmons](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/dc73703d4de8e4c8ebcf6f903c1f59bf3b645228-400x400.png) Written by ## [Robert Simmons](https://www.papercrane.ca/team/robert-simmons) Operations **Robert Simmons** is the co-founder of Paper Crane, having started the company alongside Tara McLaughlin in late 2019. He heads the online development arm of the company. During his tenure, he has overseen or directly built projects for Hopewell Residential, Lake Louise, Kudos, Virtual Gurus, and more. His strengths lie in **platform consolidation, speed optimization, and business automation**, all under the umbrella of streamlining operations while providing the best possible experience to online visitors and consumers. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-simmons-9180958b) ## More reading [All articles](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog) [ ![Flight Program Winner! Paper Crane and Impact Society logos](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/3b798cff9b6cc9b5bac8c8406b0bbf92e5cff4ee-1820x1024.jpg) Culture ### Choosing the Candidate After years of working with the non-profit space, our team has learned that, not only is it a challenge to pull and maintain attention, it can also be a challenge to resource the expertise needed to stand out and grow. Paper Crane’s Flight Program was created to support such non-profits who may not be able to afford the agency fees. Read blog ](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/choosing-the-candidate) [ ![A waveform carrying real signal, before it flattens out.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/bf0eee27db889c1a80ae26d62cdb44124e072325-1820x1024.webp) DevelopmentStrategy ### Accessibility Is Not a Marketing Tactic Accessibility is for disabled people, not your rankings. Get the motive backwards and you ship alt text that passes the audit and lies to the user. Read blog ](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/accessibility-is-not-a-marketing-tactic) [ ![Many systems feeding one source of truth](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/0838mkru/production/817bcfc11452adb189bad7265bb5a40919193b1a-1820x1024.webp) StrategyDigital Infrastructure ### Find Your Source of Truth Your CRM and your project tool both think they own the client record. How to pick a source of truth, what to integrate, and why AI makes it urgent. Read blog ](https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/data-consolidation-source-of-truth) --- Source: https://www.papercrane.ca/blog/web-agency-for-nonprofits