Case study · Nonprofit Bestowing the Basics: a nonprofit website rebuilt to bring in donors and volunteers
Bestowing the Basics serves Athol, Bayview, Careywood and other rural North Idaho communities with food, hygiene products and emergency help. They’re based in Athol, a few minutes from us. Their Wix site made the programs hard to find and giving harder than it needed to be. We rebuilt it from the ground up, and it went live in October 2026.
Before and after
Drag to compare the homepage
Left: the Wix site. Right: the new site. Same screen size: the Wix site captured October 8, 2026, the new one live on October 11.
On a phone, before
The logo and tagline fill the first screen. No program, no next step.
On a phone, after
Who they serve and where on the first screen, Get Involved right under it, and Donate always in the header.
Point by point
What’s new, and what was missing
Go through the numbered notes on the full homepage. Switch between the new site and the old one; each note says what it replaced or how it was fixed.
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A Donate button sits in the header of every page, on desktop and on phones.
Before: the footer Donate button led back to the homepage.
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About, Programs, Volunteer, Ways to Give and Donation Drop-Off Locations, each opening to its own pages.
Before: Who We Are, How We Serve, Ways to Give and FAQs in small text, with addresses like /copy-of-hello.
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“Serving North Idaho with Compassion, Faith & Care,” then one line naming Athol, Bayview, Careywood and what they provide: hygiene products, food and emergency help.
Before: the slogan “Filling the need, locally,” with the towns in small capitals underneath.
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Get Involved and Donate, right under the headline.
Before: a group photo filled the first screen, with no button.
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A faith-based, entirely volunteer-driven nonprofit: what they provide, their mission in one sentence, and a link to their story.
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Their own figures: 148 people served at a typical distribution, 10 cities reached, over $150,000 in goods returned to the community, and 5 programs, all free and run by volunteers.
Before: no numbers anywhere on the homepage.
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Supplying the Basics, Feeding the Need, the Period Positive Program, Emergency Aid and Winter Blessings, each with a Learn More link, plus Explore All Programs.
Before: four cards; one button went back to the homepage and one card had no link.
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Volunteer, Donate and Spread the Word, each linking to how.
Before: one Get Involved button.
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“Give Today,” what a gift does, a Donate button and the phone number, then a second Donate panel above the footer.
Before: an email sign-up and an empty colored band.
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Links to every program and way to help, the address, a tap-to-call phone number, email, and a 501(c)(3) note that gifts are tax-deductible.
Before: three links, a Donate button that went to the homepage, a contact form, and a phone number you couldn’t tap.
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Who We Are, How We Serve, Ways to Give and FAQs, in small text. None of the programs were named.
Now: About, Programs, Volunteer, Ways to Give and Donation Drop-Off Locations.
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“Filling the need, locally” in script, with the towns in small capitals underneath.
Now: a headline and one line that say who they serve, where, and with what.
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A group photo filled the first screen, with no button to give or get involved.
Now: Get Involved and Donate under the headline.
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The Feeding the Need button led back to the homepage.
Now: its own page at /feeding-the-need/.
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The Period Pouch Program card couldn’t be clicked.
Now: its own program page, linked from the homepage and the menu.
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An email box under “Stay Connected,” with nothing about what people would get.
Now: three clear ways to help: Volunteer, Donate and Spread the Word.
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A wide colored strip above the footer with nothing in it.
Now: “Give Today” with a Donate button and the phone number.
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The footer Donate button led back to the homepage.
Now: Donate in the header of every page and three more times on the homepage.
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(208) 561-5050 was plain text, so a phone couldn’t dial it.
Now: tap-to-call on all 18 pages.
Green: what’s new on the rebuilt homepage. Red: what was missing on the old Wix homepage. Both captured October 8, 2026, at desktop width.
The situation
Where Bestowing the Basics started
Bestowing the Basics does a lot with a small team: food and hygiene supplies through the ABC Food Bank and the City of Athol, free feminine hygiene supplies in three north Idaho school districts, Winter Blessings at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and emergency help for families. The website didn’t show it.
- Page addresses that said nothing: /copy-of-hello, /services-9, /about-3 and /general-clean, left over from Wix templates.
- Buttons that went nowhere useful: the homepage “Feeding the Need” button and the footer “Donate” button both led back to the homepage, and the Period Pouch Program card had no link at all.
- Headings Google couldn’t follow: 5 of the 13 pages had no main heading and 4 had two or three.
- Little to show in search: 10 of the 13 pages had no search description.
- No tap-to-call: the phone number was on the site, but not as a link a phone could dial.
- Heavy pages: a typical page loaded about 148 files, mostly Wix’s own scripts.
What we changed
Every part of the site, rebuilt
Navigation people understand
A full menu (About, Programs, Volunteer, Ways to Give, Donation Drop-Off Locations) with each program on its own page and clear addresses like /feeding-the-need/ and /participate/needs-list/.
Giving on every page
Donate in the header on every page, Get Involved and Donate on the first screen, plus a Needs List, donation drop-off locations and a Ways to Give page.
Faster, lighter pages
About a fifth of the files per page (a median of 29 vs 148) and a little over half the download (about 840 KB vs 1.4 MB per page).
One cohesive design
The same logo, fonts, colors and section styles on every page, so the whole site reads as one organization instead of a stack of templates.
Room to tell the story
18 pages instead of 13: a page for each of the five programs, a Needs List, drop-off locations, Partners, FAQ and Prayer Requests, with more than twice the words on a typical page.
Built for search and phones
One main heading, a search description and tap-to-call on all 18 pages, and structured data telling Google it’s a nonprofit on the homepage, About and Contact pages.
By the numbers
Measured, not estimated
Google Lighthouse 13.5 on both homepages: the Wix site on October 8, 2026, before the switch, and the new site live on bestowingthebasics.org on October 11, 2026. Phone figures are the middle of five runs on Lighthouse’s slow-phone test.
46 → 93
Mobile performance score on the homepage (Google Lighthouse).
89 → 100
Desktop performance score on the homepage (Google Lighthouse).
93 → 100
Accessibility score on the homepage. SEO stays at 100.
6.4 s → 2.8 s
Until the main content shows on a phone; 0.6 s on a computer.
1.9 s → 0.18 s
Time a phone spends blocked running scripts before the page responds.
148 → 29
Files loaded by a typical page.
Moving off Wix or Squarespace?
Book a free call. We’ll look at your current site and show you what we’d keep, fix and rebuild.