More Than a Website: Getting a Volunteer MND Support Group Seen and Supported

More than a website

Most web companies would have built the pages and handed over a login. A small volunteer group needs more than that. The organisers are busy caring and fundraising, so we took on everything around the website as well, and made sure all of it looks and sounds like the same group.

• The letter to local businesses. Much of the group's money comes from local businesses, so Joanna writes to them asking for help. We updated the group's supporter letter so it matches the new website: the new web address, email and phone number in the letterhead, and a QR code at the bottom that takes a business owner straight to the website on their phone. The letter explains in plain words who the group is and who it helps, gives four simple ways a business can help (a donation, sponsoring an activity or event, a raffle prize, or choosing the group as their cause), and says what the business gets back: thanks on social media, its logo and a link on the website, and recognition at events. It is a Word document Joanna can personalise, print or email, and it sends every business to the same place, the website, where they can see the group's work for themselves.

• An email signature that matches the site. We made Joanna an HTML email signature with the logo, a tap-to-call number, a Facebook link and a green Donate button, so every email she sends promotes the group.

• A proper Facebook Page. We gave Joanna step-by-step guidance to set one up, with a cover banner using Peter Bourne's painting and a profile picture sized for Facebook's round crop.

• Live chat that reaches real people. We connected the live chat account so messages from the website go straight to the organisers.

• Email that lands in inboxes. A new group email address forwarding to the organisers, with DKIM and DMARC security records so form messages do not end up in spam.

• The money wording checked. We checked fundraising, Gift Aid and raffle rules so the site never promises anything the group cannot deliver, and reworded everything when the group's status changed mid-build.

• The writing done for them. Joanna sent words and photos in pieces by email. We turned them into finished pages in Andrew and Joanna's own voice, and prepared every photo.

• Ongoing care. When Joanna sends news, photos or thank-yous, we have them on the site within days.

The rest of this case study explains how the website itself was planned and built.

The group

Living Positive with MND was started by Andrew and Joanna Chadwick after Andrew was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in June 2025. Their first fundraising raised £7,261 for the MND Association. They then set up a group of their own, with its own committee and bank account, so that every pound raised would stay in Lancashire: monthly support sessions for people living with MND and the people who care for them, fundraising nights, and trips to make memories.

They are not web people, and they did not have the time to become web people. What they had was material: a story, photographs, press coverage, a radio interview, a list of businesses who had helped, and a steady stream of events.

The starting point

The group already had a website, built on WordPress. It had good material in it, but it read like a diary. I audited it before we planned anything, and the problems were the kind that stop people helping:

• Upcoming, past and cancelled events were mixed together on the home page, several with no date, venue, price or way to book.

• The About page showed six 'team members' with stock photos, placeholders left over from the template.

• Every page title in Google began with 'Joanna', the template's site name.

• Two names were in use, Living With MND and Living Positive with MND.

• Around thirty businesses who had donated raffle prizes were hidden on a raffle page instead of being thanked.

• The memory trips and Joanna's wellbeing piece were buried in dropdowns, the press page was not in the menu, there were social icons for accounts that did not exist, and there was no privacy policy.

• Nothing said clearly who the money went to or what the group was.

Research and planning

Before any design, I wrote a full navigation and content plan so the organisers did not have to do the thinking themselves. I looked at how the national MND charities present themselves, and, more usefully, at small groups of a similar size: local MND foundations, hospice friends groups and family-run appeals. From those I took a short set of rules: a short menu; a donate button always visible; upcoming and past events kept apart, each in the same layout; past events written up with the money raised; business supporters recognised properly; and personal stories with a donate button beside them.

I also checked the rules that apply to a self-started fundraising group: Fundraising Regulator guidance, Charity Commission guidance, HMRC Gift Aid rules, the small society lottery rules for raffles, and ICO guidance for contact forms and privacy notices. Every piece of content on the old site was then given a home in the new structure, and the organisers got a numbered list of fifteen decisions and materials we needed from them, in priority order.

Design

The design was built from the group's own logo and the one picture Joanna loved on the old site. We built the home page as a single HTML concept first and refined it through seven versions, then published it to a private, unindexed demo link so it could be reviewed before the Joomla build began.

Joanna told us she wanted the home page to feel like walking into the woods beside water. There was one picture on the old site she loved, a forest stream. Rather than just reuse it, we found a video with the same feel, a quiet woodland path beside running water, and made it a short looping background behind the main heading, so the first thing visitors see is calm and green rather than clinical.

“I am speechless with also tears of the amazing transformation of the website. Homepage with the video beyond words thanks.”

Joanna, Living Positive with MND, on first seeing the new home page

• Greens taken from the Living Positive logo, with Fraunces for headings and Plus Jakarta Sans for body text.

• A warm, personal tone rather than a clinical one. The agreed heading is 'Living positively with MND, and making special memories'.

• The client's photos were mostly WhatsApp screenshots at odd sizes, so every image was cropped, resized, straightened where needed and given a descriptive file name and alt text.

• A local artist, Peter Bourne, donated a painting of a woodland stream. We gave a photo of it a digital gilt frame for the Past Events thank-you, and used an unframed version with a green overlay and a credit line behind the quote band on the home page.

• Every section was checked for gaps and overflow at desktop and phone widths before it was signed off.

The site

The old 22 pages became 12 clear ones under a seven-item menu, with a Donate button in the top bar of every page: Home, About Us (with Memories), Support Groups, Events (Upcoming and Previous), About MND, Contact and Support Us (with Business Supporters), plus a privacy policy written for the group's forms, chat and embedded video.

For a small volunteer group the site does a fair amount of work:

• Three forms built in RSForm! Pro: a contact form, an event ticket booking form, and a support group booking form where visitors choose a date and opt in to email reminders. All three send to the group's own address with a copy to us, and send the visitor a confirmation.

• Live chat on every page, so visitors can message the group directly.

• A site-wide Donate button linking to the group's JustGiving page, with a £10,000 target. Change the link once and it updates everywhere.

• Fundraising totals on the home page and Support Us, updated as money comes in.

• A Previous Events timeline, every event in date order with its own write-up, photos, money raised and thank-yous.

• Business sponsorship from £25 for twelve months, event sponsorship and raffle prize donations, with a hidden template page so new supporter logos can be added in the same style.

• The BBC Radio Lancashire interview embedded from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode.

The content

Most of the words and photos came from Joanna by email, in pieces, over several weeks. We turned each one into finished web content and kept it in Andrew and Joanna's own voice. Their story was rewritten into a clear account with dated sections and the fake team removed. Four separate information pages became one plain-English guide to MND, with Joanna's own piece on wellbeing for carers and a list of where to get expert help.

The Memories section tells the story of each trip, including a new write-up of the Emmerdale village tour with a twelve-photo gallery. Two meetings with Kevin Sinfield were written up, with photos and a signed shirt. Every past event got the same treatment: the date, what happened, the money raised and who to thank. Press coverage from BBC News, BBC Radio Lancashire, the Lancashire Evening Post, the Mirror and the Daily Mail was gathered in one place.

Getting the money wording right

A big part of this job was making sure the site said exactly the right thing about money and status, because the organisers found it hard to explain themselves and the position changed while we were building.

• The plan was written for a group fundraising in aid of the MND Association. Mid-build, the group became a constituted community group registered with South Ribble Borough Council, with its own committee and bank account, raising money for local families. The whole site was reworded to match.

• The site never calls the group a registered charity. The footer states it is a community group and gives the council reference.

• The draft donate page promised Gift Aid. Gift Aid can only be claimed by a charity registered with HMRC, and the group's JustGiving page is a crowdfunding page, so the promise was removed rather than mislead donors.

• The two totals are kept apart: what was raised earlier for the MND Association, and what the group has raised for itself since.

• Cancelled events are not left on the site, and events only go up with a real date and details.

• I advised against chasing searches for the national charity's name. People searching for it want the MND Association, and ranking for it would look misleading.

Domain, email and going live

The old domain could not be transferred in time, so rather than leave a finished site waiting, the group launched on a new address, livingwithmnd.org.uk, owned under their control and hosted with us. We set up a group email address forwarding to the organisers, replaced the old address on every page, form and page description, and added DKIM and DMARC records alongside the existing SPF so the website's form emails land in inboxes rather than spam.

Search

The SEO was set up for a local support group, not a national charity. We focused on realistic local searches such as 'MND support group Lancashire' and 'MND support Preston', wrote titles and descriptions for ten pages that read naturally, gave every photo a descriptive file name and alt text, and used the place names, Longton, Preston, South Ribble, Lancashire, naturally through the copy.

Ongoing care

The site keeps changing as the group grows, and we update it as Joanna sends news: new photos, stories and thank-yous within days of arriving, fundraising totals kept current, and dates kept consistent across every page, for example when the support group start date moved to January 2027. Every page change is backed up before it is made.

What it shows

A small volunteer group with a big story now has a website that does the explaining for them: who they are, what is coming up, what has already happened, how to help and who has helped.

But the website is only part of it. The email signature, the supporter letter, the Facebook Page, the live chat and the email security were all brought into line at the same time, and the site keeps being updated as the group grows. That is the difference: we look after everything a small organisation needs to be seen and supported online, not just the pages, and we make sure it says exactly the right thing about the money.