Amigos Worldwide. A charity website the team runs themselves.

Amigos Worldwide was founded in 2000. It works alongside people and communities in rural Uganda through its partner there, Amigos Uganda, a registered Ugandan NGO, while a team of five in Barnstaple, most of them part-time, looks after the supporters who make the work possible.

The work has three strands. At Kira Farm Development Centre, fifty young people a year spend a year learning practical, emotional and life skills. Sustainable Community Development works with a whole community for four years, on clean water, conservation farming and business training. And Family Sponsorship, which Amigos calls child sponsorship with a difference: a child is supported through school while their caregiver joins a community group to learn conservation farming and business skills.

Amigos came to us in January 2024 on a recommendation from another of our clients. Kayte Potter, their Engagement Lead, asked what we could offer, and after our first call the chief executive at the time, Tim Monger, wrote of “a much-needed new website”.

Since 2018 the old site had run on a hosted platform made for charities. Every page had to fit a set template, so it looked corporate, and it was hard to give an appeal or a story the space it deserved. Even the homepage’s title was just “Amigos Worldwide”, so people searching for something like a Uganda children’s charity weren’t finding them.

The platform’s contract was coming to an end, which set a firm deadline:

Some things had to come across, because supporters relied on them:

• Signing up to sponsor on the website, with a Gift Aid declaration
• Letters to sponsored children, written through the site, which had made life a lot easier
• Monthly giving by Direct Debit, and Gift Aid reports for the office
• A newsletter sign-up that’s easy to find and clear about how people’s details are used
• A simple shop, with stock levels that are easy to keep an eye on
• The old site’s addresses kept or redirected, so existing links and search results still worked

We started with two calls and a written proposal that set out the choices, with the pros and cons of each: taking donations on the site or through an outside service, which shop system to use, and how to run the Ambassadors’ area. Amigos chose, and we got going.

Everything ran through one shared document, the single place for every page’s words, with a site map taken from the old site. Amigos wrote the copy and sent about 165 of their own photographs and a short film of their work in Uganda, so the people on the site are real, not stock.

The homepage was designed first, for desktop and phone, in Figma, where the team could comment right on the design. We kept it light on text, with plenty of pictures and space, and left the detail to the inner pages. Then came the site itself, on a private address, where Tim and his colleague Jodie pinned their comments to each page (“Can this say Christmas and not Xmas?”), and every one was answered.

Before anything went live, every donation form was tried with test cards, so the team could see exactly what a donor would see without any real money changing hands. As the old platform’s closing date approached, Amigos asked to bring the switch-over forward, and the new site went live on 16 April 2024, with the existing Direct Debits moved across to the new donation system.

Donations are taken on the website itself, rather than sending supporters off to another site part-way through. One-off and monthly gifts, sponsoring a family or a Kira Farm trainee, and gifts to a particular programme each have their own form. Cards go through Stripe and Direct Debits through GoCardless, donors can add Gift Aid and choose to cover the transaction fees, and the office downloads its Gift Aid reports from the dashboard.

Amigos tries to thank every donor within a day, so the office needs to hear about a gift straight away. Direct Debit gifts were only reported once the payment had gone through, days later, so we changed that, and now the office is told as soon as someone gives:

Giving has to just work, so we keep a close eye on it. When an appeal’s progress bar counted a failed payment, we showed the makers of the donation software with a screen recording, and they fixed it in their next release. The donation pages are kept out of the cache, so a form is always up to date.

In 2026, bots started using the forms to try out stolen card numbers. As we explained to the team, they weren’t after Amigos’ money: a donation form is simply a free way to check which cards still work. We added spam checks, Amigos set a £5 minimum gift, and when a filter later turned away a genuine supporter, we loosened it, because nothing should get between a donor and their gift.

A month after launch, Tim came back with a clear brief. He had looked at how other charities show their appeals and events, and liked what he saw:

He also wanted the team to be able to do it themselves, as they had on the old platform. So appeals and events became their own kind of content, each filled in through a simple form in the dashboard:

• An appeal page with a progress bar that reads its total straight from the appeal’s donation form
• A featured appeal or event on the homepage, switched on from the dashboard
• Event sign-ups that email the office and send each guest a confirmation with the team’s own message, such as the link for an online event
• Events that drop off the site once their date has passed, and appeals and job adverts that can be set to come down on a date
• A notice bar across the top of the site, with its own start and end dates, instead of a pop-up that would clash with the cookie notice

The design choices open to the team were kept deliberately few, so every appeal looks as good as the last. It was all live by the end of May, with a short walkthrough video and a training session, and in June the team ran an online evening about Kira Farm through the new events pages.

We also recorded six short how-to videos, for adding stories, news, team members, partners, reports and policies, on a help page for staff. Within a few weeks the team were publishing for themselves:

Amigos Uganda, the charity’s partner in Uganda, didn’t have a website of its own, so alongside the UK site we built a smaller sister site, amigos.org.ug, in the same design: home, about, programmes, the team, contact, visits and donations. We suggested giving it its own words rather than copying the UK pages, which is better for search, and at first its programme pages linked to the UK site’s, so there was only one place to update them.

The address is registered in Uganda, so going live meant working through the settings with the Uganda team at a distance. We found the stray record that was stopping the security certificate from working, set up the site’s email so contact form messages arrive, and it went live in January 2025. Its donate page says “coming soon” while Amigos Uganda sets up mobile money payments.

In November 2025 we gave the Uganda team their own editor login and a written guide, explaining what they can update themselves, like team members and news, and why the designed pages are best left alone:

In February 2026 the site became fully independent. When Amigos Uganda applies for grants, it needs to show that it’s a separate organisation, so we copied the programme pages across, took out the UK donation links and sterling prices, and wrote it a privacy page of its own.

James Lewis joined as chief executive in April 2025. We set up his login within the hour and explained how the site works: the team add news, stories, appeals, events, FAQs, team members and policies through simple forms, while the page builder the site is designed in, Bricks, stays with us, so the look stays consistent. His reply:

Since then the work has followed the charity’s plans:

• Visit Uganda (October 2025): a new section for trips to Uganda, built from James’s own Word documents, with trip stories, a list of upcoming trips that updates itself, FAQs, and the logo of BS 8848, the British Standard for overseas visits and expeditions. For the trip stories we used news posts in their own category, a cheaper route we chose together
• Pray for a Community in Uganda (February 2026): a page, a feed of prayer stories and a “Become a Prayer Pal” form. James left his changes as comments pinned to the page itself, using a feedback tool he took to straight away: “I like the system”
• Garden Twinning (June 2026): a new way to give, with its own page, donation form, stories and FAQs, and a QR code for the leaflet sent out with the annual review, tagged so Amigos can see how many people it brings to the site
• Tool Refurbishment (June 2026): a page James built himself, by copying a trips page. We linked it into the menu and sent a short guide