A few days ago, I did something simple.
I tested a dozen charity donation pages - organisations doing great work, teams trying their best - and most of them took 6–9 seconds to load.
And honestly… it explained so much.
Not missed targets.
Not weak campaigns.
Just slow pages.
It still surprises people when I say this, but page speed quietly decides how much money you raise.
Every extra second drops conversions by around 10% - and that’s before the donor even reads your message.
It isn’t a branding issue.
It isn’t a storytelling issue.
It’s a page-loading issue.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Donors give because they feel something.
They leave because something felt off.
A lag.
A freeze.
A page that doesn’t load on mobile.
We underestimate how fragile that moment is.
It’s a few seconds where trust is built or lost.
Charities will spend thousands on campaigns and design - but skip a fix that costs nothing and takes minutes.
A fast site says, “You’re in safe hands.”
A slow one quietly says the opposite.
The 2-Minute Fix
No developers.
No hidden settings.
Just simple steps anyone can do.
1 - Test your donation page
Go to pagespeed.web.dev
Paste your link.
You’ll see a score out of 100. Under 85 means you’re making donors wait longer than they should.
2 - Shrink your images
Go to tinypng.com
Upload your hero banners and any heavy homepage images.
Replace them with the compressed versions.
You’ll usually cut the file size by 70-80%, which speeds up the whole page.
3 - Remove dead plugins (WordPress users)
Open your plugins list.
Delete anything not needed.
Inactive plugins still slow your site down.
It all adds up.
4 - Turn on caching
Caching lets returning visitors load your site instantly instead of rebuilding every page from scratch.
Install WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache.
Both work straight away.
Most charities jump 20+ points on Google’s test with this alone.
🧠 One final build better thought...
This isn’t about chasing perfection.
It’s about not losing donors for a reason that takes two minutes to fix.
No forms to request.
No worksheets to ask for.
Everything you need is already here.
Next week, I’m sharing something bigger - the simplest system I’ve used to diagnose why a charity isn’t raising as much as it should.
I hope this was helpful, see you next Friday.
Until next then, whether you’re trying to improve yourself or your organisation, keep building better.
Zain
P.S. Want more of this kind of stuff each week? Press this one button. Takes just one tap too :)
I share real stories, frameworks, and lessons to help charities and startups grow smarter (and a little more human).