Growing Works

Client: Growing Works (registered charity 1160003)
Project: WordPress website design and build
Sector: Charity, therapeutic horticulture and outdoor wellbeing
Services provided: WordPress website design, events calendar, PayPal donations, SEO and hosting
Live site: growingworks.org.uk

The background

Growing Works is a community charity based at Wakefield Road Allotments in Dalton, Huddersfield. Since 2015 it has worked to a simple mission: nurturing healthy lives, outdoors. The charity runs therapeutic gardening and nature-based activity for people across Kirklees, supporting more than 460 people a year across roughly 240 sessions and two sites.

The work is delivered through four distinct programmes. Bud offers therapeutic gardening for adults experiencing mental health difficulties, social isolation or long-term health conditions, with every session ending in a shared soup made from the allotment harvest. Sprout takes a whole-family approach for households with children who have SEND or SEMH needs. Young Shoots runs bushcraft, cooking and conservation for 13 to 19 year olds, funded by BBC Children in Need. Wild & Well delivers nature connection sessions for adults, funded by the South West Yorkshire NHS Partnership Trust through Creative Minds.

The challenge

Charity websites are harder than commercial ones, because they serve three audiences whose needs pull in opposite directions.

There is the person who needs the service, who may be isolated, anxious or at a low point, and who needs to find out what happens at a session and whether they would be welcome, without having to ask anyone.

There is the funder or grant assessor, who is doing due diligence and wants governance, trustees, accreditations, impact figures and evidence that the organisation is properly run.

And there is the supporter, who wants to donate or volunteer and will give up if either takes more than a few clicks.

Build the site for any one of those three and you lose the other two. Growing Works needed all three served on the same homepage, in a tone that stayed warm throughout.

Three doors in

The solution was to make the three paths explicit rather than implied. Directly beneath the hero sit three clearly labelled routes: Become a Volunteer, Join an Activity, and Donate to Change Lives.

It is a deliberately unsubtle piece of design. Nobody arriving on this site should have to work out where they fit, least of all someone in a difficult period who is already finding the idea of getting involved daunting. Three doors, plainly signposted, each leading somewhere useful.

The activities calendar

The events calendar is the operational heart of the site, and it replaced a real problem. Growing Works runs four programmes with different schedules: Bud on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sprout on Saturday mornings, Young Shoots in cohorts, and Wild & Well as a seasonal programme. Previously, finding out what was on and when meant emailing or phoning to ask.

Now everything people can join is listed in one place, browsable by date, with each session carrying its own detail page. For the charity it removes a steady stream of admin enquiries. For the visitor it removes the step that stops a lot of people, which is having to make contact with a stranger before they know whether something is for them.

The calendar is fully managed in WordPress. The team adds and amends sessions themselves, which matters for an outdoor charity where weather, funding cycles and cohort dates all shift.

PayPal donations

Donations are handled through an integrated PayPal button, supporting one-off gifts, regular giving and corporate support.

PayPal was the right choice here for two reasons beyond convenience. It is a name donors already recognise and trust, which removes hesitation at the exact moment it matters most. And it keeps the charity's transaction fees and admin overhead low, which for an organisation of this size is not a minor consideration. The donate route appears in the main navigation, in the hero, and again in a dedicated Get Involved section, so the option is always one click away without ever becoming the loudest thing on the page.

Built for funders as well as beneficiaries

A detail that often gets overlooked on charity sites: grant funders read your website before they fund you. Growing Works now has dedicated pages for governance, trustees and team, and funders and accreditations, alongside clear impact figures on the homepage and visible NCVO membership and funder logos.

We also built out Growing Works Voices, the charity's lived-experience feedback group, as a proper destination rather than a footnote. For funders it is credible evidence of user involvement. For participants it is an invitation to shape the work.

Tone, access and findability

The testimonials throughout the site were kept honest rather than polished. One participant mentions struggling socially because of masking. Another says it is a space where people do not judge. That candour does more for a hesitant reader than any amount of upbeat copy.

Practical access was treated as part of the design: session times on every programme, a Where to Find Us page with map and directions, what3words coordinates for an allotment site that is not easy to describe by postcode alone, and a plain note that email is the best first point of contact. Programme pages also state that people can self-refer or come through a support service, which matters for anyone who is not already in the system.

The SEO work targets how people actually search in this space, around therapeutic gardening, outdoor wellbeing and SEND activities in Huddersfield and Kirklees, supported by a blog covering nature and mental health, outdoor learning and SEND.

The outcome

Growing Works has a website that works for everyone who lands on it. Someone looking for support can see what is on and turn up. A funder can verify the organisation in minutes. A supporter can donate or volunteer without friction. And the team can run the whole thing themselves.

Need a charity or community website with events, donations and a CMS your team can manage? We work with organisations across Wakefield, Huddersfield, Kirklees and the wider Yorkshire region. Get in touch for a free audit and quote.