Global Girls Foundation
How a Swiss foundation created by Plan International got a website of its own, built to speak to philanthropists and to take gifts in three currencies.
- Type
- Foundation
- Year
- 2026
- Scope
- Website redesign, WordPress build and fundraising platform integration
- Languages
- English
- Live site
- globalgirlsfoundation.org ↗
- Currencies for one-time and monthly gifts: Swiss francs, euros and US dollars
- 3
- Lighthouse accessibility score, live home and giving pages. Measured 4 November 2026
- 100
- Live home page fully loaded on a 3G profile of 400 kbit/s and 2 s latency. Measured 4 November 2026
- 14.0 s
The challenge
The Global Girls Foundation is a Swiss foundation, established in 2022, created by Plan International to fund its programmes for girls. Its website has to reach philanthropists and the people around them: family offices, advisers and lawyers, as well as family and corporate foundations.
Its website did not match that ambition. It was 11 pages on Plan International’s WordPress platform, hard to manage and to find things on, and it had no integrated way to give.
The new site had two jobs that pull in different directions. It had to read as a serious institution to someone thinking about a legacy or an endowment, and it still had to take a gift by card from anyone who wanted to give today.
The goals
- Say clearly what the Foundation is and why a donor should give to it.
- Give each kind of donor a clear route from first visit to gift.
- Take secure one-time and monthly gifts in more than one currency.
- Let the Foundation’s own team edit every page without breaking the design.
Key decisions
Offer a conversation as well as a checkout
A major gift usually starts with a conversation. So the first screen offers two routes side by side: give now, or start a conversation. The Annual Giving Fund and the endowment are reached only through a conversation.
Let the donor name the amount
Earlier versions offered preset gift levels. After seeing them, the Foundation asked for them to go, so the giving panel opens with one empty box and sets no upper limit of its own. A gift above what a card can carry shows the bank details instead, and any donor can ask for those at any size.
Keep card details off the site
One-time gifts are taken on the page itself and monthly gifts on Stripe’s hosted page, so card details are handled by Stripe and never by the site. The panel still works as a plain form if scripts are turned off.
Build the editor around the page
The Foundation’s staff needed to run the site themselves. Editors work on the page as it will appear: they change text in place, add sections from a picture menu, and the site checks each page against its rules before it publishes. The WordPress admin was restyled in the Foundation’s own look, with a 31-step guide kept inside it.
Review real pages, not pictures
The design was built as a working review site with comments on the page. The Foundation’s team reviewed real pages on real screens, and only approved pages moved to WordPress.
Move without losing the old addresses
The Foundation’s domain sat with Plan International, so the move depended on its IT team. We sent the exact changes needed, and every old address was set to redirect to its new home. On launch day all 21 pages and 23 redirects answered correctly.
Before and after
Pages
- Before
- 11
- After
- 21
Where it lives
- Before
- Plan International’s WordPress platform
- After
- Its own WordPress site, hosted in Belgium
Giving
- Before
- No integrated way to give
- After
- One-time and monthly gifts in Swiss francs, euros and US dollars
Editing
- Before
- Hard to manage
- After
- Edited on the page by the Foundation’s own team
The result
The site went live on 9 October 2026, with all 21 pages and 23 redirects answering correctly on the day. One-time and monthly gifts were both confirmed with real payments by 12 October.
For the first time the Foundation can take a gift on its own site, and its staff have been trained to run the pages themselves. Giving totals belong to the Foundation and are not published here.
What we learned
- Decide who the site is for, then let that settle the arguments. Knowing the reader was a philanthropist made most questions about wording and giving easier to answer.
- Expect the giving rules to change. Gift levels, limits and currencies all changed close to launch, so the giving panel had to be easy to change.
- When a launch depends on another organisation’s team, send the exact change, not a general request.
Standards met
- Accessibility
- Lighthouse accessibility 100 on the live home and giving pages, 4 November 2026. An axe-core run across 16 pages before launch found no confirmed violations. No screen-reader test by a person is on record yet.
- Languages
- English
- Performance
- Home page 546 KB, giving page 395 KB. On the 3G profile the home page shows first content at 6.8 s and its main content at 12.5 s.
- Security
- Hosted in Belgium on WP Engine · HTTPS with HSTS · daily backup points · card details held by Stripe
Team
- Project lead
- Matthew Bowman
- Client team
- Global Girls Foundation staff