How I Built a Website for an NGO — and Why WordPress.com Wasn't the Answer
Caption: The finished La Grupa website — live and fully managed by their own team.
Not every project comes with a client brief, a budget, or a deadline. Sometimes someone just needs help — and you happen to have exactly the right skills. That was the case with La Grupa, a Danish NGO with a big heart, a growing community, and no website to show for it.
The problem with WordPress.com
When the team at La Grupa started looking into building their online presence, WordPress.com seemed like the obvious choice. It's beginner-friendly, well-known, and widely recommended. But as they dug into the pricing, a frustrating pattern emerged: almost every feature they needed came with an extra cost.
Want to add a carousel of images? That'll be extra. Need a contact form? Another add-on. Custom domain? Upgrade your plan.
For a small NGO running on a tight budget, this model quickly becomes unsustainable. The features that make a website feel polished and functional — the very things that help an organisation communicate its mission — were locked behind paywalls. It didn't feel right. There had to be a better way.
Enter Sanity — a CMS that actually makes sense
Instead of WordPress, I chose Sanity as the content management system for La Grupa's website. If you haven't heard of it, Sanity is a headless CMS — meaning the content lives separately from the front end, giving developers full flexibility over how the site looks and behaves, while giving content editors a clean, intuitive dashboard to manage everything.
And the best part? No paywalls for basic features. No "upgrade to add an image gallery." Just a powerful, well-designed tool that works.
Caption: The Sanity Studio dashboard — clean, organised, and genuinely easy to use.
What makes Sanity easy to use
Once you're inside Sanity Studio, the experience is remarkably straightforward. Here's what the workflow looks like step by step:
Step 1 — Log in to Sanity Studio You access the dashboard directly from the browser — no software to install. The interface greets you with a clean sidebar listing all your content types: pages, events, team members, or whatever the project is structured around.
Step 2 — Choose what you want to edit Click on a content type and you'll see a list of all existing entries. Want to update the homepage text? Click it. Want to add a new event? Hit the "Create new" button. It's as intuitive as editing a document.
Step 3 — Edit content in the panel Each entry opens in an editing panel on the right. Fields are clearly labelled — title, description, image, date — and you fill them in like a form. There's no code, no short codes, no cryptic settings. Just fields and content.
Step 4 — Upload and manage images Adding images is drag-and-drop. Sanity handles the upload, stores the asset, and lets you reference it wherever you need it across the site. No separate media library to wrangle.
Step 5 — Publish When you're happy with your changes, you hit "Publish." The update goes live. That's it.
Caption: Editing a content entry in Sanity Studio — clear fields, no technical knowledge needed.
Teaching the team: three videos, under five minutes each
Once the site was live, I recorded three short tutorial videos to walk the La Grupa admins through everything they'd need to keep the content fresh and up to date. The goal was simple: make them fully independent from day one.
Video 1 — Getting familiar with the Sanity dashboard A guided tour of the Studio interface — what the sidebar means, how content types are organised, and where to find everything.
Video 2 — Creating and editing content How to open an entry, edit text and images, create new records, and publish changes — step by step, with no assumptions about prior experience.
Video 3 — Managing media and keeping things updated How to upload new images, swap out old ones, and keep the site looking current as La Grupa's events and activities evolve.
Caption: One of the three onboarding videos recorded for the La Grupa team.
Each video was under five minutes. No jargon, no assumptions — just clear, friendly walkthroughs designed for people who had never touched a CMS before. And they picked it up quickly. Genuinely quickly. Within no time, the team was navigating the Sanity dashboard with confidence, editing content on their own, and asking smart follow-up questions. That, honestly, was the best outcome of the whole project.
Why this kind of work matters
NGOs and cultural organisations do important work, often with very limited resources. Having a professional, functional website shouldn't be a luxury. It's how they reach new people, communicate their events, and build credibility in the communities they serve.
Caption: La Grupa in action — a community worth showing up for.
La Grupa now has a real online home at lagrupa.dk — one they own, control, and can update themselves. No monthly upsells. No dependency on someone else to make every small change. Just a clean, working site backed by a CMS their team actually enjoys using.
If you're part of an NGO or small organisation wondering whether you can afford a proper website — the answer is probably yes. And if you're a developer with a few spare hours, consider reaching out to someone who could use your skills. The return on investment, for both sides, is surprisingly high.
Tags: Sanity · CMS · NGO · Volunteering · Web Development · Technical Writing