The brief
A Bible translation ministry came to us with a familiar problem: a website that told their story well, but wasn't being found by the people who most needed to find it. They had real expertise and a genuine mission, but their content wasn't reaching the audience actively researching, giving and praying for organisations working in this space.
The bigger question underneath that brief was one we're hearing more and more: how do you find people who want to engage with a cause — through prayer, through financial giving, through support of any kind — when the way people search is changing faster than most organisations can keep up with?
Building for what's next, not just what's here
A key part of the work involved building the foundations to optimise the site for standard search, but also for emerging technologies such as generative search engine results and AI-driven answer tools — the platforms people increasingly turn to when they're actively looking for charities and ministries in a particular sector. This is still an emerging area, but it's growing quickly, and in places it's already overtaking standard search as the first stop for a question.
Preparing for that meant writing content that answers real questions clearly and credibly enough to be picked up and cited by AI tools, not just ranked by traditional search engines. The two goals reinforce each other rather than compete: content written to genuinely answer a question tends to perform well in both.
Finding the right topics
We commissioned a content plan with the organisation, working closely with the ministry's director and a specialist content creator. Together, we identified the specific topics the ministry were genuine experts in — the questions that would engage people at the level of education first, and conversion to support second.
Questions like how many languages has the Bible been translated into? and what is the history of Bible translation? speak directly to the people we needed to reach — not just those already engaged with the topic, but those actively researching and learning, whether as part of ministry work or their own education. Content built around genuine questions like these does the groundwork that a donation ask alone never can.
We can no longer rely on traditional advertising and responses alone. We have to meet people where they are — searching for information, and wanting to know which credible organisations they can support.
The results
Since going live, visits to the website rose sevenfold within six months. The process took time — understanding what potential donors and supporters actually needed to see, and shaping content around that, isn't something that happens overnight. But alongside the rise in visitors came a significant increase in email subscribers and donors, which told us we were reaching the right people, and appealing, most importantly, to those who wanted to support the work.
We're now working with the ministry to take this further and set a new standard for how organisations in this sector reach their supporters.
What this tells us about donor behaviour
The clearest lesson from this project is that the behaviour of donors and supporters is changing. People researching a cause increasingly start with a question, not a charity's name — and where they ask that question is shifting too, from a standard search box towards AI tools that answer directly. Organisations that build genuinely educational content, and prepare it to be found across both, are the ones donors and supporters are finding first.