When USAID's assistance to Nigeria ended in January 2025, it closed a chapter that had lasted more than 60 years. At its peak in 2023, USAID committed about $1 billion a year to Nigeria. From April 2025, NGOs working in public health, immunisation, youth employment and human rights began closing programmes, shutting offices and letting staff go (dRPC).
The organisations still standing are doing what the sector now calls forced innovation: finding foundations, corporate partners, embassies and individual donors they have never worked with before.
That changes one thing about how you get funded. A new funder doesn't know you. Before they reply to your email or read your proposal, someone on their team will look you up. In most cases, the first thing they find is your website.
Funders are checking harder than before
Donor due diligence was already strict. It's getting stricter.
A June 2026 analysis on grant fraud in Nigeria found that donors are responding to trust concerns by asking for more: registration checks, audited statements, governance details, safeguarding policies and bank verification (GrantsDatabase). The same piece points out who loses most. Smaller, community-based NGOs, even credible ones, struggle to clear the bar.
Its recommendation is simple: be publicly verifiable. Make it easy for a stranger to confirm that you exist, that you're governed properly, and that your work is real.
Your website is the cheapest place to do that.
What funders look for, and where it should be on your site
1. Proof you're a real, registered organisation
A programme officer's first question is "Is this organisation legitimate?" Answer it before they ask.
- Your CAC registration number in the footer or on the About page
- A physical address and a working phone number, not just a Gmail address
- Your board and leadership, with names, photos and short bios
- Your SCUML registration, if you have it
None of this is confidential. All of it builds trust in seconds.
2. Your impact in numbers, on the homepage
Funders back results. If your numbers are buried in a PDF on page four of your reports section, most visitors will never see them.
Put your headline figures where everyone lands:
- How many people you've reached
- How many communities, LGAs or states you work in
- How long you've been operating
- One or two outcome numbers, such as children immunised, women trained or loans disbursed
Keep them current. A figure labelled "2021" tells a funder your reporting has stopped.
3. Annual reports and audited accounts you can download
If a funder has to email you to ask for your last annual report, you've added a step, and some won't take it.
Create a simple Reports or Transparency page with:
- Your last two or three annual reports
- Audited financial statements, or a summary if you prefer not to publish the full set
- Any external evaluations of your programmes
4. Your policies
The same due diligence lists keep appearing: safeguarding, anti-fraud, whistleblowing and data protection. Publishing them shows you have them, and that you take them seriously.
You don't need a long page. A short list of policies, each with a one-line summary and a download link, is enough.
5. Signs that you're active
A website that hasn't changed since 2022 raises a quiet question: is this organisation still running?
Signs of life matter:
- Recent news, stories or blog posts
- Photos from current programmes
- A copyright year in the footer that's this year
You don't need to post every week. One update a month is enough to show you're active.
Your donation and contact forms now carry legal duties
There's a newer reason to look at your website. Nigeria's Data Protection Act is now backed by the General Application and Implementation Directive (GAID), which took effect on 19 September 2025. It applies to any organisation that processes personal data of people in Nigeria, and commentators have been clear that this includes NGOs (AELEX, Afriwise).
Your contact form, newsletter sign-up, volunteer form and donation page all collect personal data. At a minimum, that means:
- A clear privacy notice that is easy to find wherever you collect data
- Saying what you collect, why, and how long you keep it
- A way for people to ask for their data to be removed
International funders already expect this from partners. Now it's the law too. If you're unsure what applies to you, speak to a lawyer who works on data protection. It's a small cost compared with getting it wrong.
What this looks like in practice
We see the same two problems again and again when we work with Nigerian NGOs.
The impact is there, but it's hidden. One public health organisation we worked with reaches nearly half a million people across 15 states, through five programme areas. That's the kind of scale funders look for. But the website led with programme descriptions, and the numbers sat deeper in the site. We rebuilt it so the reach, the communities and the human stories lead every page. Now the first thing a funder sees is the evidence they came looking for.
The site is organised for staff, not visitors. A development NGO came to us with a website structured around its internal departments. That made sense to the team but not to the donors, partners and government bodies visiting it. We mapped the questions each audience brings to the site, then rebuilt the structure around those questions. A donor now finds what they need in a couple of clicks, without knowing how the organisation is set up inside.
Both fixes started with the same question: what does the person visiting this site need to know? See more of our work.
Checklist: 10 things to fix this month
Most of these need no developer. If your site runs on WordPress or a similar CMS, your communications team can do them.
- Add your CAC registration number to the footer.
- Add a physical address and phone number to your Contact page.
- Publish your board and leadership with names and photos.
- Put three headline impact numbers on your homepage, with the year.
- Create a Reports page with your last two annual reports.
- Upload audited accounts, or a financial summary.
- List your safeguarding, anti-fraud and data protection policies.
- Add a privacy notice linked from every form on your site.
- Publish one new story or update from a current programme.
- Ask someone outside your organisation to find all of the above in under two minutes. If they can't, move it somewhere easier to find.
The short version
New funders are deciding whether to trust you before you speak to them. Your website is where that decision starts. Make your legitimacy, your impact and your accountability easy to find, and you've done much of the due diligence for them.