Link Building for Nonprofits and Charities

Nonprofits have a structural advantage that most commercial link builders would envy: people genuinely want to support them. Corporate partners, supporters, journalists and community organisations are frequently happy to link to a good cause, often without being asked twice. The real work isn’t persuasion so much as making it easy for people who are already willing, and asking at the moments they’re most likely to say yes.

Corporate partners and sponsors

Businesses that donate, sponsor events or send volunteer teams often want to publish that involvement somewhere visible, usually on a CSR page, a community page or an annual impact report. Make this easy for them: provide a short, ready-to-use description of the partnership, a logo, and a suggested link to the specific campaign or programme involved rather than just your homepage. Partners are far more likely to follow through when you’ve removed every point of friction.

Original research and reports

Charities frequently hold unique data about the issues they work on — beneficiary surveys, service usage patterns, outcome tracking — that no one else has published. Turning that into an accessible report earns links from journalists covering the issue, policymakers citing evidence, and educators building lesson materials, in the same way described in our data-driven PR campaigns guide. This is often the single highest-value content a nonprofit can produce, because it’s genuinely unique rather than another opinion piece on a well-covered topic.

Awareness days and seasonal campaigns

Recognised awareness days give journalists an editorial hook and a reason to run a story they might otherwise skip. Prepare your angle, spokesperson availability and supporting resources well in advance rather than scrambling on the day itself; most media outreach around these dates happens on a tight, predictable calendar, and being first to pitch matters.

Volunteers, supporters and ambassadors

Fundraisers, long-term volunteers and public ambassadors often want to write about their involvement on their own blogs, LinkedIn or local community pages. Give them a simple one-page resource — key facts, a suggested paragraph, your logo and a link — and most will use at least part of it. This works especially well around big fundraising events like challenge runs or sponsored activities.

• Provide a ready-made “why I support this cause” template supporters can adapt.
• Ask fundraising page creators to link back to your main site, not just the fundraising platform.
• Feature supporter stories on your own site and let them share the resulting page.
• Send a short thank-you post-event with an easy link to share, while the story is still fresh.

Local press and community coverage

Local charities in particular tend to get strong coverage from local news outlets and community sites: openings, milestones, volunteer days and stories of individual impact are exactly the kind of human-interest content local editors are short of. This overlaps with general local link building, but nonprofits typically have an easier time of it because there’s no obvious commercial angle for editors to be wary of.

Resources that genuinely help people

Support guides, information sheets and directories of services relevant to your cause tend to get linked by schools, health services, libraries and other community organisations looking for reliable resources to point people to. The bar here is accuracy and being kept current — an outdated resource gets quietly removed from other people’s link lists, so treat maintenance as part of the job, not an afterthought.

Offering expert voice to journalists

Charity staff are frequently genuine subject-matter experts on the issue they work on, and journalists covering that beat need commentary. Make yourself available for comment on relevant breaking news, following the approach in our guide to getting quoted, and you’ll often pick up links from articles that have nothing to do with a specific campaign.

Tactic	Cost	Typical link source
Original research report	Staff time	Journalists, policymakers, educators
Corporate partner asks	Minimal	Company CSR pages
Supporter templates	Minimal	Personal blogs, social profiles
Expert commentary	Staff time	News coverage of your issue area

Paid link building is rarely a good use of charitable funds when the tactics above cost little beyond staff time and tend to produce stronger, more relevant links. If you do consider a paid placement — for instance to support a specific fundraising push — vet it as carefully as any commercial buyer would, using our guest post red flags checklist.

Setting realistic expectations

A small charity with limited staff time can’t run every tactic above at once, and shouldn’t try to. Pick the one or two that fit your organisation’s actual strengths: a charity with a strong data set should prioritise research reports, while one with a large volunteer base should prioritise supporter templates and local press. Trying to run a full programme with no dedicated capacity usually produces a handful of mediocre attempts rather than one or two things done well enough to actually earn links.

Where to go next

For measuring whether any of this is working, see our digital PR metrics guide, and for building a proper research campaign from scratch, read data-driven PR campaigns. Should you need occasional paid coverage support, the public service niche in the marketplace includes relevant publishers, or browse the full marketplace directly.

Frequently asked questions