Between now and Christmas, most membership organisations will agree next year’s budget. Somewhere in it there will be a line for the website.
In my experience that line takes one of two forms. Either it says nothing at all, because the website was paid for years ago and nobody thinks of it as an ongoing cost. Or it says “new website”, because the current one feels tired and someone has seen a competitor’s.
Neither is usually right. This is a guide to what I’d put in instead. I should say up front that it will probably earn me less than the alternative.
Why “nothing” costs more than it looks
A website with no budget line still costs money. The cost is just hidden.
It turns up as someone’s time: the communications officer who spends Friday afternoons updating plugins they don’t understand, or the education lead who has become the de facto LMS administrator. It turns up as emergency work, paid at emergency rates, when something breaks the week before congress. And it turns up at renewal, when the licences nobody tracked all fall due in the same month on a card belonging to someone who left.
None of that appears in the budget. All of it gets paid for.
Why “new website” is often the wrong answer
When a site has had no budget for four or five years, it starts to feel beyond saving. Pages load slowly, content is out of date, things half-work. A rebuild feels like a fresh start.
But most of those symptoms are the result of neglect, not bad foundations. A new site with the same (lack of) budget behind it will feel exactly the same in another four years. I’ve written about how to tell whether you need to repair, refresh or replace. The short version is that repair and refresh are right far more often than people expect.
The four lines worth budgeting for
Instead of one line that says either nothing or everything, I’d suggest four. Each is small and predictable, and together they avoid most of the surprises.
1. Keeping it running
Hosting, domain renewals, security certificates, plugin and theme licences, LMS or membership platform subscriptions, backups, and the routine updates that stop the site becoming a security risk.
This is the line most organisations underestimate, because the costs are scattered across different suppliers, cards and renewal dates. Before the budget meeting, get a list of every paid service the website depends on, who holds each account, what it costs and when it renews. I wrote a checklist for exactly this in Who Actually Owns Your Website? It usually turns up at least one thing you’re paying for twice and one thing about to lapse.
2. Making it better
A modest, planned allowance for improvements through the year. Not a project, just a steady programme of small ones.
The easiest way to fill this line is to ask your membership team for the three things members complain about most. The login that doesn’t work on a phone. The event page nobody can find. The course everyone gives up on half-way (more on that in this month’s piece on LMS drop-off data). Three fixes a year, done properly, will do more for members than a redesign every five.
3. Keeping up with change
Your website sits on top of things that change whether you want them to or not: regulation, platforms, browsers, search engines, AI assistants.
This year alone, the UK’s cookie rules changed in February, when the Data (Use and Access) Act brought new exemptions and raised the maximum PECR fine to £17.5 million or 4% of turnover. In September Cloudflare changed how it handles AI crawlers for every site on its network. That one turned out well, as I wrote in my follow-up, but only because the vendor fixed it, not because anyone was ready.
You can’t predict which changes are coming next year. You can predict there will be some. A line for “responding to change” means you can deal with them when they arrive, rather than finding the money afterwards.
4. Contingency
Something will go wrong that isn’t on the list. A plugin will be abandoned by its developer. A payment provider will change its integration. The person who knew how the event booking system worked will leave.
A small contingency line, which you’re happy not to spend, turns those from crises into jobs.
What to leave out
Just as important is what not to fund.
The rebuild nobody has justified. If the case for a new website is “it feels old”, that’s not yet a case. Ask what specifically it can’t do that you need it to, and whether that could be added to what you have. If the answer is still “rebuild”, fine. That’s a real decision, made on evidence.
The tool bought for one event. Every organisation has a platform bought for a single conference or campaign that’s still quietly renewing three years later. Find it and cancel it.
The licences nobody uses. Premium plugins for features that were switched off. Seats on a platform for people who’ve left. Stock image subscriptions nobody has logged into since 2023.
A redesign to fix a content problem. If members can’t find things, the answer is usually fewer, better-organised pages, not a new look for the same muddle.
An “AI strategy” sold as a product. There’s a lot of this about. Knowing who holds your logins, what your settings say and what AI assistants currently tell members about you is worth far more, and costs far less.
When a rebuild line is right
To be fair to the other side of the argument: sometimes it is. A rebuild belongs in the budget when your site is built on software that’s no longer supported, can’t be used properly on a phone, has security problems that can’t be patched, or can’t do something your members now need, such as a member area, online learning or a directory. If several of those are true, budgeting for a replacement is the sensible thing to do.
The point is to get there by checking, not by feel.
The questions your board will ask
“Why don’t we just build a new one and be done with it?” Because a website is never done. A new site with no running budget is the same problem, four years younger.
“What do we get for maintenance if nothing visibly changes?” A site that’s still working, still secure and still findable next year. You don’t see it working. You see it when it stops.
“Can’t we do this ourselves?” Some of it, yes. Content updates, the renewal list, reading the LMS reports. Security updates and the technical side need someone who does it regularly, because the risk of getting them wrong falls on your members’ data.
“What happens if we budget nothing?” The same as this year, probably. Unless something breaks.
The uncomfortable bit
I build websites. A rebuild is a bigger piece of work than a year of looking after one, and telling you not to budget for it isn’t the most profitable thing I could write.
But I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and the organisations whose websites work best are almost never the ones that rebuild most often. They’re the ones with a small, boring, predictable line in the budget every year, and someone who looks after the site as though it’s their job. That’s the old webmaster role. It’s unglamorous, and it works.
Getting real numbers before the meeting
The hardest part of any website budget is that you go into the meeting guessing. Three things will help:
- The renewal list from the ownership checklist above. That gives you line one.
- Your membership team’s top three complaints. That gives you line two.
- An honest outside view of where the site stands, so you know whether you’re budgeting for repair, refresh or replacement.
That third one is what our Website Check-Up is for. It’s £400, you’ll have the report within 48 hours of giving us access (usually within 24), and it’s written so your board or committee can read it, not just your developer. It gives you a prioritised plan that any competent developer could work from, whether that’s us or someone else. If you go on to work with us, the £400 is deducted.
If what you need is a predictable monthly figure for lines one to three, that’s the Website Care Plan. It starts from £400 a month, with no minimum contract, and unused hours roll over for up to twelve months, so a quiet spring can be saved towards a bigger piece of work in the autumn. Hosting is priced separately, at £95–£240 +VAT a month, if you want it with us.
Or book a call before your budget meeting and we’ll talk it through. No charge, no pitch.
