What Internal Website Ownership Actually Looks Like

In a recent article, I made the case that your nonprofit website likely isn’t broken, it’s just underused. I argued that the root issue isn’t bad strategy or outdated tech, but a lack of internal ownership: no one inside your organization is truly responsible for keeping your site aligned with your mission as it evolves.

If that idea resonated with you, you’re not alone. Many nonprofit leaders nod in agreement when they hear it. But the next question is almost always the same:

“Okay, I’m with you. But what does internal ownership actually look like?”

That’s what this article is here to answer.

This is your practical guide to internal website ownership: what it is, how to recognize when it’s missing, and what to do if your organization needs help building it. We’ll look at common warning signs, concrete examples, and a clear path forward.

You’ll leave with a much sharper picture of what strong ownership looks like, and how to get there, whether you’re building it internally or need a strategic partner to help you steward your site.

Internal Ownership Defined

When I talk about internal ownership, I don’t mean that your team needs to handle every technical detail or manage everything in-house. What I mean is this:

Internal Ownership: Someone inside your organization is clearly responsible for making sure the website reflects your evolving mission and remains useful to the people you serve.

Ownership isn’t about who has the website login. It’s about who’s making sure the website still reflects what your organization is doing and where it’s going.

It’s not just the job of the comms department, or something your vendor keeps up with behind the scenes. And it’s definitely not just about having access to the website backend.

Instead, internal ownership is a combination of roles, habits, and systems that keep the site aligned with your strategy, week after week, quarter after quarter.

You don’t need a huge team. But you do need someone who owns the site not just as a tactical task, but as a strategic asset.

A Day in the Life of a Nonprofit with Strong Internal Website Ownership

Imagine it’s Monday morning at a mid-sized nonprofit focused on health equity. The development director, Maya, is preparing to launch a new giving campaign that ties into an upcoming awareness week.

She doesn’t send a request to an outside developer or wait for the comms team to find time between competing priorities. Instead, she logs into the website, drops in the new campaign content using a prebuilt landing page template, and publishes the page. It’s something she was trained to do during onboarding, and she’s confident using the tools.

Before lunch, she pings the comms lead to review the email draft and double-check alignment with the broader content calendar. The campaign page is already live and ready to go. No bottlenecks, waiting, or drama.

Principle: Internal ownership means the right people can take timely action, because they have access, training, and clarity.

Later that afternoon, a program coordinator named Luis joins a planning meeting to discuss a new service being piloted next quarter. As part of the discussion, someone asks: “What needs to change on the site when this launches?”

That’s not a side conversation. It’s a standard part of how planning works. Luis already owns the web content for his program, so he adds a note to update the page when the pilot rolls out. But this time, there’s a twist: the pilot includes a self-screening form that the team wants to embed on the website.

Luis flags this as a new feature request and brings it to the organization’s internal digital lead, who meets weekly with their web development partner to triage upcoming needs. The request is scoped, discussed, and prioritized weeks ahead of launch.

Principle: When ownership is clear, new needs are identified early and routed to the right people so tech capabilities are ready when they’re needed, not after the fact.

Elsewhere in the organization, the digital lead is meeting with their web partner to review progress on a few strategic items on their tech roadmap. During the call, they bring up a trend: staff keep requesting microsites for short-term initiatives.

Rather than saying yes or no to each request in isolation, the vendor zooms out. They suggest exploring whether a reusable landing page system could serve the same purpose with less overhead and help avoid content sprawl.

This isn’t just tactical support. It’s strategic partnership. The vendor helps the organization think about how they’re solving problems, not just executing whatever shows up in their inbox.

Principle: Strong ownership includes knowing when to involve outside partners – not just to build, but to think with you.

Over the course of the week, small improvements continue quietly in the background.

• An outdated board member bio gets removed by the executive assistant who manages the About section.
• The DEI working group updates their section of the site with new language based on staff feedback.
• A blog post drafted by a program lead gets reviewed by comms and published without needing a committee or external developer.

Each of these moments is small, but they add up. They reflect a culture where the website is woven into the fabric of the organization. Not as a one-off project. Not as a once-every-seven-years headache. But as a living extension of the work.

Principle: Strong internal ownership isn’t one person doing everything. It’s everyone knowing their part and having what they need to do it.

This is what good looks like.

It’s not perfect, or flashy. You’re not operating like a Silicon Valley tech startup. But it’s functional, distributed, and sustainable.

And most importantly, it’s how your website starts to reflect the quality of the work you’re actually doing.

It’s how you build something your staff feel proud to point people to, because it’s clear, current, and genuinely useful. And it’s how you earn trust online the same way you do in person: with consistency, care, and follow-through.

In the next section, I’ll show you what the journey from “nowhere near this” to “we’re getting close” actually looks like, so you can find your place on the map and start taking steps forward.

The Internal Ownership Maturity Model

The last section gave you a picture of what strong internal ownership looks like in action. You saw how it plays out when a nonprofit team is confident, supported, and aligned, from program launches to campaign updates to vendor collaboration.

That was a snapshot of what we call Level 5: Thriving.

But most nonprofits aren’t starting there, and that’s okay.

We use a five-level maturity model to assess internal website ownership. It’s based on real-world patterns we’ve observed across nonprofits, and it’s one of the five dimensions in our broader Digital Maturity Index.

Here’s a quick overview:

1. Absent: No meaningful internal capacity or control
2. Emerging: Some access exists, but it’s informal, risky, or unreliable
3. Established: Routine updates are possible, but ownership is siloed or reactive
4. Strategic: Ownership is clearly distributed and supported
5. Thriving: Ownership is embedded in culture, operations, and planning

You just read what Level 5 looks like. Now let’s walk backward—from Level 4 down to Level 1—so you can see where your organization might fall and what it takes to move forward.

Level 4: Strategic

What it sounds like: “We’re doing well, but it takes vigilance.”

Maya builds her campaign page using a documented template and published it on time, but not before slacking the comms lead with three questions about formatting and triple-checking the donation tracking code. She still worries a little every time she hits “Publish.”

Luis flags a new program launch during planning and notes it in a shared tracking doc. The digital lead sees it, but because there’s no clear process for confirming what’s vendor-facing vs. handled in-house, it gets overlooked during their vendor check-in. The update is made two weeks later only after someone notices the page is still missing.

The web vendor is helpful and invested, but they rely on internal folks to bring context and priorities. Everything works, as long as the right people remember to follow through.

This is a system that performs well, but it’s held together by process, not culture. When things get busy or people change roles, cracks begin to show.

Next steps to reach Level 5:

• Create role-specific playbooks so staff like Maya don’t need to ask the same questions each time.
• Embed website updates into your team’s planning process. For example, include a standing agenda item for reviewing web needs during campaign or program launch meetings.
• Shift vendor meetings from task reviews to true collaborative roadmapping.

Level 3: Established

What it sounds like: “We can make updates, but the site doesn’t evolve with us.”

Maya drafts her campaign materials and sends them to the comms team. They add them to the website (eventually) but it gets done alongside three other priorities. No one talks about tracking, optimization, or audience impact.

Luis forgets to bring up a new program launch during planning. Two weeks after rollout, someone realizes it’s not on the site. A quick update goes up…reactively.

The website vendor is responsive when needed, but they’re not in the loop on organizational priorities. They implement and fix. They don’t advise.

Ownership exists, but only within the communications silo. The website stays mostly accurate, but it’s not actively helping the organization move forward.

Next steps to reach Level 4:

• Assign and empower departmental owners for their website sections.
• Link planning and program activity to web updates with simple triggers (e.g. “new program = page update”).
• Start involving your vendor or digital lead in regular team planning to anticipate needs, not just react to them.

Level 2: Emerging

What it sounds like: “We’re getting by, but it’s duct-taped together.”

Maya writes the content for a campaign and emails it to the only person who can update the site. That person is behind on other tasks, so the campaign launches without a proper landing page. They patch it up a few days later.

Luis mentions a new program at a meeting. Everyone agrees it should go on the site, but no one writes it down, and it’s forgotten. A few weeks later, a staff member notices the discrepancy and scrambles to fix it.

The vendor is used sparingly, and usually at the last minute. Feature requests get patched in quickly, but without broader strategy or sustainability.

Ownership exists, but it’s fragile, informal, and prone to slipping through the cracks.

Next steps to reach Level 3:

• Expand website backend access and create basic documentation to support it.
• Identify one or two update types (e.g. blogs or events) that other staff can own safely.
• Introduce a simple intake form or shared doc to track needed updates across teams.

Level 1: Absent

What it sounds like: “No one owns the website…and it shows.”

Maya launches a campaign, but the email links to a stale page because no one had the access (or confidence) to update it. There’s no internal tech champion to turn to for help, and the website vendor hasn’t been contacted in months.

Luis launches a new program. It’s a big milestone for the organization, but it never makes it to the website. No one remembered, felt responsible, or had the tools.

Internally, staff avoid sending people to the site. They know it’s outdated, but fixing it feels like someone else’s job, or a future project that never comes.

Next steps to reach Level 2:

• Assign one internal steward who can begin learning the website platform and managing simple updates.
• Identify one public-facing section of the site to take responsibility for (e.g. About, Staff, Contact).
• Reconnect with your website vendor and ask: “What would it take for us to safely manage more of this in-house?”

Where Are You Now?

Most nonprofits we work with fall somewhere between Levels 2 and 3. That’s not a failure, it’s just a starting point.

What matters is having clarity about where you are, and committing to the next small shift.

In the next section, I’ll show you how to build that shift: either internally or with the help of a strategic partner.

What to Do If You’re Missing Ownership

If reading through those scenarios gave you a sinking feeling (like “that’s us”) you’re not alone.

Most nonprofits aren’t failing at digital. They’re just stuck in a system that wasn’t built for shared ownership. And because no one really owns the problem, it never quite gets solved.

But you don’t need to overhaul everything at once. In fact, some of the biggest improvements start with a single question:

“What would it look like to take real ownership of our website?”

Depending on where you are, that might mean:

• Training one staff member to confidently update key pages.
• Building a simple web checklist into your program launch process.
• Creating shared documentation so updates don’t live in one person’s brain.
• Bringing your web vendor into planning conversations, not just implementation.

Each of these is a step toward embedding stewardship into how your organization works.

Where Brooks Digital Fits In

We built the Digital Maturity Index because we kept seeing the same pattern: organizations invest in websites, but don’t get lasting value from them because they’re missing the structure and support to manage them well over time.

Our job isn’t just to build or fix your website. It’s to help you own it.

That might look like:

• Running a maturity assessment to help you identify gaps
• Coaching your team on governance, workflows, and training
• Serving as your external digital lead: someone who can bridge the strategy and execution week to week
• Or just helping you build internal habits that make your site feel like an asset again

If you’re ready to stop redesigning and start stewarding, we’d love to talk.