Only 8 percent of Google searches end in a click when they encounter an AI summary (source). In other words, most audiences never make it to your website. These zero-click searches, AI-driven results, and the evolution of other channels and attention-based social platforms are redefining your digital front door and reshaping how people discover and navigate information.

For decades, the nonprofit playbook centered on the website as the digital “front door,” with email, social, and advertising all pointing back to it. That model no longer holds. Today, people are forming impressions, taking action, and even donating without ever visiting your homepage. They’re encountering your work through AI summaries, TikTok and YouTube feeds, and algorithm-curated news streams. Increasingly, your most important audiences may never reach your website at all.

The Evolving Role of the Website

The decline of SEO as we know it is not a new trend, but tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews have pushed us past the tipping point. Organic search traffic is dropping—by some reports, as much as 60% for information-gathering queries. At Forum One, we’ve seen this hold true across a wide range of mission-driven organizations: audiences no longer visit and browse websites to find the answers to their questions. In this new reality, the website’s role is fundamentally different. It must function as:

• A springboard for action: donate, sign up, volunteer, get help, register.
  
• A source of truth: a trusted anchor that ensures accurate representation across a fragmented digital landscape.
  
• A data source for bots and LLMs: structured in ways that feed AI and platforms as much as people.

This shift is both a challenge and an opportunity. To thrive, leaders must embrace a new playbook that reorients digital strategy away from static, department-driven sites toward audience-centered, product-driven digital ecosystems.

A Unified Playbook for Digital Presence

To maximize your impact today, your digital strategy can’t just be about your website or social media channels—it must be about architecting a flexible, resilient journey for your audiences, supported by a strong and interconnected technological ecosystem.

This new playbook outlines the principles required to build a modern digital presence that works across teams, platforms, and evolving technologies.

1. Obsess Over Audience Journeys

Your teams may already be focused on this, but it’s more critical than ever to embrace channel-agnostic marketing and communications and meet people where they are. Success comes from providing value and ease across every interaction along the increasingly fragmented journey, aligning your strategy to how audiences actually engage, and ensuring consistency across touchpoints.

Audience journeys cross multiple departments, so focusing on them requires teamwork across communications, marketing, digital, technology, and leadership. This means aligning on shared goals, creating collaborative workflows, investing in shared data, and sharing insights about what audiences want.

2. Install a Product Mindset 

You can’t expect people to come to a site and “look around” anymore. A product mindset means treating your website and digital properties as products people use to accomplish something. Every design decision should be measured against whether it helps audiences complete their goals. Adopting a product mindset moves your website from being a passive content dump to being an active tool in people’s lives.

3. Shape the AI Narrative 

Content is no longer written just for people—it must also serve machines. AI models are already shaping how people encounter your mission, whether they’re asking ChatGPT “How can I help stop climate change?” or searching Google’s AI Overviews for ways to support medical research.

If your organization isn’t contributing structured, authoritative content, AI will find other (possibly less accurate) sources. By pushing accessible, well-sourced information, you help ensure the answers are reliable, accurate, and actionable.

4. Embrace Experimentation

The digital landscape is emergent—what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Mission-driven organizations must foster a culture of experimentation: testing, iterating, and learning continuously. Experimentation is no longer a luxury. It’s the only way to stay relevant in an unpredictable environment.

5. Build on Flexible Technology 

Meeting these challenges requires more than a content management system. You need a technology ecosystem that integrates data, automates workflows, and empowers cross-functional teams.

The right tools create resilience, allowing your organization to adapt quickly as platforms evolve. Technology is not the end goal—it’s the infrastructure that enables your mission to thrive.

Your Next Steps

Making this transformation may feel like abandoning your website. But in reality, you’re elevating it into a connected, intelligent hub and a powerful digital front door within a larger digital ecosystem.

The organizations that thrive will be those that:

• Put audiences at the center of every digital decision.
  
• Build systems that integrate data and deliver intelligence.
  
• Foster experimentation as a habit.
  
• Treat digital properties like products with jobs to be done.
  
• Optimize for both people and machines.

By doing so, nonprofits and foundations can expand their reach, strengthen trust, and accelerate impact in ways the old playbook could never deliver.

To explore how your organization can build a modern digital ecosystem, we invite you to connect with us. We can help you develop a tailored strategy that ensures your mission thrives. Please reach out to your Forum One contact or email us at info@forumone.com to schedule a conversation.