Nonprofit site increases uptime and achieves 30-60% conversion rate improvement

The challenge

People rely on stories to create meaningful connections between events out there and our lives right here. That's why the featured content on Mercy Corps landing page is stories: stories about rebuilding displaced communities in Ukraine, strengthening disaster preparedness plans after a devastating tsunami in southeast Asia, or easing tensions by providing additional water sources in Nigeria.

Stories like these engage visitors to learn more about Mercy Corps, subscribe to its newsletter, and provide support for its work through monetary donations. Converting visitors to donors depends on a website that loads fast and maximizes uptime. To meet those needs, Mercy Corps turned to Fastly.

The solution

Mercy Corps actually started as a traditional customer with Fastly. Senior front end developer Benjamin Walker learned about Fastly from a digital agency that works with nonprofits and frequently referred several clients to Fastly.

Later Fastly approached Mercy Corps about taking part in its Fast Forward program, which extends free services to eligible open source projects and the nonprofits that support them.

Page-load speed improved by 98%

"All of us in this industry know that the faster the page loads, the higher your conversion rate will be," said Paul Bock, Director of Digital Development at Mercy Corps. “Using Fastly CDN to cache donation pages means that pages load "extraordinarily fast," Bock said.

Mercy Corps also customizes the user experience to help each donor find the right level for giving. For example, a returning donor who gave $500 in the past will see a set of donation options that start at $500 and go higher, while a brand-new donor is shown a different set of options. That dynamic element of the page made caching difficult.

By collaborating with the Fastly support team, technology and support team, Mercy Corps implemented a solution that transformed their website’s performance. The result: Mercy Corps' website went from 2-3s page loads to 40ms page loads. This 98% improvement in speed not only enhanced user experience but also contributed to a measurable increase in donations. During the busy year-end giving season, Mercy Corps achieved conversion rates of 30-60%!

Nudging uptime toward 100%

"We're always trying to find a way to get to zero downtime on the site," said Dwight Burton, senior web developer at Mercy Corps, adding, "Caching with Fastly is getting us there." The Mercy Corps team counts improved uptime as one of its first big wins with Fastly. Prior to working with Fastly, Mercy Corps had everything on physical servers on prem. A denial-of-service attack could easily take the website down and require rebooting servers and blocking IPs. Caching with Fastly means that even when there are bumps in the road—whether it's an attack or a planned deployment—users don't experience problems with the site.

"The extra capacity and being closer to our end users/visitors/donors made a huge difference for page-load speed, uptime and a better user experience.” Burton said. In 2024, Mercy Corps achieved 99.7% uptime, and it continues to find ways to improve that.

Key takeaway

Mercy Corps counts on Fastly to help tell the stories that engage potential donors and ensure a smooth, reliable donation experience, so the nonprofit can continue supporting communities in need. "Being able to bring my problem-solving and technical skills to an organization doing this important work is fulfilling," said Bock. "Like Fastly does with the Fast Forward program, we can sit wherever we are and contribute to communities around the world. That's something that definitely motivates and inspires us."