NGO Website Development in India: Building a Multilingual Donation Website in Hindi, Marathi and English
A multilingual NGO donation website gives each language its own crawlable address (usually /hi/ and /mr/ folders beside English), translates the pages a donor needs in order to trust you and give — the donate page, the receipt and tax information, and a short account of your work — links the versions with correct hreflang tags, and carries the donor's language through the payment screen, the receipt email and the WhatsApp thank-you. Good NGO website development in India treats language as part of the donation journey, not a translate button on the homepage. Translate the few pages that decide a gift before you translate the whole site, and only add a language you can keep accurate.
This article is for trustees, programme heads and communications staff of Indian NGOs whose supporters or beneficiaries are more comfortable in Hindi or Marathi than in English. It is the NGO-specific companion to our guide on a Marathi and Hindi online store, which covers product catalogues, Devanagari font loading and hreflang in depth. We do not repeat that here; we focus on what is different for a charity: trust, receipts, consent and volunteers. Technical statements come from Google Search Central, Razorpay's documentation and summaries of the DPDP Rules read in October 2026. Where we could not confirm something against an official text, we say so. We quote no prices; our own pricing is confirmed by the team on request.
Start with the question: who is not giving because of language?
Before commissioning translations, find out whether language is actually the barrier. A second language is a commitment to keep two sets of pages accurate for years.
Look for evidence you already have:
- Messages and calls. Do donors and volunteers write to you in Hindi or Marathi on WhatsApp, or ask for forms in those languages at events?
- Offline giving. Do supporters who give by cash, cheque or bank transfer at your office or camps say they would give online if the page were in their language?
- Search Console and Google Ads. Queries typed in Devanagari, or Hindi and Marathi typed in English letters, show demand. Our guide to planning NGO pages around donor searches explains how to read them.
- Local donors versus national donors. An NGO working in rural Maharashtra and raising money mostly from Pune and Mumbai professionals may need Marathi for beneficiaries and partners but not for donors. Be honest about who the website is for.
If the evidence is thin, a lighter option exists: keep English as the main site and offer a small number of Hindi or Marathi pages, starting with the donate page. You can widen later.
Which pages to translate first (and which to leave)
A common mistake is translating the homepage and blog while the page that actually collects money stays in English. Use this order of priority, based on how close a page sits to the donation decision.
| Priority | Page or element | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donate page, including amount buttons, payment labels and error messages | This is where the gift happens; a language mismatch here costs the donation |
| 2 | Receipt and tax information page (what receipt you send, when, and what to do if it is wrong) | Donors want to know what they will receive before they pay |
| 3 | "What your gift does" and a short about page | Builds the trust that precedes the donation |
| 4 | Thank-you page, receipt email and WhatsApp message | The first moment after the gift; sets up repeat giving |
| 5 | Registration, governance and financial information | Trust material; see below for how to handle versions |
| 6 | Programme pages, stories, news, blog | Translate selectively, with a clear "also available in" link rather than a half-empty section |
| 7 | Annual reports and PDFs | Often better offered as a separate Hindi or Marathi summary than a full translation |
The pages you may leave in English at the start are archive news, old blog posts and long compliance documents. Do not publish a Marathi page that shows English text below a translated heading. Either translate the whole page or do not create it.
Registration, 80G and compliance wording needs a decision-maker
Statements such as your registration numbers, tax-exemption status and the conditions of any receipt are legal or factual claims. In every language they must say the same thing. Decide who owns each statement and give them sign-off: a translator should not be left to choose the wording of "this receipt is eligible for deduction under Section 80G". Where the translated and original versions might differ in a way that matters, ask a lawyer or chartered accountant how to state which version prevails.
URL structure and hreflang for a donation site
The technical foundation is the same as for any multilingual site, so here is the short version for a charity, with the store-specific detail left to our store guide.
Give each language its own URL. A subfolder structure such as yourngo.org/hi/daan/ and yourngo.org/mr/dena/ is the practical default for a single organisation. Google's guidance on localized versions describes language versions as separate URLs that should be linked to each other, and it does not use the page's lang attribute or hreflang to detect language; it uses its own algorithms on the visible content. A page that changes language by cookie or script at one address gives search engines one version only.
hreflang rules that matter. Google's documentation says each language version must list itself as well as all other versions, that the set of tags is the same on every version, and that if two pages do not point to each other the tags will be ignored. Language codes follow ISO 639-1, so hi for Hindi and mr for Marathi are valid on their own, and a country code cannot be given by itself. Google describes x-default as a fallback for users whose language matches none of your versions, intended mainly for language-selector pages. For a three-language NGO site, a sensible x-default is the English page.
A donate page's head would carry the same four annotations on all three versions:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yourngo.org/donate/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="hi" href="https://yourngo.org/hi/donate/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="mr" href="https://yourngo.org/mr/donate/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourngo.org/donate/" />
Each language page should be canonical to itself. Google notes that localized pages are treated as duplicates only when the main content stays untranslated. A Marathi page whose canonical points to the English page asks Google to ignore the Marathi page.
Only annotate pages that exist. If your donate page exists in three languages but your news archive exists only in English, the news pages carry no hreflang for the other languages. Linking to a missing or redirected page is the most common audit finding on small NGO sites.
The language switcher: small, visible and honest
A donor who lands on the wrong language needs one obvious way out.
- Show language names in their own script: "हिन्दी", "मराठी", "English", not flag icons. A flag is a country, not a language.
- Put it where people look: the header on every page, and again near the top of the donate page, since that is the moment of decision.
- Link to the equivalent page, not the homepage. A switcher on the Marathi donate page should go to the Hindi donate page. If a page has no translation, link to the nearest translated page and say so.
- Do not force a redirect by location or browser language. Google recommends a fallback page for auto-redirecting home pages. A donor on a shared phone set to English may prefer Hindi; offer a link instead.
Set the lang attribute (lang="hi", lang="mr") on each page so screen readers and browsers pronounce text correctly.
The donation form, payment screen and receipt in the donor's language
This is where NGO sites differ most from brochure sites: the donor's journey continues after they leave your pages.
The form you control
Translate every label, hint, placeholder, error message and button on your own donation form, including the optional fields. Test the awkward ones:
- Name fields. Marathi and Hindi names may be typed in Devanagari. Make sure the form accepts and stores Devanagari characters and that your receipts print them correctly. Decide whether you also need an English-spelled name for the receipt and bank reconciliation.
- Amount and currency. Choose one way of showing numerals (Latin or Devanagari digits) and use it consistently across the page, payment, receipt and email.
- PAN and address labels. If you collect PAN for tax receipts, explain in the donor's language why you ask, and collect only what you need.
- Error messages. "Invalid input" in English on a Marathi page is the commonest dead end. Write each error in the language of the page.
The payment screen you do not control
Most NGOs use a hosted payment gateway, so the card or UPI screen belongs to the provider. Razorpay's documentation on local languages says Standard Checkout lets customers view checkout fields in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu and Tamil, that English is the default, and that the default can be changed from the dashboard settings. It also says the customer can switch language from the checkout menu. Its heading mentions seven languages while the list names six plus English, so confirm the current list with the provider before you promise a language to donors. Other gateways differ; treat language support as a question to ask before choosing, not an assumption.
Whichever gateway you use, place a real small test donation from the Hindi page and from the Marathi page and note which screens remain in English. Tell donors honestly if the bank's own authentication page, which neither you nor the gateway controls, appears in another language.
The receipt, email and thank-you page
The receipt is both a trust document and a compliance document. Decide:
- One receipt or several? Many NGOs issue one bilingual receipt, with legally required fields exactly as on the official format and the donor's language added as an explanatory layer. Others issue a receipt in the donor's chosen language. Ask your accountant which fields must not be altered.
- The email. Subject line, greeting, body and footer should follow the language the donor used when they gave. Store the donor's language with the record so later emails follow it.
- Unicode in PDFs. PDF receipts generated by a server need a font that contains Devanagari glyphs. If the font is missing, you get empty boxes where the name should be. Test with names that include conjunct letters and Marathi-specific characters.
- The thank-you page. Keep it in the language of the donation page, with a clear line on when the receipt will arrive and who to contact.
For the messaging side, see our notes on sending donation receipts over WhatsApp. WhatsApp message templates are approved per language, so a Hindi thank-you needs its own approved template rather than a translated paragraph pasted into an English one. If you use the WhatsApp Business API, plan a template for each language you send in.
Consent notices in the donor's language (DPDP)
If your donation form collects names, phone numbers, emails, addresses or PAN, you are handling personal data, and language is part of the legal picture.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 says, in section 5, that the data fiduciary must give the person the option to access the notice in English or any language specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. Hindi and Marathi are both among the 22 languages in that Schedule. Summaries of the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, notified in November 2025, say Rule 3 requires a notice that is understandable on its own, in plain language, itemising the personal data collected and the purposes, with links for withdrawing consent, exercising rights and complaining to the Data Protection Board. The same summaries describe a phased start, with most of these obligations applying about 18 months after notification. We relied on law-firm and news summaries here and could not retrieve the official gazette text in this run. TODO: verify the exact rule text and commencement dates against the official notification, and have your legal adviser confirm what applies to your NGO.
What this means for a multilingual site, in practical terms:
- Offer the consent notice and privacy notice in each language you offer the form in. A Marathi donation form with an English-only privacy notice sits badly with the spirit of the requirement even before a deadline applies.
- Write the notice for a donor, not a lawyer. Short sentences, itemised data, a plain purpose for each item ("to send your receipt", "to send updates only if you tick this box"). Do not tie ticking a newsletter box to giving.
- Keep withdrawal as easy as consent. A link in each email and a contact in each language.
- Record the language shown with each consent record. If a donor is later asked what they agreed to, you can produce the version they actually saw.
- Have a translator and your adviser review the notice together. A literal translation of legal wording is often both inaccurate and unreadable.
Translation workflow: volunteers, professionals and tools
Most NGOs have willing volunteers and a limited budget. Both can work if the process is clear.
| Content | Suggested approach |
|---|---|
| Donate page, receipt wording, consent notice | Professional translator or a trusted bilingual staff member, plus a second reader |
| Registration, 80G and financial statements | Translation signed off by the person who owns the underlying fact |
| About page and impact summary | Staff or volunteer translation with review by a native speaker outside the team |
| Stories and news | Volunteer drafts reviewed by one editor; publish only when reviewed |
| Long reports and PDFs | Offer a translated summary instead of a full translation |
Use machine translation as a draft only. Google's guidance on generative AI content says automatically generated output can contain inaccuracies and should be fact-checked before publishing, including titles and descriptions. Its spam policies cover mass-producing pages through automated translation without adding value. A few pages translated by a tool and then reviewed by a native speaker are very different from hundreds of unreviewed pages. For a charity, a mistranslated sentence about how a donation is used is also a trust problem.
Keep a short glossary of your own terms: how you say "donor", "beneficiary", "80G", "receipt", your programme names and which English words stay in English because that is how your community says them. It stops volunteers from translating the same word three ways.
Name a language owner for each language, one person responsible for approving changes. Without one, translations drift.
Keeping the languages in sync
The usual failure is the fourth update, not the first translation: a registration number changes and only the English page is edited.
- Mark critical content as "update all languages together": bank details, registration numbers, tax wording, campaign dates, contact details.
- Keep facts in one place. If your platform lets you store a number once and display it in all languages, do that for registration numbers and contact details.
- Review quarterly. Open the three donate pages side by side on a phone and check that they still say the same thing.
- Retire a language honestly. If you cannot maintain Marathi, remove or clearly label the pages rather than leaving outdated information. Redirect removed URLs to the nearest equivalent page.
If you run WordPress, plugins such as WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress handle per-language URLs and hreflang, and a hosted custom build can do the same. The choice matters less than whether someone is responsible for updates. Our website creation service page describes how we plan builds.
Fonts, speed and low-bandwidth donors
A heavy font file can slow the donate page on a mid-range phone and mobile data.
- Use one Devanagari family for both Hindi and Marathi, in WOFF2, with weights limited to regular and bold.
- Load the Devanagari font only on pages that need it, so English pages stay light.
- Test with real Marathi text, because some conjuncts and the letter ळ expose missing glyphs in a poorly subset font.
The detailed rules, including font-display and size-adjust, are in our store guide and our post on low-bandwidth mobile donors. Compare the Hindi and English donate pages on PageSpeed Insights, using a mid-range phone profile; if the Hindi page is clearly slower, fix the font before you promote it.
Measuring each language: GA4, receipts and honest comparison
Without measurement you will not know whether the second language is working. A few points specific to GA4:
- Do not use the built-in Language report for this. It reflects the language setting of the visitor's browser, not the language of the page they read. A donor with an English-language phone can read your Hindi page.
- Use the URL. If you use /hi/ and /mr/ folders, filter the page path in Explorations or build a report on it, and create a custom dimension or channel-style grouping if you want it available everywhere. Page path is a built-in dimension, so you may not need a custom one to get started.
- Track the same donation event on every language. The "donation completed" event should fire on the confirmation page of each language, with the language as a parameter, so the funnel can be compared. Our GA4 donation funnel guide shows the events.
- Compare like with like. Compare Hindi donate-page visitors to Hindi donations, not total donations; the numbers will be small, so look at counts over several months rather than percentages from a handful of gifts.
- Cross-check with receipts. Your finance records are the source of truth for money received. Use analytics to see where donors drop off, not to report income.
A hypothetical example (not a real client)
Imagine a small Pune-based education charity with an English-only website. Its field team reports that many local supporters ask for a Marathi form at events and then give in cash. The charity decides to start small:
- It translates the donate page, a short "how your gift is used" page, and the receipt information page into Marathi first, with a bilingual receipt checked by its accountant.
- It adds a visible "मराठी / English" switcher on every page and on the donate page.
- It tests a real small donation from the Marathi page, finds the gateway screen is in English by default, and sets the default language in its gateway settings after checking the provider's documentation.
- It adds a Marathi consent notice reviewed by its legal adviser, and stores the language with each donor record.
- After three months, it compares donation-page visits and completed donations on /mr/ with its offline pledge counts, and decides whether to add Hindi.
We suggest no benchmark or expected uplift; the numbers belong to the charity.
Working with Govindani Infotech on multilingual NGO websites
Govindani Infotech is a Pune-based website design and development company at 2nd Floor, Landmark Plaza, 206 Satara Road, Parvati Paytha, Pune 411009. We have built more than 500 non-profit websites, and the pattern we see most often is not a missing translation but a donation journey that changes language halfway through. Our NGO website and donation platform page describes what we build for charities.
If you are weighing whether to add Hindi or Marathi, the most useful first step is a short conversation about your donors and your capacity to maintain a second language. We will say plainly if one language is the right size for now. You can message us on WhatsApp at wa.me/919201958278 or write through our contact page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which pages should an NGO translate first?
Start with the pages closest to the gift: the donate page with its form and error messages, the receipt and tax information page, and a short page on how donations are used. Then translate the thank-you page, receipt email and WhatsApp message. Leave archive news and long reports in English until the core journey works.
Should an NGO website use separate URLs for Hindi and Marathi?
Yes, give each language its own URL, such as /hi/ and /mr/ folders, and link the versions with hreflang. Google does not rely on the page's language attribute and treats a page that changes language at one address as one version. A visible language switcher is better than automatic redirects.
Does the DPDP Act require a consent notice in Hindi or Marathi?
Section 5 of the DPDP Act says the person must be given the option to access the notice in English or any language in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, which includes Hindi and Marathi. Summaries of the 2025 Rules describe a phased start for the notice rules. Confirm the exact text and dates with your legal adviser.
Is it acceptable to use machine translation on an NGO website?
As a first draft, yes; as the published version without review, no. Google's guidance says automatically generated content can be inaccurate and should be checked, and a wrong sentence about how donations are used damages trust. Have a native speaker review at least the donate, receipt and consent pages.
Sources: Google Search Central: Localized versions of your pages; Google Search Central: spam policies; Google Search Central: guidance on generative AI content; Razorpay Docs: Display Razorpay Checkout in Local Languages; DPDP Act, 2023, section 5 (text mirror); Mondaq: Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 notified; DSK Legal: Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025. Summaries of the DPDP Rules are secondary sources; check the official notification before acting.