01 / Arts and culture

Free websites for arts and culture nonprofits

We donate the design and the build. Hosting is $25 a month for the first 12 months, then $50 a month. Built around the one page that decides whether a first-time visitor buys a ticket or closes the tab.

Rolling, no deadline
Decision in 2 weeks
Live in 4 to 6 weeks

Apply for the grant Read the program detail

The mechanism

No box office cut, no revenue share

The build is donated. Hosting and SSL are $25 a month for the first 12 months, then $50 a month. That is the entire arrangement. Omen takes nothing from ticket sales, nothing from memberships and nothing from donations, because the site never touches the money.

$0 build $25 a month, first 12 $50 a month after You own the files

Check eligibility first

02 / How these sites get used

What the site actually does

Seven jobs. Two of them carry the traffic, and one of them is the reason anybody ever comes back years later.

Season: What is on now, what is next, and the dates in between. One page, first item in the navigation, dated at the listing level so nothing sits there quietly out of date.
Tickets: A clean handoff to the platform you already sell on. The link is in the same place on every listing and stored once, so switching platform does not mean editing forty pages.
Archive: Past exhibitions, past productions, past casts and past programs. Researchers, funders, press and alumni performers all come back for this, and it is the part most rebuilt sites quietly delete.
Membership: Levels, what each one includes, when it renews, whether it transfers, and how to give without joining. Subscribers and donors are not the same reader and should not land on the same page.
Venue: Address, parking and what it costs, the accessible entrance, step-free seating, assistive listening, latecomer policy, and how early the doors open. Somebody is reading this in a car twenty minutes before curtain.
People: Artist, company and staff biographies at stable addresses, so a program note or a press release can link straight to one.
Education: Workshops, school programs, residencies and outreach. Named contact, real dates, and what a teacher has to do to book one.

03 / The page that matters most

The season page goes stale

Nothing on an arts site decays as fast as what is on now. It is also the page every first-time visitor lands on.

An exhibition that closed in March, still sitting at the top of the page in July, tells a first-time visitor more about the organization than any of the copy does.

So the page is built to be dated rather than undated. Every listing carries a start date and an end date. Closed listings move into the archive instead of being deleted, because the archive is the other half of the value. There is exactly one page that answers what is on right now, which means there is exactly one thing to keep true.

Everything else on the site links into it. The venue page, the membership page and each artist biography point at the current run rather than repeating it, so a change lands in one place.

Where the money is handled

Ticketing stays on your platform. The site links out.

Ecommerce and online stores are not in the program, and a box office is a store. Donation buttons are, as long as you already hold the processor account. We connect Stripe, Givebutter or PayPal. We do not supply the processor.

04 / Your content

You already have the photographs

Photography is not included in the award. No shoots. For most sectors that is a genuine constraint on the design. Here it usually is not.

Unusual for a nonprofit

What you turn up with

Production stills. Installation shots. Headshots taken by somebody who knew what they were doing. A designed program, a press kit, a poster series, and a mailing list that opens its email.

That changes what the build can be. An arts site can lead with an image without inventing a mood, because the image is a record of something that happened rather than a stock photograph standing in for it.

What is usually missing

The unglamorous half

No Alt text. Nobody writes it until somebody asks. Copywriting is in the award, so we write it with you.
No Photographer credits and written permission. We will ask who shot each image and what you are licensed to publish. We will not publish an image you cannot answer that for.
No Files under 400 KB. A 6 MB hero image is the most common reason an arts site feels slow on a phone.
No An archive older than the last website. Seasons before the last rebuild usually exist only in a filing cabinet or a former staff member's drive.

05 / Questions

Asked by arts organizations

Can you build our ticketing?

No. Ecommerce and online stores are outside the program, and a box office is a store.

We link out to the platform you already sell on, keep the buy path visible from the season page and every individual listing, and hold the link in one place so changing platform is one edit.

The season changes. Who updates it?

You do, or you ask us and we bill it. Content edits are not in the monthly. The monthly is $25 a month for the first 12 months, then $50 a month, and it covers hosting and SSL.

Every dated listing is built in one place so a season turnover is one pass rather than a hunt through the site.

How far back can the archive go?

As far back as your records go. Send dates, titles, casts or artist lists, and images you hold the rights to.

The archive is built from your material. We do not research it, reconstruct it or fill gaps with anything invented.

We have paid staff. Are we too big?

Staff size is not a criterion. The tests are US 501(c) status, an application pending with the IRS, or fiscal sponsorship by a qualifying organization, and an annual operating budget under $1,000,000.

501(c)(6) organizations, including business leagues and trade associations, are eligible. The eligibility page has the rest.

06 / Related sectors

Calendars, registration and member records show up the same way in these three. All eight sector pages.