More common than it sounds
When we started the International Medical Committee website, for the medical branch of OMPP · WOFP, there was a clear institutional brief about what the committee does. There were no photographs of its field work and no verified data to publish.
That’s not unusual. Many organizations do a lot and document little, or document it in internal reports that were never meant for a website. The site still has to launch, and the usual guides don’t say what to do in that situation.
What we leave out
Stock photos. Visitors spot a photo that isn’t the organization’s own almost immediately, and from then on they doubt everything else. In humanitarian work, that doubt is expensive.
Filler figures. “Ten years and counting”, “active in 30 countries”, “thousands of people helped”. They’re easy to write in a draft and hard to remove later, because by then they look like part of the site. A published number is a claim by the organization: if it can’t back it up, it doesn’t go in.
Quotes nobody said. Without a verbatim statement confirmed by the person it’s attributed to, there are no quotation marks.
What we publish instead
What the organization does, precisely. On the International Medical Committee site, every situation it works in has its own page explaining how the committee responds: natural disasters, conflict zones, disease outbreaks and community health. A clear explanation of the work persuades more than a round number.
Who it belongs to and how to get involved. The link to OMPP · WOFP is on the first screen, and there are dedicated pages for partnerships, medical professionals and contact. For someone who doesn’t know the committee, knowing who stands behind it is part of trusting it.
Transparency without invented numbers. A page explaining how the organization is run can exist before the reports do. When the reports exist, they’re added.
A design that doesn’t depend on photos. Type, color and icons carry the visual weight, with spaces set aside for documentary photography once it exists.
The question we ask before publishing any figure: could the organization show where it comes from, if someone asked?
When the photos and data arrive
The site is built to grow with the evidence. Adding real photography or an annual report is easy. Removing a published number that turned out to have nothing behind it is far more costly, because by then someone has already read it.
The full project is in the International Medical Committee case study. The same approach shapes how we work on each organization’s brand and website.