When the volunteer who built your website leaves: a 30-day plan

If you're reading this, you're staring at a website you didn't build, can't fully access, and are now responsible for. It's one of the most common situations small schools and nonprofits land in. It's also one of the easiest to make worse by acting too fast.

The wrong move is to call an agency in week one and accept their $8,500 quote because you're scared. The right move is the plan below. By the end of 30 days you'll either have a clean handoff to a sustainable setup, or you'll know exactly what to ask the next vendor for.

Week 1: Inventory and access

Do not touch the live site yet. Don't "just try to update the calendar." First, figure out what you actually have.

Day 1–2: The asset list

Open a Google Doc and answer the questions below. Can't answer one? Write "unknown." That's data too.

• Domain. Where is yourorg.org registered? GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains? Who owns the account? When does it renew?
• Hosting. Where do the files live? Bluehost, SiteGround, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com, the volunteer's personal server?
• Platform. What's it built on? Right-click the page, View Page Source, search for "wp-content" (WordPress), "squarespace," "wix," "webflow." 90% of sites give themselves away in the source.
• Email. Where do info@yourorg.org messages actually go? Does the mailbox belong to your org, or to the volunteer's Gmail?
• Logins. Do you have admin login to the platform? Do you have access to the email address the account is registered under (for password resets)?
• Billing. What credit card is paying for hosting and the domain? Is it the volunteer's personal card?

That last one matters more than it sounds. We've seen sites quietly die because the volunteer's card expired six months after they left, hosting renewal failed, and nobody noticed until the site went dark.

Day 3–4: Get into every account

For each item on your list, either log in or reset the password. Order of operations:

1. Email first. If domain email runs through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, get into the admin console and confirm someone in your org owns it. If it points at the volunteer's Gmail, that's a fire — if they lose the password or delete the account, your domain dies with it.
2. Domain registrar second. The domain is the most valuable asset you have. Lose it and you lose your URL, your branded email, your search rankings. Make sure it's registered in the org's name, with a renewal date you control.
3. Hosting / platform third. Get admin access. Squarespace or Wix with the login? Good shape. WordPress on someone else's hosting? Harder — see week 2.

If you can't reach the former volunteer for credentials, most platforms have account recovery for verified org owners. It's painful but it exists. Start now. These take 7–21 days.

Day 5–7: Audit what's broken

Open the site on three things: a desktop browser, an iPhone, an Android phone. Click every link. Try the donation button. Submit the contact form (with a real email so you can confirm it lands). Check the calendar. Write down what's broken.

Common findings:

• SSL certificate expired — browser shows "Not Secure"
• Donation processor disconnected (Stripe key rotated, Donorbox inactive)
• Contact form going to an inactive email
• Calendar still showing 2023 events
• Pages that won't load on mobile
• Plugins or platform out of date, with security warnings

Don't fix anything yet. You're building the punch list.

Week 2: Stop the bleeding

You're not redesigning yet. You're making sure the site isn't actively losing donors, prospective families, or trust.

Critical fixes (do these first)

• SSL certificate. If the browser says "Not Secure," visitors bounce. Most platforms re-issue an SSL in under 30 minutes. Free with Let's Encrypt on custom hosting.
• Contact form destination. Make sure submissions go to a real, monitored email. The number of orgs we audit where the contact form has been emailing a dead address for two years is depressing.
• Donation button. Send a $1 test donation. If it fails, fix it before anything else. Every day the button is broken is real money on the floor.
• Phone and address. Confirm both are current on the homepage and contact page. These are also what Google uses for local search.

Optional but smart

• Strip anything from 2023–2024 off the calendar.
• Replace the head of school's bio with the current person — plain text is fine.
• Add a "Last updated May 2026" note on the homepage if anything looks stale. It signals "we're here."

Week 3: Decide your path

By now you know what platform you're on, what's broken, what works. Three honest options. None of them is "do nothing forever" — that's how you ended up here.

Option A: Take it over yourself

Works if: someone on your board or staff has 4–6 hours a month and basic comfort with web tools.
Cost: $200–$700 a year in hosting and platform fees.
Risk: you're one volunteer departure from this exact problem in 2027.

Option B: Hire a freelancer on retainer

Works if: you have $80–$200 a month, want to keep your current platform, and don't mind that "your freelancer" is one person whose schedule is their own.
Cost: $1,000–$2,500 a year, plus project fees.
Risk: bus factor. Freelancer disappears, you're back here.

Option C: Move to a managed service

Works if: you want the work done and kept current, don't want to log into a CMS again, want one predictable monthly bill.
Cost: $79–$200 a month.
Risk: less day-to-day control. You're trusting a vendor's response time.

Most small schools and nonprofits should be in B or C. The orgs that pick A often end up here again in 18 months.

Week 4: Execute the handoff

Taking it over yourself? Schedule monthly 1-hour blocks on your calendar — right now, for the next 12 months. The reason these sites freeze is that nobody puts website-tending on a recurring calendar. It's nobody's job until it's an emergency.

Hiring a freelancer or service? Get three things in writing before you sign anything.

1. You own the domain. Registered in the org's name, accessible by your admin email, billed to the org's card.
2. You can export. If you ever leave, you take your content as files. No hostage situations.
3. Response time in writing. "We'll get back to you" is not a response time. "48 business hours" is. Get a number.

What this is really about

Every "the volunteer left" situation has the same root cause: nobody put website continuity on the org's books. The site felt free because someone donated their time. When that time stopped, the cost showed up — usually as panic, sometimes as a $10,000 emergency rebuild.

The lesson isn't "don't accept volunteer help." It's "treat the website like the building." You wouldn't let a parent volunteer be your sole point of failure for the HVAC system. The website is the same thing. It's infrastructure.

Budget for it like infrastructure, hand it to someone whose job is to keep it running, and you'll never read another post like this one.