Register .foundation Domain Name
Anyone can register a .foundation domain name, and the rules behind the extension are short and easy to follow. Identity Digital operates .foundation under a registry agreement with ICANN as one of a large family of descriptive endings. Accredited registrars and their resellers, including WinsHosting, sell the names and manage your account, while the registry holds the authoritative database.
Registration is open to anyone. An individual, a company, a trust deed organisation, a section 42 not-for-profit company or an informal community group can all hold a .foundation domain. The registry does not ask for charity paperwork, and there is no requirement to be located in the United States or anywhere else, despite older descriptions suggesting the ending was mainly for American non-profits.
What the registry does require is accurate registrant data and compliance with its acceptable use policy. Using a .foundation website for fake fundraising, phishing or spreading malware can lead to suspension. Because charity fraud is a known problem after disasters, registries and law enforcement take reports about fake appeal sites seriously.
We strongly recommend registering the domain in the name of the organisation rather than a staff member or the web designer who built the site. When a volunteer leaves or a vendor relationship ends, a domain registered to the wrong person is one of the most common causes of lost websites among Pakistani non-profits. Keep the login details with at least two trustees.
Buy .foundation Domain
Before you buy a .foundation domain, settle on a name that donors can remember after hearing it once. The neatest .foundation names drop the word Foundation from the left side, because the ending already supplies it. The Al-Huda Welfare Foundation becomes alhuda-welfare.foundation rather than alhudawelfarefoundation.foundation. Shorter names are easier to print on receipts, banners and donation boxes, and easier for donors to type correctly.
If your organisation is widely known by an acronym, consider registering that too and pointing it to the same website. Think about how people search for you in Urdu-speaking households as well: a transliterated name such as khidmat.foundation may be what donors remember after hearing a radio appeal. When the trust is named after a person, check the spelling that family members and the trust deed use, so the domain and official documents agree.
Some short dictionary words are classed as premium names by the registry and carry a higher price. Our domain search shows this before checkout, so there are no surprises later.
Once you have a shortlist, say each option aloud the way an announcer would read it at a fundraising dinner. If the audience could write it down correctly after hearing it once, it is a keeper.
- Match the legal or trust deed name as closely as possible
- Leave out the word Foundation before the dot
- Register the acronym and common misspellings as redirects
- Avoid names close to another charity, to prevent confusion
.foundation Domain for Charities and NGOs
A .foundation domain for charities and NGOs only pays off when the website behind it earns donor trust. Donors in Pakistan have become cautious, and rightly so. Fake appeals circulate on WhatsApp after every disaster, and people now look for signs that an organisation is real before they send money. Your .foundation website is the place to provide those signs.
Start with an About page that names the trustees or board, gives the registration number and the authority you are registered with, and shows a physical office address with a map. Add your tax exemption status if the Federal Board of Revenue has approved it, because donors who pay tax will ask whether their gift qualifies for a rebate.
Publish annual reports and audited accounts as downloadable PDFs, and update them every year. Show real photos of projects with dates and locations, and describe outcomes in numbers you can stand behind. A short page explaining how you choose beneficiaries answers many donor questions before they are asked.
On the technical side, secure the entire site with HTTPS so donation forms and contact forms never trigger browser warnings. Our hosting plans include a free SSL certificate. Keep the site fast on mobile, because most Pakistani donors will open your link on a phone from a WhatsApp message, and a slow page loses them before the donate button appears.
.foundation vs .org.pk Domain
.foundation vs .org.pk is a question many trusts ask, and the answer is usually that both have a place. Many Pakistani non-profits already hold an .org.pk domain, which PKNIC offers for organisations in Pakistan and which clearly signals a local body. A .foundation domain does not need to replace it. The two can work together in a few sensible ways.
The simplest approach is to choose one as the main website and redirect the other to it with a permanent 301 redirect. Organisations whose public identity centres on the word Foundation often make the .foundation name primary, because it matches the name on their banners exactly, and keep the .org.pk name as a redirect for people who type it from habit.
A second approach splits the jobs. The .org.pk site stays as the formal institutional website for regulators and partners, while the .foundation address runs a campaign, an endowment drive or an international fundraising page for overseas Pakistanis. This can work well, but it doubles the content you must keep current, so only choose it if you have the staff to maintain both.
Whichever you pick, register both names before you publicise either. It costs little compared with the damage an impostor could do with the name you left unclaimed, and managing both in one WinsHosting account keeps renewals in a single place.
.foundation Domain Price in Pakistan
The .foundation domain price in Pakistan is Rs 3,800 for the first year with WinsHosting, but long-term cost depends on how you handle renewals. A foundation is meant to last, and its domain should too. Lapsed domains are a surprisingly common problem in the non-profit sector, usually because the person who registered the name has left and renewal emails go to an inbox nobody reads. When a donation site disappears, donors may assume the organisation has closed or, worse, been a scam.
You can register a .foundation domain for up to ten years in one go. Multi-year registration is worth considering for an established trust because it removes the annual risk of a missed renewal and can be planned into a single budget line. Make sure the account email is a shared organisational address, not a personal one.
If the domain does expire, you will have a limited window to renew at the normal price before it enters a redemption period with an additional restore fee. After that it can be registered by anyone, including people who buy expired names to exploit their existing links and donor traffic.
To move a .foundation name from another provider, unlock it at the current registrar, get the EPP authorisation code and submit it on our transfer page. The transfer extends the registration by a year. Names registered or transferred in the last 60 days cannot be moved until that period ends.
