Are you excited about your donation page? Does your online donation form make your heart sing? Are you thrilled to direct donors to it?
…No?
Your donation page is an essential component of your digital fundraising. It doesn’t matter how many people you get to click through your emails or social media posts; if your donation page doesn’t convert, you won’t see any payoff from that hard work.
A good donation page is more than a pretty website: it can increase both your number of donors and the size of their donations. More than half of donors worldwide prefer to give online with a credit or debit card, so your online donation page can’t just be an afterthought.
Why Does It Matter?
You might be asking yourself “why should I take the time to update my donation page? It’s there, isn’t that enough?” But you know, deep down in your heart, that “good enough” isn’t what you want. If your page isn’t doing its job, you’ll end up with three big problems:
- Lukewarm fundraising results: fewer donors will complete your donation page which means less revenue for your organization. According to Nonprofit Source, custom-branded donation pages raise 6 times more.
- Donors that don’t return: if you barely even remember your donation experience, how likely are you to come back and do it again? Not very. You’ll end up with fewer returning donors, which means you have to do the bigger work of finding new donors.
- More and more fires to fight: if donors have a hard time completing donations, you’re going to get calls and emails with complaints and questions. You’re going to be spending a lot more time trying to recruit new donors instead of deepening the relationship you have with your current donors.
So why do so many of us continue to let our pages fall by the wayside? The honest truth is that we’re probably too focused on our own needs instead of the needs of our donors. It’s not shocking that it’s easier for us to solve the problems we face rather than think about the problems of our donors. But unfortunately it’s not a very effective fundraising method.
Instead, shifting your attention to what your donors want and need will make your donation page sing (and then in turn, help you do your job better)There are two main elements to a donor- centric donation page: what’s easy and what’s compelling.
So what does a great donation page need? Let’s check out the 5 important elements of a high-performing donation pages.
Take a look at these nonprofit donation pages that are doing it right, and learn how to improve your own donation page to raise more money and delight your donors.
1. Volo Kids Foundation: Maintain Your Brand
Picture this: You click the “donate” button on a nonprofit’s website, and then, all of a sudden, you’re taken somewhere else. You’re no longer at the nonprofit’s URL, the form looks generic, and you’re expected to enter your credit card information. How confident do you feel making a donation?
The answer is that most donors are less likely to make a donation or give again. In fact donors are 70% more likely to give again if they gave on a branded form the first time.
Volo Kids Foundation uses CauseVox to keep their brand consistent on their donation page. Their logo is right on top of the donation form. Custom-branded donation pages build trust with donors, and increase both the size of average gifts and likelihood that a donor will make a second one.
They also use CauseVox’s embedded donation form so that donors never leave their website. This makes donors feel more secure, since they remain with the organization they trust, rather than a third-party site they may not recognize. This security results in greater giving. According to NP Source, custom-branded embedded donation pages raise six times more money.
You might think that it’s a lot of work to get a donation page that has your organization’s styling, but it doesn’t actually require too much. Make sure your logo is included, add some of your brand colors, and then think carefully about your language. You should be using the same type of language about your impact across different platforms so that potential donors get a sense of who you are and start to trust what you’re saying. It also has some serious payoffs.
Nonprofit Donation Page Tip #1: Branding is about more than logos, it increases trust and donations.
2. 20 Liters: Use Donation Tiers
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: sharing impact is one of the most important things you can do to get donors on your side. If you didn’t know how your donation was making the world better, would you give? Probably not. 68% of donors agree that knowing how their donation makes an impact is important to their gift.
That’s why it’s so important to include donation tiers on your page. Donation tiers are suggested levels of giving your donors can choose from on your donation form. Ideally, they’ll also include a description of what the donation amount can accomplish. This example from 20 Liters does it wonderfully: they offer multiple donation tiers and use the description section to show how each amount will benefit the communities they serve.
Nonprofit Donation Page Tip #2: Donation tiers increase gift size.
3. Ubuntu Football: Simplify Your Forms
Filling out forms is part of online giving, but it’s not the most exciting part. In fact, it can be quite annoying if the form is unnecessarily long, hard to understand, or strangely invasive. No one wants to fill out a ten-page form to make an online donation, and a lot of people won’t. They’ll put it off, or start and then leave without completing the donation.
Make it easier for your donors to give by only asking for the information you really need. Meat Fight’s donation form is simple and straightforward. Each step is short and sweet, with no extraneous information.
You can still encourage monthly giving and donation tipping without cluttering up your form. Meat Fight gives their donors a chance to make a recurring gift or cover processing fees with simple checkboxes, an easy option to add with CauseVox.
On top of that, they also keep things easy and simple for the donor by offering mobile wallet payments. Mobile payments are the way of the future. 54% of consumers have used a mobile wallet like Google Pay or Apple Pay to make a payment. That’s a huge segment of the market, and if you want to appeal to them you need to offer them the payment option they prefer.
Not only that, but experts estimate a 50% growth in mobile payments by 2025. If today’s numbers don’t convince you, know that they’re only going to go up.
Mobile wallets are great for donors because they can give on any device quickly and easily. No more entering credit card information every time you want to give (and from personal experience I can tell you that I’ve stopped a donation because I didn’t want to enter my credit card info again). That means you get increased conversions. Win/win.
Nonprofit Donation Page Tip #3: Simplify your donation form to encourage donors to complete their donation
Bonus tip: Include the option to pay via Mobile Wallets
4. Champions in Action: Prioritize Giving
You may have a gorgeous donation page and a beautiful website, but if you bury the donation button you aren’t going to get good outcomes.
Taking the time to ensure that it’s easy to find your donation page and that your donation button is always visible on your website has some huge payoffs. Your donors will find it much easier to navigate to the page, and you’ll end up with more donations because more people will reach your form.
Champions in Action does a great job of making their page highly visible by including a large donate button in their header and by making it a different color from any of the other menu items. Plus they also include a donate button right on their homepage. No one has to go searching for how to donate on their site.
In addition to making it easy to find your donation page, you also want to make sure that the page itself is focused on one thing: making a gift.
If your page is cluttered, you risk donor dropoff. People may come to your page prepared to make a donation, but then get distracted by something else, or not be willing to sift through all the information you’ve given them.
Once you click through to donate, you’ll see that Champions in Action does a good job mitigating this risk. Their donation page offers options, includes their tagline for information about impact, and has clear donation tiers that tell a story, but what you see clearly is that you’re here to make a donation.
If you have a donation page with other ways of donating, it’s important to prioritize your donation form by putting it right at the top. Donors who want to know about planned giving or in-kind donations can scroll down, but people who come ready to give see exactly what they need immediately.
Nonprofit Donation Page Tip #4: Make giving easy
5. Meat Fight: Connect To Impact
Does your donation page solely focus on the logistics of making a gift? If so, you’re missing out on an opportunity to further excite your donors about your mission and possibly increase their commitment and giving: tying donations to impact.
People give to nonprofits because they want to make a difference. Showing them what their money can make happen is crucial to creating a donor experience they’ll want to repeat. 68% of donors agree that knowing how their donation makes an impact is important to their gift. Your donation page is another place you can show them why their donations make them the heroes of your cause.
Meat Fight immediately connects donations to real-life impact by using CauseVox’s custom donation tiers. Isolated dollar amounts don’t show your donors what their donations accomplish, but you also don’t want to overload them with text, so custom donation tiers are the perfect solution. It gives you another great place to showcase your impact, while making the donation process even more seamless for your donors (they don’t even have to consider how much to give: just pick!). Plus you can use them to increase the gift size of donations.
Nonprofit Donation Page Tip #5: Make the dollars mean something with custom donation tiers
Drive More Donations
Your donation page has so much potential to improve your online fundraising, and we want you to have one that you’re excited about. CauseVox is here to help you create a donation page that converts more donors and raises more money, without a hassle or a headache. Get started for free today!
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in 2020 and was updated and for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness in June 2022.
