With #GivingTuesday behind us, we’ve officially stepped into the end-of-year-giving zone. There’s no turning back. Now it’s time to step up your game so you can raise a lot of money over the next three weeks.
Nonprofit Tech for Good analyzed nonprofit’s donation pages by making a small donation to 32 nonprofits, and they recorded their experience: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
We’ve boiled down their results and have paired them with some suggestions for your year-end fundraising campaigns:
- Make sure people are able to donate. The good news is that there were only 3 nonprofits that they were unable to donate to while attempting their donations (9% of the nonprofits).
- Ask people to become monthly donors. Asking people to give monthly vs once will always generate more money in the long-term. 84% of the nonprofits included the option to make a monthly gift within their donation form. 4 of the 32 nonprofits included a light box to convert one-time donors into monthly donors.
- Include honor and tribute options. 19% of the nonprofits included the option to make an honor/tribute gift within their donation form.
- Short, sweet, and to the point gets the donation quicker. 50% of the nonprofits had a one-page donation form. Your donors don’t want to have to click again, and again, and….again when they’re just trying to support you and contribute some of their hard earned money.
- Your entire website should be responsive; especially the donation form. While the majority of nonprofits had mobile responsive donation forms, 22% did not. This will inhibit some of your constituents from giving to your nonprofit. This should be a priority fix.
- Let your donors share your nonprofit with their personal networks. Only 10 of the 32 nonprofits (31%) included a call-to-share the donation on social networks on their “Thank You” landing page and only 2 included it in their “Thank You” email. Zero featured a visually compelling call to follow them on social media on their landing page, and only a few more (7) included a call to follow them on social media in their email.
- Survey your users and find out what inspires them to give. A miniscule 2 of the 32 nonprofits included a poll on their “Thank You” page asking what inspired the donor to give. See WWF's example below.
Your job to test and re-test your donation forms to get the highest conversion rates is never finished.
What have you found to work for your nonprofit to inspire giving?