When it comes to online giving, charities need to up their game. As we continue to live within the confines of a global pandemic, the shift to digital continues to be paramount. Here are five incredibly simple yet effective ideas from our team to boost your online fundraising efforts and drive better engagement with your prospective donors and audience. These tips will be especially helpful if you work at a smaller charity and don’t know where to start when it comes to online fundraising, or have less experience working with online services.
#1 Invest in optimizing your website
When someone arrives on your homepage, you have three seconds to engage with them and 30 seconds to keep them. There are simple steps you can take to help make those seconds count by ensuring your message is clear and that your donate button is prominent and easy to find. Each additional click a website visitor must make to reach a fundraising page can result in the loss of a potential donor, which in e-commerce is known as “friction.” Friction is a barrier to your donor completing the donation. It can come from a complicated checkout, forcing users to create an account, or adding any other additional steps and decision points before the transaction can be completed.
When setting up your online donation form, keep the user on the same page wherever possible to maintain brand engagement and ensure that it works well on mobile devices. Data through CanadaHelps shows that donations from mobile (smartphone and tablet) users grew 33% last year, compared to 25% for desktop users; and mobile traffic grew by 55%, while desktop traffic grew by only 13%. Desktop users still tend to give more, but charities should continue to improve the ease of engaging with their organization and making online donations via mobile devices.
In addition to making it easy for people to make a one-time gift, make sure to offer many ways to give, such as monthly giving, in memory/in honour gifts, securities donations, legacy giving, event hosting etc.
Your website should also offer easy-to-find ways to sign up for your mailing list and follow your social media accounts.
#2 Start tracking
Powerful data insights are available by using tools like Google Analytics, Survey Monkey, MailChimp, Facebook, Twitter, and more. These applications generally offer free basic features as well as advanced options for a recurring fee. Data related to donation revenue, engagement, traffic and page visits, new and returning visitors etc., allows you to review what is working best and gives you insights on new donor acquisition and retention which will lead to better results. It’s often hard to approach data and tracking but it’s best to start somewhere and invest as much as possible into learning more and getting better at it.
Investing in a Donor Management System is an important step in managing your donor data and extracting useful insights. This whitepaper or this webinar are both free resources to help charities better use their data.
#3 Personalize your message
Use messaging that shows that your donors matter. Personalize content wherever possible using their names and thank them for their contributions. Let them know what campaign their funds are contributing to and which projects they are helping make possible. Create donor engagement programs to grow the relationship, such as a monthly donor initiative, and celebrate your time together with anniversary emails. A program, such as a personalized welcome email to someone who has chosen to engage with you, sets the foundation for the rest of your communications. It allows you to provide a contextual introduction, outline the benefits to subscribing and explain why your work matters, as well as provide further calls to action.
#4 Be findable
Ensure that if someone is looking to donate to your organization or cause that they will be able to find you. For example, a free Google Business account allows you to create a profile, list contact information, and engage with your audience. Also, Google Grants offers free ad grants to eligible non-profits.
#5 Take social media to the next level
A simple blog post can fuel your email campaigns and social posts. Success is a cross-charity effort that everyone can get involved in. Remember to be relevant and timely with your posts and to network for greater reach.
It also might be time to think about using paid or boosted social options in order to gain measurable results. This can be cost-effective and the impact is quantifiable. Paid social media advertising can be highly targeted. For example, these options can be targeted to your email list which can result in better retention. They can also target friends of fans, or you can target “lookalike” audiences to help acquire new donors. Often you are also able to test options to see which have better results for engaging with your audience.
As the pandemic continues to place limitations on fundraising possibilities, it gives organizations like yours an opportunity to reflect on your online presence to ensure you’re meeting your potential to engage with your audiences.
For more information, here are some good resources:
-Digital Donor Retention: Achieve Fundraising Success with Current Donors
-Webinar: Fundraising in 2021: The Tools You Need to Master
Marina Glogovac is President & CEO of CanadaHelps, a leading provider of powerful fundraising and donation technology to charities and donors since 2000. Marina has been a technology and media executive for more than 25 years, including roles at Kobo, Lavalife Corp. and St. Joseph’s Media. www.canadahelps.org
Cover photo by Julius Drost via Unsplash
