GivingFuel Blog

Fortunately, we have some expeirence in these matters. In no particular order, here is a list of 10 mistakes you might be making with your online giving, possibly costing a lot of money in the process!

1) The Paypal Standard.

Paypal is a fantastic solution when you are starting out because there is no monthly cost and you can get up and running in an hour. However, our stats show over 50% of people who click to ‘donate now’ and get redirected to Paypal never actually complete their donation.

This is primarily because many people falsely believe an account is required to donate with Paypal. We think Paypal Standard would be a more viable solution if it didn’t draw your donors away from your site. Try upgrading to one of Paypal’s other merchant services or research another vendor.

2) Forced Accounts.

Beware of online giving solutions requiring your donors to make an account BEFORE donating. Who wants another username and password? Most people are maxed out when it comes to creating yet ANOTHER website account. It’s like saying “Before you donate, juggle these balls for me.”

Accounts are not always bad as they can allow for donors to update information themselves. But often they can be seen as an unnecessary barrier, resulting in substantial amounts of people turning the other direction.

3) Hands Deep In Your Cookie Jar.

Have you ever looked at your credit card statement and found a random company mysteriously charging your card for months in a row? Many of your donors may feel the sting if you use a company that holds your funds for you.

These companies charge donor credit cards on your behalf and then send you the donation amount (less their fees) after 30 days. Can you say a lot of confusion and unnecessary difficulty?

When donors don’t recognize a charge, they often will simply charge back the fee not even considering it might be one of their favorite non-profits.

Wouldn’t you rather have your donations within 2-3 days and have donors see your organization’s name on their statement instead of some mysterious one?

4) Security and Compliance.

People are a lot more worried about security these days. If anything seems to be wrong with the donation page or some security warning pops up, you better anticipate that people will think twice about giving their precious information.

Processing credit cards requires a lot of technical compliance and security standards to be safe. Be ready to spend a good chunk of change on this or use a company that manages all the security for you.

5) No Cause Specificity.

Organizations don’t realize how emotionally tied people are with the images they see and the call to action when they donate. So why only have a single generic campaign that asks someone to write in where their donation should be applied within the organization?

The best non-profits and churches we’ve seen have dozens of online giving campaigns, one for every pet cause, niche, or need that they serve. Then they customize the donation page for each specific cause with images, text and great specificity to reason someone should donate.

People feel more compelled to offer their donations when the entire donation page is about a cause they feel passionate about instead offering up a generic form.

6) Add Your Donation To The Cart.

When donors to come to donate, they’re not typically associating a donation with a product they need to buy and add to their shopping cart. Add a $25 donation to cart just has something missing to it.

From an organization standpoint, issuing donations on a website as if they were products doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We believe it’s best to let the donor decide how much and how often they donate to you.

Why limit them to $25, $50, $100 when they want to donate $1300 or $2800? Perhaps that donation might be out of stock. Give them an amount box than give them several intervals to choose from if they want to make their donation reoccur on a cycle.

7) Branding Crimes.

We are often shocked at how poorly designed many organization’s donation pages are. Squished logos, vertigo-inducing background patterns, animated gifs running rampant…STOP THE MADNESS!

For churches and non-profits, you want your donation page to look good and reflect your organization. Remember, this is where it all counts. Trust us, it’s worth the effort to choose a visual solution allowing you to have your donation page look amazing and not scare people away with amateur hour when they are about to donate.

8) Recurring Donations.

If there is one cardinal sin when it comes to accepting donations online, it is not accepting recurring donations. Someone wants to give money to you every month, week or quarter and all you need to be able to retrieve their payment information.

Our top organizations are processing thousands of recurring donations every single month giving them incredible stability and access to amazing financial resources with minimal effort.

Recurring donations lets you leverage the power of the motivation for your cause cash in on it every month.

9) Too Many Clicks.

With multiple pages, steps, clicks, accounts, the donor doesn’t know if they have signed up or not once they’ve finished.

We always recommend keeping the click ratio down to 2. One click from your website link, and the other click on hitting submit to authorize the transaction. It’s that easy.

Stay away from multi-page processes for donations too. The easier and less confusing you make it, the higher the rate that donors will complete the transaction after getting to the page. Sites that make the donation process a one step process are far more effective because the donor knows exactly what to expect.

10) Leaving Money On The Table.

Ever been to a grocery store and have someone ask if you wanted to donate $2 to breast cancer? Millions of dollars are made from this simple question simply because people have their credit card out.

On your donation page, people have their credit card out and could be interested in a small increase. You could be missing out on a lot of money by not asking one very simple question. Just make a check box with an optional $2 or $5 donation to another area within your organization. You will be amazed at how much you will raise.

Best of luck with your online fundraising efforts!