The Time is Now || Optimize Your Online Giving Pages

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7K0A0190A few weeks ago my friend Pam Dechert, Blackbaud’s lead eTapestry consultant, gave a wonderful presentation on “Optimizing Multi-Channel Fundraising” at BBCON. It was extremely well-received and very timely, especially considering that 35% of all online gifts are received in the 4th quarter.

With this blog being posted in early November, the time is now for us to act.  Today’s blog we will discuss a few tips and suggestions to take full advantage of the upcoming season, specifically focused on the online giving front.  But first let’s take a minute to set the stage with a few statistics from Blackbaud’s 2013 Charitable Giving Report and some statistics from eTapestry’s DIY ecommerce pages to reinforce investing some time in this area soon.

2013 Charitable Giving Report key stats:

  • In 2013, Online giving grew by 13.5%, while overall charitable giving grew by 4.9%.
  • 33.6% of all charitable giving occurs in Q4. 35% of online giving occurs during the same timeframe.
  • December is the biggest month for all giving; 17.5% offline, 18.8% online.
  • January is the slowest month of online giving at 4.8%, February the slowest for all giving at 5.8%.You can download the 2013 Charitable Giving report by Clicking Here

2013 Blackbaud’s Do It Yourself ecommerce stats:

  • Over 5,400 DIY forms are live.
  • $186 Average Gift
  • $77 Million raised online
  • 414,620 total transactions

To help you maximize your chances to grow your online contributions for Q4 and 2015, I’ve compiled the key points you’ll want to consider to optimize your online giving forms success.

Branding – Does your page match your website? Have you used the “Embeddable” template, which will allow you to have a consistent look and feel of your current website with our DIY form?

Mobile Responsive – Think of how much you do on your phone currently. Your donors are no different. In the last eTapestry release, we made our DIY forms responsive. Thus the experience is just as good on a tablet and cell phone, as it is on a computer. Republishing your existing page is all it takes to enable this new feature.

Location, Location, Location – the 3 keys in real estate are the same for your DIY page. On average it takes 4 clicks to get to a nonprofit’s donation page. Make it simple and make it visible.

A Strong Call to Action – Through various channels (mail, email, social media, etc.) you are hopefully driving your constituents to your website and online giving forms. Make sure you are very straight forward with what you want them to do once they get there. Try not to clutter the page with a lot of other items they can click on to take them away from the page.

Suggest Giving Amounts - Only 22% of online giving pages have suggested giving amounts, so make sure you’re asking for donation levels that will have an impact on your organization’s mission. If you have key giving level clubs, it’s not a bad idea to identify them with the gift amount (example below). Another popular technique is to pre-select your preferred/recommended giving level, so when visitors click on the link there is already a default amount. This is a nice way to highlight recurring gifts opportunities (example below).

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Tailor to the Seasons – Within eTapestry’s DIY functionality you have the ability to create up to 50 forms (only 10 can be “live” at one-time). You should think about adjusting your pages as the seasons and fundraising initiatives change. For the Q4 pages, consider increasing your ask amounts to coincide with the increased volume of giving that occurs. By viewing the performance of each of your DIY pages, you can adjust your approach as time passes, if you feel the increased levels may be scaring people off. I’ve enclosed a quick screenshot of the report.

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Don’t Forget Your Noble Purpose – Whether on your online donation form or on the page you have the form embedded, make sure you are telling your donors how their contributions impact your mission. If every dollar raised feeds 4 people, you should and need to get that powerful stat out in the forefront. If you tie this together with Ask Amounts, it can be even more impactful. I wrote another Blog post earlier this year on this topic; take a look if you missed it. blogs/35/1469

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While the timing of this blog post is to help you capitalize on the 4th quarter online fundraising boom, optimizing your online forms is a year round effort. The more strategic you can be with your overall communication strategy the better your results will be throughout the year, especially when you are directing your constituents with a strong call to action on an optimized form.

Best of luck!

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