Curious about QR Codes

Molly Thompson
Molly Thompson
Fourth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions
I'm curious to know if other organizations are using QR codes as part of their fundraising appeals. Are there upsides or downsides to consider? Are QR codes falling "out of style?"
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Comments

  • Lauren Aristizabal
    Lauren Aristizabal
    Eighth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified
    We included a QR code in our 2020 Summer Appeal and End of Year appeal for the first time. We included it on our normal snail-mail appeal slip, so that folks had the option to try it if they wanted but didn't have to use it to participate in the appeal. With our group at least, it wasn't particularly popular. In all, we had under 100 scans. We were able to correlate a handful of them with online gifts.


    Upsides - if your donors/members are using them, they are a very efficient tool that allow for some interesting data capture and could cut down on gift processing time. We configured ours to link to you a landing page, with the option to join/renew a membership or make a gift to the annual fund. Depending on their selection, it would link directly to our Altru webpage to complete the transaction. I'd be happy to share it with you if you like. We used a dynamic QR code that enabled us to update the appeal language on the link, and we got an email notifications when it was used.


    Downsides - I don't know that QR codes ever "took off" enough for most people to use them consistently; but obviously there is a resurgence during COVID. So their helpfulness may depend on your audience. I would highly recommend a dynamic qr code (as opposed to a static code) if you use them. Static links can "break" and stop linking to the right webpage, but a dynamic link can be updated and corrected. For our summer appeal QR landing page, I was able to add summer appeal specific language for that time period. During our EOY appeal, I could update in real time to reflect our EOY language. We were able to keep the same QR code in the piece and retain all scan data, which was great.


    Hope that helps somewhat!


    Lauren Aristizabal

    Database Manager

    The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature
  • Heather Pauli
    Heather Pauli
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 January 2026 Monthly Challenge Name Dropper
    We've used QR codes but they really never caught on with our constituency. However, we do find them really useful for our employees' COVID-19 daily health screening questionnaires!
  • Nicholas Linell
    Nicholas Linell
    Fourth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified
    We have been using QR codes as a part of our signage for eMembership cards. The QR code takes members to their app store to download the app.


    I have found that most members prefer to either look up the information themselves on their app store or simply do not know how to scan a QR code on their phone. Although I know the QR code is a quick way to convey information if scanned correctly, I find most individuals prefer other avenues of receiving the information.
  • Molly Thompson
    Molly Thompson
    Fourth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    Thank you all for your feedback. It's been very helpful. Thinking about your experiences and then taking our audience into consideration, it seems QR codes wouldn't be a beneficial thing for us to pursue for our direct mail appeals. I personally find them handy, but I think it would be realistic to expect that many of our constituents wouldn't know how to use it (or would just prefer to use more traditional methods). Heather - that's a great idea to use them for a daily health screening for your staff!


    Thanks, everyone.
  • Ray Bergman
    Ray Bergman
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
    We tried to help this out a little by featuring it in The Buzz:
    https://community.blackbaud.com/blogs/61/7425

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