Online donations are appreciated by nonprofits for their efficiency. They are faster to process, easier for your donors, and are a greener option because they save on paper waste. In addition, they provide a greater opportunity for your donors to become recurring donors. 

While direct mail remains a powerful fundraising tool for nonprofits, online giving increased by 42% from 2018-2021 and has continued to grow. Because of this, nonprofits can’t ignore their digital strategy and should focus on harnessing more support online. 

In this blog post, we will explore two simple yet effective ways to enhance your online fundraising efforts and increase donations in the current year.

1. Refresh Your Online Donation Pages and Forms

If you haven’t updated your donation page in a while, consider giving it an audit and refresh. Your donation page should be a direct link on your website, not just the link to the form. For example, your donation page should be something like yourwebsite.com/donate. 

DonorSnap bonus: If you collect donations with DonroSnap’s responsive forms your forms can easily embed onto any page on your website. 

Donation Pages

Make sure your donation pages have simple yet effective text and images. You don’t want to overwhelm or distract your visitors, you want to inspire them to give. 

Think of a strong call to action, this should be your H2 headline. Then a short paragraph about why their gift matters, and a powerful visual + your form. There is no need to have much more than that. 

If you have a separate recurring giving page, you can also include a button or link to that. In addition, check to make sure there is no out-of-date information or dates from previous years. 

Donation Forms

Your donation forms live on your donation pages and should also be updated regularly. If you use DonorSnap, check to make sure you have the correct appeals and campaigns for the year. 

Also, take a look at your confirmation pages and confirmation emails. Both of these can be updated with current information about your nonprofit and are a great opportunity to connect with your online donors as soon as they give. 

It is also worth adding a recurring giving option to your donation forms if you don’t have that option available. 

Expand Your Digital Outreach

Once your donation pages are refreshed it is time to drive traffic to them. The best place to find online donors is….online. So consider expanding your digital marketing strategy if you are not heavily focused on your online presence. Think about your social media channels and email outreach specifically. Consider putting together a multichannel fundraising strategy. This involves creating a powerful message and then sharing it across multiple online channels. This is effective because donors usually need to hear a message up to seven times before they take action. So your online strategy is a great way to get in your donor’s ears often, in a variety of ways. 

Social Media

If your nonprofit has a social media presence, ensure you are posting consistently. The content shared should strike a balance between being entertaining, informative, and promotional. By maintaining this mix, you engage your audience effectively, keeping them interested in your cause. It’s essential to establish a rhythm in your posts, maintaining a steady presence without overwhelming your audience.

Social media is a great opportunity to reach potential new supporters and keep your current audience excited about what you are doing. So use it as an opportunity to continuously share your story and progress within your various programs. 

As you share content, strategically incorporate calls to action, encouraging your followers to take the next step. For instance, include links directing them to your donation page every few posts. Maintaining this mix of engaging content with calls to action will help drive more donors to your donation pages! 

Last, most social channels offer an option to link to your donation page at the top of your profile. Make sure these are all optimized to make donating easy and fast for supporters. 

Email Marketing

If you are not harnessing the power of email marketing you are missing out on one of the most effective ways to communicate with your audience. 

Consider putting together a monthly or quarterly newsletter to keep your audience engaged, don’t forget to include a link to your donation page somewhere in the email. 

You can also think about running email appeals throughout the year to complement your larger year-end direct mail ask. Because of the cost savings, you can run targeted micro-campaigns to specific audiences using the power of segmentation. 

Tools like Constant Contact make it easy for nonprofits to create beautiful emails easily. If you are a DonorSnap user we have a simple integration with Constant Contact so you can manage all of your mailing lists in one place. We also have built-in mass email and automation tools right in our system. 

Final Thoughts

Enhancing your online fundraising efforts involves a thoughtful approach to both the technical aspects and outreach strategies. By refreshing donation pages, updating forms, and expanding your digital presence, nonprofits can better engage with donors and increase support for their causes. The key lies in maintaining a user-friendly experience and employing a comprehensive multichannel strategy to ensure that your message resonates with potential donors effectively

Bonus Checklist

Give your online presence an audit and a refresh with this Optimizing Online Giving Bonus Checklist.