MAKE IT EASY.
One of the oddities of the nonprofit world is that so many organizations make giving so hard for donors to do. Within a sector where mission fulfillment is funded largely by the gifts of generous folk, making it easy to give should be a priority. All the more so at year-end.
These days, making it easy MUST include the option of giving online.
The good news is that the most nonprofits have gone the way of online giving.
The bad news is that too few have done it well. It’s my experience that donate buttons are hard to spot and giving pages are buried layers deep in organizations’ websites.
With the clock ticking down to December 31, frazzled would-be donors are in no mood to play hide-and-seek with your online giving page. Anything more than one click to where they can give (preferably on their smart phone) is too many.
Which is why Steven Screen from the Better Fundraising Company encourages fundraisers to take control of their organizations’ websites during the final days of the year. Specifically, he plugs a technique that he calls the “bump down.”
Essentially this entails moving the usual introductory content on the home page down by six inches or so and filling the newly freed space with an invitation to give and a REALLY BIG donate button. (Screen claims he’d cover the button with glitter if he could.)
Screen’s call to action, which you can hear here, is this:
“Twenty-eight percent of all on-line giving happens in December” so “don’t put anything between the donors’ dollars and them making a gift. . . This is literally when the fish are running. You should have your hook in the water. Make it as easy as possible for them to bite, to give a gift, to change the world through your organization.”
And when your web content manager screams foul, remember this: Screen and team have the research to show that most
“people going to a nonprofit website in the last few days of the year aren’t going there to find out about programs or to be educated. They are going there to give a gift.”
So there you have it. If we want to make as many of those gifts as possible happen, make it easy.
Makes sense to me. How about you?
Other one things for year-end fundraising success:
This one thing for year-end fundraising success: focus
This one thing for year-end fundraising success: listen
This one thing for year-end fundraising success: keep calm
This one thing for year-end fundraising success: embrace social
This one thing for year-end fundraising success: tell a good story