Online fundraising continues to evolve as technology changes, but is your online giving strategy keeping up with the evolution? With swift changes happening in our world, it's important for your organization to be prepared to start making the moves needed to successfully navigate through uncertain times.
In its 2019 benchmark study, M+R Strategies found that online revenue for nonprofits grew by just 1% in 2018. You read that right, it was the only time in their study’s history where online donations were effectively flat year-over-year.
While the reasons for this dramatic shift are wide and varied, there’s one key message that rings loud and clear for fundraisers this year: it’s time to step up your fundraising ideas game.
It’s tough enough to try to keep up with the technology, so coming up with the ideas for fundraisers that are going to compel your donors to take action this year might be harder than ever. While there’s no silver bullet approach that is going to raise your organization’s fundraising success fast, there are plenty of ways you can more effectively boost your online giving and convert more donors.
Here’s a list of some irresistible online fundraising ideas that will increase interest in your fundraising campaigns while converting more visitors to donors on your nonprofit website.
1) Online Fundraising Idea: Mobile fundraising
Last year was first time in the M+R benchmark report that mobile traffic beat out desktop traffic to nonprofit websites. Mobile devices produced 48% of all traffic to nonprofit websites, while desktop browsers accounted for 44% of traffic.
It’s time to meet your donors on the friendly confines of their smartphones, where they’re now spending more of their personal online time. To do that, make sure that you’re optimizing your online donation page for mobile devices. One great way to do that is to use fundraising software that is built with a mobile-first approach, like the Soapbox Engage Donations app.
By using a fundraising app that looks beautiful on mobile devices, you’re decreasing the friction for your prospects to give, and increasing the likelihood that they’ll convert quickly and easily. Plus, you'll have a chance to spend more time building your fundraising ideas.
Campaigns that focus on inbound traffic from social media are great for mobile giving, as comScore found that more than 80% of social media reading is done on mobile devices. Creating a call-to-action on a social media platform that drives traffic to your mobile optimized donation page is a fantastic way to ensure you’re meeting your community where they’re living online.
2) Online Fundraising Idea: Amazon Smile
Sometimes, fundraising ideas can seem too good to be true. Did you know? Every time a member of your community shops on Amazon, your organization could receive an online contribution based on their purchase. This is as close to “free money” as you can get!
Donors can select from more than 1 million 501c3 nonprofit organizations like yours using Amazon Smile, a nearly seamless way for you to do online fundraising without really doing much of anything. It’s important for you to let your donors know that they should up their Amazon Smile preference, and once they do that, unless they change it (which I tend to think doesn’t happen much) your organization can find itself receiving fundraising dollars while donors are ordering their common needs on Amazon.
Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price from your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to your organization, which might seem small to start, but could add up depending on your community!
3) Online Fundraising Idea: Digital advertising with Google Ad Grants
While we’re talking about free money, what if I told you that you could have a $10,000 online fundraising budget every month by only filling out a few forms? Pretty incredible, right? Well, the folks at Google do just that for qualifying nonprofit organizations through their Google Ad Grants program.
With reductions in retention, email response rates, and revenue growth, the M+R benchmark report shows that in 2018 organizations invested $0.10 in online advertising for every $1 raised online. That’s pretty incredible. If you’re going to keep up with your fellow nonprofit organizations, using Google Ads to help get in front of the right mix of potential donors is a fantastic way to augment your investment in online fundraising.
Getting started with a Google Ads Grant account is just a five-step process, so it’s fast to get up-and-running with an account. Better yet, if you pair and an online fundraising platform like our Soapbox Engage Donations app, you’ll be able to track advertising traffic in both Google Analytics as well as a database like Salesforce. That can help inform you changes to make to your campaigns, and of course, increase your conversions for visitors to donors.
4) Online Fundraising Idea: Corporate matching gifts drive
Online fundraising ideas often focus just on the donor visiting your website, and then deliver the thank you message...and the engagement stops there. Stopping at that point could literally be stopping you from nearly doubling your donation opportunity by not asking one simple question: does your company match donations?
According to Double the Donation, an estimated $4,000,000,000 of potential matched donations goes unclaimed every year. That’s right, billions of dollars. Having a focused corporate matching gifts drive for your community is a great way to highlight this big opportunity to raise more money. Plus, if you do this on a regular basis each year, your community will better remember to use their employer benefits, and feel good about their work while also helping you grow.
Online fundraising ideas like this can be easily implemented using donation software that seamlessly integrates this corporate matching gift question as part of the standard flow on a donation page. For an example of how to do this easily, take a look at how organizations leverage Double the Donation’s 360MatchPro integration with Soapbox Engage to raise more money faster.
5) Online Fundraising Idea: Facebook Fundraisers
That’s right, the social media behemoth has its own fundraising tool that few organizations know about, but whose impact could be great this year. Based on data collected in the M+R report, rights groups and health organizations saw a massive influx of fundraising dollars from Facebook Fundraisers, with health groups finding that Facebook Fundraiser donations were about 30% of all other revenue sources combined.
Now that’s nothing to sneeze at!
Starting a Facebook Fundraiser is easy, and since it’s embedded directly on the social media platform, it’s easy to see how prospective donors can find giving through it compelling.
It’s clear that online giving in 2020 is going to be more difficult than in years past, and that online fundraising ideas will need to be more outside the box than ever before. For those of you online giving leaders ready to take the leap, there’s a wide variety of new and innovative ways to entice your community to give with new online fundraising ideas.
Regardless of the path you take, remember that good online fundraising starts with good ideas and ends with testing, testing, and more testing. Always be testing.
Online Fundraising FAQs
How do I ask for donations online?
To ask for a donation online, start by putting yourself in the shoes of your prospective donors. They understand your organization's general mission, but are busy with their lives, work, etc. Provide them a clear call-to-action that connects them with a direct story from your organization, and delivers a way for them to better understand the impact of their donation.
How can I fundraise online?
To fundraising online, it typically will start with the type of fundraising you're looking to do. For organizations, you can easily leverage one of the many existing online donation software options, and be up and running quickly. For individuals, you'll want to consider a crowdfunding platform, as you won't already have an audience to market to easily.
How do nonprofits accept donations online?
Nonprofits can accept donations online in a variety of different ways, but typically they fall into the following categories: crowdfunding, individual giving page, peer-to-peer fundraising pages, and event fundraising pages. There are fantastic online donation software options for nonprofits to choose from today that do these types of fundraising right out of the box.
How do nonprofits raise money online?
Nonprofits need to think beyond the "Donate" button and technology. To raise money online, nonprofits need to encouraging donors to give with a compelling call-to-action story, a connection to their cause, and an obvious outcomes oriented approach to their ask. With that in place, there's plenty of great software to make fundraising pages.
What is an online donation?
Any time your nonprofit organization asks for a contribution online, you can consider that an online donation. This might come in the form of an in-kind gift, a pledge, or a credit card or cash contribution.
How do I make a donation link?
To be most effective, rather than creating a simple text donation link, your organization should consider creating a colored donate button, which can point to a giving page on our platform or in other locations like PayPal. These buttons increase conversion rates and boost fundraising amounts.
Can nonprofits use crowdfunding?
Absolutely! Organizations that have broad community outreach can leverage their supporter impact to create crowdfunding campaigns. For instance, a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for a school, church, or club can really be as easy as creating a fundraising ask on popular crowdfunding platforms.
Is online fundraising effective?
Most definitely! Recent reports have shown massive +10% growth in peer-to-peer online fundraising for nonprofits, and it's easier than ever to update. Online fundraising not only reduces the typical costs associated with offline fundraising, but it works for you around the clock, can provide real-time engaging content to encourage donors to give, and can be customized for every donor.
How do I do an online fundraiser?
Creating an online fundraiser for your nonprofit can be easy to get started. Start by collecting key data, like your call-to-action message, campaign photo, tagline, giving levels, etc. Then, we recommend taking a simple trial of the fundraising software you're investigating and give it a whirl. These days, it's easier than ever to get started.
How do online fundraising sites work?
Typically, online fundraising sites work by allowing an organization to create a personalized fundraising page. On this fundraising page, you're able to provide a call-to-action, a main image, and a story to encourage people to give. When a donor gives online, typically the best fundraising sites quickly provide funding to your organization after the credit cards are processed successfully.
What is a fundraising platform?
A fundraising platform allows organizations to easily create online donation pages, which then will store the data collected from donors into an online database. The data can then be used to report on the donor community, providing organizations a full-view of their engagement with their donors.
How do nonprofits accept credit cards?
Nonprofits accept credit cards online typically by connecting a fundraising platform or donations app with a payment gateway (credit card processor). The fundraising platform provides the web pages that visitors will use to make the donation, and the payment gateway then accepts the credit cards and processes them.
How do you make a fundraising thermometer?
You can display a fundraising thermometer on your nonprofit website with widgets or tools provided by the most popular fundraising apps. For instance, with many of the donation pages today, specifically around peer to peer fundraising, a progress bar is included on the page for the fundraiser.
How do you show fundraising progress?
For online donation pages, show fundraising progress by displaying thermometers and gauges that show amount received versus goal. Additionally, displaying the raw numbers and the percentages can help give a big contrast to other text on the page to make the amounts really stand out. Consider going beyond the money raise and display the impact, too!
Ready to dive deeper into fundraising strategies that will convert more visitors to donors? Here’s some good articles for further research in building the best fundraiser ideas for your community.
- Learn 9 fast tips to increase your donation page’s conversion rate
- Watch how online giving software can entice your donors to give
- Boost online fundraising with successful fundraising tricks
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