For nonprofit organizations, accepting donations online is absolutely essential today. Fortunately, it's easier than ever to get up and running with powerful sets of online fundraising tools quickly.
However, the easiest online donation tools aren't always the most effective or the most valuable in the long-run! If you're new to online fundraising and are unsure of the best ways to accept donations online, it'll be worth your time to review the essentials.
We've got you covered. Let's walk through these key considerations:
- The basics of online fundraising
- Top tools for collecting online donations
- Getting started accepting donations online
No matter what type of cause or mission you're raising money for, following a few best practices and getting started with the right tools can make a huge difference. You'll be fundraising online in no time! Let's get started.
1. How to Get Donations Online: The Basics
In order to effectively fundraise online, there are a few essential tools and strategies that you'll need. Think of them as the essential elements of digital fundraising:
- A donation tool. This is what your donor interacts with on your website and enters their payment information into. A donation app that can integrate (or freely share its data with) your website and database is the best bet, as is a tool that lets you pick your own payment processor. If your organization doesn't have a website yet, use an online fundraising platform. Check out our top online donation software options for nonprofits to get started exploring providers.
- A way to collect, store, and organize your online donation data. Ideally, this will be a dedicated database. Salesforce is a popular database platform that can easily incorporate additional tools, called Salesforce apps, designed just for fundraising. If a professional-grade database isn't feasible yet, be sure to use donation tools that give you access to your fundraising data, like donor names, amounts, dates, etc. This will be helpful later when you're fundraising in the future and want to reach out to guaranteed supporters.
- Tools to boost the impact of online donations. There's a wide variety of tools out there designed to help organizations boost the impact of the donations they receive. Recurring donation options, corporate matching gifts, and research tools are all good examples. We'll walk through a few top providers in a later section.
- A way to promote your donation page online. How will anyone make a donation with your new donation tool if they don't know how to access it? For brand new fundraisers, 'digital marketing' might sound overwhelming for brand new nonprofits, but it's quite easy to get started. Social media and email will be your best bets. Launch an awareness campaign and ask your supporters to help share your posts, all of which should provide easy links and instructions for making an online donation.
Familiarize your team with these essential elements of online fundraising and how they fit together. For the best results, make sure to always customize your approach to your unique cause, community, and audience.
Now, we'll walk through a few top providers and examples for each of the four categories listed above.
2. Collecting Online Donations for Nonprofits: Top Tools
Let's highlight some top options for each of the essential elements of online fundraising.
Use this list to jump ahead, or follow along from the top to get an idea of the range of tools and providers out there.
Top Tool to Accept Donations Online: Soapbox Engage
Overview of This Donation Tool
Soapbox Engage creates fundraising and donor engagement apps for nonprofits of all sizes.
We make it easier than ever to get up and running with a powerful set of fundraising tools quickly, especially with our Donations app. Designed to work seamlessly with the Salesforce CRM platform or on its own as a standalone donation tool, our app can give your organization everything it needs to start fundraising online like a pro.
Plus, we prioritize offering intuitive options that today's online fundraising requires. Mobile-optimized donation pages for your website, unlimited donation page creation for all your campaigns, clean data reports, flexible processing options, and more can all take your fundraising to the next level.
Why This Donation Tool Stands Out
The Soapbox Engage Donations app stands out because it offers professional-grade functionality and options at an affordable price.
Effective fundraising tools are often out of reach for smaller organizations that can't afford them, causing them to settle for cheaper, but less flexible and effective, alternatives. With the Soapbox Engage Donations app, you don't have to compromise.
Check out this demo video to see our donation app in action, or take it for a spin with a free trial.
Top Tool for Organizing Online Donation Data: Salesforce
Overview of This Donation Tool
Salesforce has quickly become the world's most popular database platform for a few reasons. The main one is that it's incredibly flexible, empowering all types of businesses and organizations to use their data in smarter ways.
It's a particularly popular choice for nonprofits because eligible organizations can get started with the platform for free with their Nonprofit Success Pack. If your organization has been relying on spreadsheets and disorganized data tracking systems, it might be time to upgrade! You'll just need to pick the perfect Salesforce-integrated donation tools and additional features to add on as needed. Check out our guide here to learn more about what it's like to get started with Salesforce.
A dedicated constituent relationship management system (CRM) is a major asset for nonprofits that know how to make the most of them. With more data being saved and analyzed in smarter ways, each new fundraising campaign you host will become more and more effective.
Why This Donation Tool Stands Out
Salesforce stands out for its flexibility, which is all thanks to the AppExchange. This is the official marketplace for Salesforce apps, or integrated add-on tools designed to work seamlessly with the platform.
With integrated apps, you gain new functionalities and ensure that all your data gets cleanly reported and sorted in your database, improving both your supporters' and your team's experiences. There's a Salesforce app to support practically anything you need to accomplish, from hosting an advocacy campaign to helping supporters register for your events.
Top Tools for Boosting Your Online Donations
These tools can all help to boost the impact of the online donations that you receive.
The ways that you boost your online fundraising will vary depending on your exact cause, campaign, and audience, so always get creative when brainstorming new ways to raise more. We've highlighted a few examples to get you started:
Double the Donation
Double the Donation is a leading database and search tool centered around one key goal — helping nonprofits raise more money through corporate matching gift programs.
Through matching gift programs, generous companies will financially match donations that their employees make to eligible nonprofits, effectively doubling the impact of that single donation. With the rise of corporate social responsibility, nonprofits that know how to tap into these funds can seriously grow their revenue. Check out this complete guide for more information about these programs.
Your nonprofit just needs to provide easy ways for donors to learn their eligibility, and that's where Double the Donation comes in. Plus, some donation tools (like the Soapbox Engage Donations app) make it easy to add this matching gift search tool directly into your donation pages!
DonorSearch
DonorSearch is an industry leader in prospect research tools. For newer nonprofits, you might not be familiar with the idea of prospect or donor research. Essentially, it involves learning more about your donors and community in order to ask them for support in smarter, more targeted, and more effective ways.
This type of research is especially helpful when you're looking for major gifts from wealthy supporters. Understanding their interests and philanthropic habits will make it a lot easier for your team to begin building relationships with those donors.
DonorSearch maintains a comprehensive database of philanthropic and wealth data and can conduct a wealth screening of your database. That is, you can quickly analyze your donor database to identify individuals who have the proven ability to give more, and then you can focus your efforts on reaching out to them. Prospect research is what fuels nonprofit organizations as they grow, so get a head start on learning all about it with tools like DonorSearch!
Bonfire
Bonfire is a top choice for nonprofits and individual fundraisers looking to raise money with merchandise. Specifically, they make it extremely easy to create great-looking custom t-shirts, set your prices, and offer them for sale.
This fundraising platform stands out because it offers more flexible options than similar t-shirt fundraising services. With Bonfire, you can print and purchase a bulk order of custom tees, sell them online directly to supporters, and even set up a crowdfunding-style campaign to promote and sell your merch online.
Flexible options like these are perfect for nonprofit organizations that want to raise money online with their merchandise but also want to offer shirts for sale at their fundraising events, too.
Top Tools for Promoting Your Online Donation Page
This last essential element of raising money online involves promoting your donation page, sharing news about your cause, and reaching new supporters. Online marketing is essential for success today, involving email, social media, ads, blog posts, and more.
There are tons of effective marketing tools and services for fundraising, so we'll highlight a few to give you an idea of the range of options:
Soapbox Mailer
Soapbox Mailer is the only affordable mass email tool designed to work with the Salesforce CRM platform.
The beauty of a database-integrated email tool is that it can pull directly from your contacts in intuitive ways, reducing the logistical challenges of constantly creating and importing new mailing lists. With Soapbox Mailer, you can drastically simplify how you promote your campaigns to supporters with flexible options, robust reporting tools, and appealing design templates.
As part of the larger Soapbox Engage toolkit, Mailer is focused on empowering organizations to make the most of Salesforce. Unlock enterprise-level email tools without the huge price tag!
Fundraising Letters
FundraisingLetters.org is an invaluable resource for nonprofits that are just getting started with fundraising outreach.
Compiled by professional fundraising consultants, this website offers a free collection of fundraising letter templates. Each template is designed to ensure you hit all the essentials while still customizing it to connect with your target audience.
The templates include a wide range of different donation request scenarios, sponsorship requests, and matching gift letters. Explore FundraisingLetters.org to download them for free, and then use them in your emails and direct mail efforts.
MogliSMS
MogliSMS offers a powerful set of mobile communication tools for nonprofits that use Salesforce. Reaching your supporters where they already are (their smartphones!) is a surefire way to boost engagement with your online fundraising campaign.
With tools from MogliSMS, you can use both bulk and personalized two-way texting to reach more donors quickly. Its features and options are easy-to-configure, plus it pulls contact information directly from the lists you create within Salesforce.
They report a 98% open rate for text campaigns run through their Salesforce app. That's huge! If your organization is ready to step up its mobile engagement game, text-marketing and fundraising tools from MogliSMS are your best bet.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a leading web-based marketing platform for organizations that aren't already using a CRM platform like Salesforce.
As a lightweight but comprehensive platform, Mailchimp gives you access to email automation tools, landing page creation, social media tools, and audience analysis features that can take your marketing to the next level. It's a very user-friendly platform designed to help even the least tech-savvy users get up and running fast.
Mailchimp has quickly become a favorite in the space for organizations that haven't yet invested in a more robust database solution. Check out the full range of offerings and features on their site to learn more.
3. Getting Started Accepting Donations Online
Whenever investing in new fundraising tools for your campaigns and organization, think about the future. Will your tools support your work now and down the line? Will they grow along with you, or will they require frequent upgrades and expansions?
These concerns are part of the reason that CRM platforms and integrated tools like the Salesforce ecosystem are so popular. They grow along with your organization, scaling up as your donor base does. Integrated tools and suites of fundraising apps designed to work seamlessly together tend to be smarter investments than a wide variety of disconnected tools. With a jumbled toolkit, you can lose track of a lot of data and end up wasting your team's time.
Keep in mind the essential elements of online fundraising that we covered at the top of this article, and always remember to look ahead to your organization's future when researching new tools!
Be sure to continue your research with a few additional resources, as well:
- Increasing Your Donation Page Conversion Rate: 9 Smart Tips. Once you've got your donation page up and running, make sure it's customized to generate the most donation revenue possible! Check out these tips to get started.
- What You Need to Know to Start A Nonprofit [Updated]. Ready to make your passion for your cause official? Register your organization as a nonprofit and kick your fundraising into high gear!
- Top 25 Event Management Software Solutions. Planning a fundraising event now or in the near future? Check out Double the Donation's picks for the best tools to get your event off the ground.
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