Effective online fundraising is more than a donate button. It’s a complete path that moves people from casual visitor to recurring donor and dedicated supporter – all while minimizing overhead.

Join us tomorrow for our first in a series of webinars throughout the month of December!

We'll be highlighting strategies and tips to complete your path for more online donations and supporters as well as presenting the tools available within Soapbox Engage to complete your path.

Effective online fundraising is more than a donate button. It's a complete path that moves people from casual visitor to recurring donor and dedicated supporter - all while minimizing overhead.

How does your nonprofit's path look? Is it a single donation page and a strategy involving crossed fingers and wishful thinking? Is it a cobbled together collection of tools that kinda sorta work together?

If so, not to worry! You're not alone - and we're here to help!

Seven essential facts every nonprofit fundraiser should know about the path to online donations:

Are you getting the most of out your organization's communications megaphone?

Review these three quick content pointers - and grab our free Soapbox Communication Planner to help you plan the publishing of that content for maximum effect.

With the current protests in Turkey and Brazil, focus is again being drawn to the role of social media in mass movements agitating for change.

Mobile-friendly channels such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are being leveraged by organic groups of individuals to speak out and mobilize.

News outlets are highlighting social media's ability to bridge national boundaries to inspire and inform groups thousands of miles away from one another - as well as confuse and muddle their messages and goals.

We commented earlier on the massive explosion of mobile internet use and how it is contributing to 2013 being the year of responsive web design - responsive web design being a powerful and flexible way to make your site mobile-friendly.

How do you know if your site traffic justifies the investment in making your website mobile-friendly? If you've got Google Analytics tracking traffic, you've got ready-made reporting waiting for you.

You have probably heard the phrase “content is king” when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy for your website. While I would never denounce this self-evident truth in the SEO world, great content means less without links.

Links to your content are signs of trust to search engines. They tell Google, Bing, and others that your content is authoritative and worthy, especially when its other sites with strong reputations that link back to your website. These types of links are appropriately called “linkbacks”.

They are evidence to search engines that sites are shouting about what you've published and that others should take notice.

Here are two tips for grabbing some low-hanging linkback fruit to improve your SEO and increase organic search traffic:

Not every organization looking to roll out a brand new web presence has the advantage Holy Trinity Church of Georgetown Pike (HTC) enjoyed: a volunteer leading the project who has been founder and CEO of several DC area technology startups.

Phillip Merrick knew the possibilities of a robust and integrated online presence and its importance to a startup, whether that be a business or a church:

"As a newly formed church preparing to launch our ministries and outreach, we needed more than just a website. We needed a platform to support a digital footprint spanning social media, web video and traditional email marketing, together with an integrated database on the back-end."

We posted a great little tidbit the other day regarding the authorship service available to Google+ Profile owners and how it can help increase traffic to your site.

By following Google's instructions for verifying authorship of content on a website, search results will display your Google+ Profile headshot and a link to other content you've written, increasing the likelihood that your link will get clicked:

We followed the instructions provided by Google for our own blog and can report back the following:

Nonprofits have several ways individuals can support their missions - through volunteering, attending an event, signing a petition, making a donation, becoming a member, and more.

Nonprofits would love to have each individual support them in ALL of the ways they provide.

Like any relationship, those steps of engagement with your organization happen incrementally over time. Just as one doesn't meet a promising someone at a bar and instantly get down on one knee to pop the question, organizations need to work a little romance over time to nurture and expand a relationship with each individual.

That's called moving them up the engagement ladder in nonprofit-speak.

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