Is Your Donation Form Killing Your Donations?

For many non-profits, donation forms can be the bane of your existence. You do all the hard work of attracting and inspiring supporters, and at the sight of the form (or a few scrolls in), they bail.

There are two main reasons donation forms send donors packing.

Reason #1: You're Asking Too Much

Many charities see the donation form as an opportunity to collect as much information as possible about their supporters.

When you’re in peak campaign mode and you’ve spent your hard earned marketing dollars to get the message out, conversions matter.

Imagine that moment, the donor is on their computer, or more likely, their phone. Credit Card / PayPal login at the ready… Is now the time to ask them when their birthday is? Or what day of the week they’d like their newsletter sent? (Don’t laugh, it’s more common than you think).

Most people hate filling in forms. We already know that people are wary of giving out their personal information. When you’re creating your donation form, focus on the conversion.

How to Fix the Problem

Only ask for the essential information:

Name
Email
Donation amount
Frequency
Payment option
Anything critical to the specific campaign (be selective!)

Data is important. Fundraising is only sustainable with good data.

Be creative in your post donation journey. How can you follow up as part of your thank you email? What surveys have you got through the year as a light touchpoint? Hot tip, these double as a lovely engagement piece so you aren’t asking for money in every communication.

How GiveEasy Can Help

Aside from offering fully customisable donation forms within minutes (try doing THAT with your legacy form), GiveEasy offers two incredibly important donation form features.

Pre-filled forms: These used to be pretty rare but these days if you aren’t offering a pre-filled form with all the information you already have from a donor, you’re doing them a disservice. If they’ve told you their email once, don’t make them tell you again.

One-click donations: Once a supporter has donated to you, we tokenise that payment with some of the highest security and safety protocols available. When that same donor returns they are offered the opportunity to click donate without having to fill in a single form field.

Amanda Schofield

Individual Giving Manager

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

Donors want a quick and easy way to make a donation and sending an SMS that clicks through to a pre-populated donation form has delivered great results for us during our Telethon and EOFY appeals.

Reason #2: People Are Busy - And Mobile

Many donors will receive and respond to your appeal on their mobile. That means they’re typing one-fingered on a pop-up keyboard, fighting autocorrect every step of the way.

Is the mere sight of your donation form just too much to handle on mobile?

Look, committed donors MIGHT come back to it later, you know, when they’re near an actual keyboard. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Stats show that site visits via mobile have well and truly overtaken desktop. But donations still only make up a tiny part of overall donation campaign revenue.

Is your donation form and campaign page mobile ready?

How to Fix the Problem

As above, only ask for critical information.

Use GiveEasy tools to personalise, pre-fill and tokenise every step of the way.

Make your donation page mobile friendly. An unresponsive page will impact a donors overall experience not only stop them from donating today, but potentially driving them to lose trust with your brand completely.

If the text is too small, the elements are out of sync, if they need to scroll too far to see important links, all of this will impact your bottom line today, and well into the future.

How GiveEasy Can Help

GiveEasy pages focus on very specific templates that are analysed and evolved over time to ensure our charities are always using the best performing pages, based on the results of thousands of campaigns.