Your regular donors are the lifeblood of your nonprofit. Major donations often make a big splash, but it is those monthly or quarterly donations that not only consistently further your cause, but keep the lights on at the office.
You want to cultivate more regular donors. Your nonprofit wants to make it easier for your existing regular donors to give. The best way to do this is to encourage them to give online.
What? You are not setup for online giving? What are you waiting for? Your competition — the entire nonprofit world — has been, and actively is, adopting online giving at a rapid pace. Don’t get left behind!
Online giving makes life easier for your regular donors, in that they don’t need to write a check and mail it every month. Giving online also greatly appeals to young people, many of whom have never written a check in their lives — and likely won’t. They pay for everything digitally. Why shouldn’t they be able to GIVE digitally?
Okay, we have made the case. You are probably onboard, or at least interested. What now?
First, you need to set your website up to be able to take online donations. At DonorLynk, we have done this for many nonprofits so it’s second nature. Contact us about it!
However, that’s the simple part. There’s a lot more that goes into it.
- For example, you absolutely want to encourage and enable people to make recurring donations (weekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly), using any payment method they’d like. Think of it as a subscription, instead of automatically giving $10 a month to Netflix, they’re instead giving it to your nonprofit.
- Your online giving should be mobile device-friendly. This is especially important since people spend so much time on their phones today. Is the online giving function on your website EXTREMELY easy to use on a mobile device?
- Speaking of your website and mobile site (and if you have an Apple or Google app for online giving, kudos!)… it could maybe use a refresh around the online giving function. Does that page have interesting facts, videos of people you’ve helped, and other content that will entice people to give? Do you explain where the money will go, and how it will be sent?
- Get social! More and more people are first exposed to nonprofits, not through their websites, but through social media. Promote and link to your online giving pages. Make it as easy as possible for your social media friends to click “Donate.”
We’ve got lots of ideas about how to integrate online giving with your nonprofit. Just ask!