For nonprofit organizational websites that wish to accept donations directly on their site, there are technical issues to consider first. Placement of a typical “call to action” graphic is of utmost importance, and should be done so to provide optimal viewing capability. Colors can be manipulated to stand out and direct attention to the area to click and initiate the donation process. Catch phrases need to be carefully tailored to compel visitors to take action, much like excellent marketing language in the business world.
Another consideration is the actual design and placement of the donation button on a webpage. It has been found that donation buttons which contain both a picture of the “crisis” or “need” that the nonprofit addresses, along with the “agency response” to that crisis, are more likely to have successful donations, higher trust by users, and longer time spent on the website than buttons containing only one of the aforementioned pictures, or text alone such as “Donate Now,” “Make a Gift,” or “Help Our Cause.” Transactional trust is the driving force in successfully implemented donation websites, and this includes both a trust of having a secure online transaction as well as knowing the money donated will truthfully go towards the cause for which it is advertised. “The current research suggest that aid agencies can and should do more than simply provide a donation button with the words ‘Donate Now.’
E-commerce strategies for nonprofits are in the infancy stages, but are showing great potential for fundraising on websites. The most successful to date is Mission Shopping, sometimes called Mission Inspired Gifts. This method incorporates the power and trust of a typical online shopping cart system yet changes the “face” of each product to compel visitors to purchase a service either individually or as a gift to another. Mission Shopping is popular with existing organization donors, who can purchase gifts of charity services for friends and relatives. There is great potential for this type of donation system to take on viral proportions quickly. It is proven to also be very compelling to acquire new donors as well.
The technical aspects are fairly simple. An organization first determines which services it would like to offer as gifts online, such as “one month’s food for a starving African child,” and develops enough services to fill a shopping cart system. The most important next step is to portray that service in a compelling and highly effective manner, including clear pricing and donation button. Examples follow:
The use of a Google Adwords Grant is as unlimited as your imagination (and a few rules from Google). Nonprofit organizations are using Google Grants to…
- Raise cause awareness
- Increase name awareness
- Build traffic to your website
- Expand conversions to goals
- Increase donations
- Attract new donors
- Attract strategic partnerships
- Expand programs reach
- Recruit volunteers
- Build e-mail lists
- Increase the reach of PR
- Capitalize on News events
- Promote and sell memberships
- Promote corporate and celebrity endorsements
- Increase social interaction on Facebook
- Increase social interaction on Twitter
- Promote special programs and events
- Expand services to more clients
- Recruit board members
- Attract interns
- Hire the right people
- Increase YouTube video views
- Raise money from corporate sponsors
- Raise money from individuals
- Fund content development
This is only 25 ways to use a Google Adwords Grant, there are hundreds more! Think outside the box. Promote articles on your site. Promote tools on your site. Promote give-aways and free information to download. But just don’t promote your “donate” button. One-click donation just is too much to expect today. Rather, start a conversation and it will pay off with donations and many other things over time. Use a “Give to Get” strategy, just like you do with your non-profit overall!
Crowdfunding websites propose that many small donations really do add up to successful amounts for charities. The proof is in the statistics: Fundly.com has raised over $233M, Razoo.com $73M and GiveZooks.com $49M, of those who report their totals. How effective are these platforms on the individual cause level?
On Crowdrise, the Foundation for Antarctic Research has realized its goal of raising $10K and actually overshot it by $3K for its “Save the Emperor Penguins on Snow Hill” project. On Razoo, the New Life Academy Educational Foundation Inc. has also overshot its goal of raising $100K for its FUEL “Faith-Driven Education” program. On Fundly, a private project to raise funds for a woman’s young husband who had a stroke leaving his children without an income earner, the “Medical Fund for Scott Lavigne,” has realized its goals of raising $10K.
Examples of typical crowd funding presentations on CrowdRise follow:
Learn more at: http://thedesignpress.com
Crowd funding, sometimes referred to as crowd sourcing, is an online phenomenon that began fairly recently. It is based on age-old models of cooperative funding like the Irish Loan Fund from the 1700s, which provided micro loans to poverty stricken rural families and has evolved into popular micro lending models such as those developed by Dr. Mohammad Yunus, which providing much needed capital to small businesses in India. Cooperatives and businesses are now utilizing the internet to achieve similar goals to help small businesses with startup capital and, more recently, have shifted to provide online platforms for nonprofit organizations to achieve fundraising goals for specific projects.
Current examples of successful website platforms for nonprofit fundraising include CrowdRise.com, Fundly.com, Razoo.com, Give2gether.com, GiveZooks.com and Rally.com What all these platforms have in common is the logic of their platforms – they all typically display current causes for donors to easily find and get involved, simple membership signup forms for new organizations to come on board and post their causes, tracking systems to watch funding totals increase and goals reached, and social networking for donors and causes to communicate.
CrowdRise includes a voting function whereby users can assign points to members, not only based the validity of their cause or money donated, but also on the amount of effort they put in to recruit other donors and members. This “rewards” approach has proved very successful for CrowdRise causes to quickly become viral, spreading throughout communities quickly to gain new memberships. Additional assistance for the quickly gained popularity of CrowdRise is that its primary founder is actor Edward Norton, so the venture gets much more potent exposure than its competitors through television spots with Edward and other celebrities. These online donation platforms all make a profit by taking a small percentage of each donation, varying from 2% – 7%.
How well do these online fundraising platforms perform for causes? Follow our next installment at: http://thedesignpress.com
