05 Aug 9 Keys to Successful Online Giving Campaigns

By Jackie Sue Griffin, MBA, MS

There are many digital tools and tactics that can boost online donations to your nonprofit, but before you start sending weekly email appeals or sliding into supporters’ DMs, you have to do the groundwork.

The sooner you dial in the details of your online giving campaign, the easier it will be to plan the communications and calls to action. To help, we’re sharing some of our best tips for building and executing an online campaign plan.

1. Evaluate Your Current Situation.

Before you do anything else, it’s crucial to understand your starting position. Evaluating your current situation means studying your existing campaign efforts, noting where they could be improved or changed.

If your text-to-give campaigns have worked well, lean into that; if it flopped, look elsewhere. If you’ve successfully mobilized social media ambassadors, rally those troops again (maybe they can help give your text-to-give campaign a successful relaunch!).

2. Set Clear Campaign Goals.

The first step in planning a successful online giving campaign is setting clear and realistic goals. These targets will guide your fundraising strategies and help you motivate your community to help. Our best advice: Develop and promote a simple goal, like a certain amount of dollars within the given time period, e.g., $90,000 in 90 days.

Online campaigns often target monetary goals, but you can think outside the box and raise volunteers instead. How about recruiting 900 volunteers in 90 days by targeting groups and businesses impact your mission delivery?

3. Involve Your Board from Day One.

If you’re launching a brand-new online giving campaign, you’ll need your board’s buy-in. If you’re proposing to expand on a less-successful-than-hoped digital campaign, their support can make or break your efforts. Even if they’re already wholeheartedly on board, their active participation—even publicly making the first gifts—can be invaluable in motivating other donors.

4. Choose the Right Donation Tool.

You have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing an online giving platform for your nonprofit. Having the right donation tool can help you bring fundraising to the next level—and it’s not always an easy task.

Be sure you gather input from the right stakeholders: departments involved in fundraising, payment processing–and even your donors. Also, research and consider all of the fees and costs, setup and maintenance procedures, integration with your software and scalability options to be sure you make the best choice for your organization in the long term.

5. Sing it from the Mountaintops!

Now that you’ve decided on your campaign goal and set up an online donation page, it’s promotion time. The easiest way to get the word out is through social media, email and your website. However, you can also use more traditional options such as direct mail and public advertisements.

And don’t forget to mobilize your stakeholders—board, staff, volunteers—to spread the word. Make it easy for them by supplying pre-written social media posts with links and visuals.

6. Testimonials Tell Your Story.

Testimonials, either in text or video form, foster connection: The more visual the testimonial, the better. The production value doesn’t have to be high; you don’t need to spend days of recording time or thousands of dollars. Videos captured on smartphones with a bit of careful thought to backdrop can be more compelling than the slickest studio-produced vehicles. If possible, include text on top of photos on your social media profiles to increase interest. But whatever else you do, make sure the story gives your viewers all the feels.

7. Ensure Mobile Compatibility.

Make sure that every part of your online giving campaign is accessible—and easy!—on smartphones and tablets. That includes the initial emails, any page that social media links to, your campaign donation page and a Thank You letter.

A donor that finds it confusing or clunky to complete an online gift on their phone is not very likely to take the time to get to their laptop or desktop to make the gift.

Well, before you launch your campaign publicly, ask staff or volunteers not very familiar with your website or even very tech-savvy to test the process and offer you feedback.

8. Track Your Metrics.

As you’re planning the campaign, think about how you will measure success. There can be a number of factors, but here are a few of the most common performance indicators:

• Total funds raised
• Number of donations received
• Average gift amount

These are just key metrics that you should track. Others may depend on your communication methods for directing donors to your online campaign page. Or you may have the capability to tally average gift growth for existing donors or capture the number of employer-matched donations. Tracking new newsletter subscriptions, memberships or volunteer applications may give you insight into how the campaign helped raise interest in and affinity for your organization, as well.

Whatever you decide to measure, make sure it feeds into a clear picture of who wants to be involved with your organization and how they’d like to participate.

9. Don’t Forget to Thank Your Donors and Share the Campaign Results.

Thank you letters tend to be built into donation platforms, but don’t skip the step of customizing the message as much as you can. Your donors and volunteers can recognize a canned email response at 50 paces. Don’t they deserve better than that?

In addition to expressing your appreciation, this is a great tool for sharing the end result. They were excited enough to engage with you by giving their time or funds; why wouldn’t they be excited to learn what changed because of their participation? You don’t have to write pages to share with them a few, clear examples of how they’ve helped bring about a positive change.