One thing that puzzles me is why some nonprofits make it so hard for people to donate.
Sit down for a moment and think about your own nonprofit practice.
Key questions about your donation button
- Do you have a donate button on your website?
- Where on your website?
- What does it look like? Is it easy to spot? (Also if you’re colour blind or are visually impaired?)
- Are you using buttons or QR codes everywhere you can, like in your email footer, your posts, your publications, your business cards, etc.?
If your answers are:
- Yes.
- Everywhere.
- It is big and beautiful. It jumps out from the page because of a contrasting colour and it has a clear call to action text.
- Yes, my buttons and QR codes are everywhere including on my personal profile pages and such.
Then take a moment to pat yourself on the back and celebrate!
What’s next?
Now you’re all set to start optimising your donations!
You can do that by managing the money coming in neatly and using your money data to set up and time your campaigns better. And by using the donor data properly, sending targeted updates and messages to those donors who love hearing from you.
So the next thing for you to look at is: the set up of your donation process. Is it working well for you and for your donors?
Try mapping your process together with your whole team. Follow one donation from a person visiting your website for instance, to donating, to the donation landing in your bank account and accounting system, to your communications with your donors. (And your compliance with relevant privacy laws). Just see what happens – and what doesn’t happen.
Sometimes you discover small gaps that could have a big impact and that might be easy to fix.
For instance, in one nonprofit we found out that a donor made a donation directly to the bank account. The persons checking the bank statements informed the team about this. And they sort of assumed that someone on the team knew what to do. Like, spending the donation in line with what the donor wanted to support. And sending a thank-you note. Four months later, it turned out that nothing was done because nobody had known what to do!
You can easily avoid this with clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), where all steps are made explicit.
I am curious to hear from you what you find out from your mapping! Is the whole process covered? Is it all clear? Do you also have monitoring in place in case something out of the ordinary happens, like an unexpected direct donation? Let me know!
How I can help
If you’re not sure your systems are set up to manage that money in the best and easiest way, check out my workshop Donation Received – Now What?
In this workshop I walk you through all the things you need to set up, decide and do around the money coming in.
The second part of the workshop focuses on handling the personal data of your donors, coming in with their donations. What do you need to have in place to be compliant with privacy laws that might apply to you (even if you’re not aware of it!)?
All in all, it can be challenging to be on top of all these things – and that’s why I created this workshop for you! You can find out more here: https://www.changingtides.eu/donationnowwhat
I can also do a review of your SOPs for managing donations. You can find out more here: https://www.changingtides.eu/reviewdonationssops
Check out my video 5 mistakes to avoid to get more donations for your nonprofit
Want to know more and ask questions?
If you want to discuss this more – jump into my nonprofit support community and get input from a wide range of peers and from myself!
Here is how you can join my free nonprofit support community
You can join my free nonprofit support community on the Heartbeat platform here. This group is a safe space for open exchange and discussion on potentially sensitive topics like boards, nonprofit management, fundraising, etc.
You can visit the community via a browser or via an app. Here is the link to download the Heartbeat chat app in the Google Play store.
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The seaside always inspires me and helps me think of articles, videos, workshops and courses I can create for you.
If you want to support me without getting a paid workshop, course or review – you can donate me a coffee and speed up my thinking process!
You can support me here: https://ko-fi.com/suzannebakker