The Nonprofit’s Guide to Setting Up a High-Converting Campaign Donation Page
The donation page is the heart of your nonprofit’s fundraising effort, and a major artery of the organization itself. This is the portal by which goodwill translates into support.
There are different types of donation pages: there’s the evergreen page that lives on your website for inquisitive browsers and one-off calls-to-action, but for focused efforts—such as fundraising campaigns—it often makes sense to have a separate donation page that’s dedicated to the cause.
But what should you put on it, and how should you distinguish it from your main donation page?
Follow this list of best practices for creating a campaign donation page that’s easy to use, tells a story, and makes an impact.
Choose your online fundraising platform
Online fundraising platforms allow you to create quick and effective donation pages for your campaigns. There are a number of great services that provide a wide range of customizable features, allowing you to design a user experience that aligns with your brand and campaign goals.
Many donation platforms offer live chat, automation, progress bars, on-demand reporting, built-in CRM tools, and more. Some platforms even serve as donation directories, helping drive new supporters to your campaign’s donation page.
Having a campaign-specific donation page can be particularly useful for both internal and external reporting, allowing you to assess your efforts while communicating your progress to audiences.
Some of our preferred donation platforms here at Green Gate include Give Lively, Givebutter, and Classy.
Customize your messaging and design
While the design and messaging on your website ought to reflect your organization’s overall mission and branding, campaign donation pages are often temporary, which gives you a little bit more freedom to go off script. Custom messaging and bold design can help create a sense of urgency that cuts through the noise and drives action from your audiences.
For messaging, perhaps you focus the campaign around one aspect of the work that you do, using a campaign storytelling framework to create urgency and specificity.
Meanwhile, custom design elements will create a sense of occasion for your campaign and also help your communications stand out in supporters’ feeds and inboxes.
How long should your donation page copy be?
The general rule of thumb is to say no more than you must to get the message across. Brevity is the soul of wit, and all. However, for your custom donation page, there are a few good reasons to provide yourself with a little more runway.
If you’re using a custom messaging strategy, it will not have the benefit of previous communications and branding to support it.
As the heart of your campaign, your donation page needs to tell the full story for those who aren’t familiar with your brand or mission. This opens your campaign up to communication channels like peer fundraising which reach and engage newer audiences.
Having the “full story” in one place provides you with a reservoir of design and copy elements that you can draw from and repurpose for campaign emails, social posts, and ads.
Don’t go crazy with it—you don’t want to write a novel—but so long as the information is relevant to the story you’re telling, there’s no need to get hung up on arbitrary word counts.
Lead with the abridged version
While you don’t necessarily need to censor your copy, you must plan for the fact that many (if not most) people will not read your entire message. Distill it down to the most important points and include those at the top of the page alongside a donate button, then include another button at the end.
Leading with your most important points also makes your campaign page more effective for visitors clicking through from channels that aren’t able to display as much information, like social ads.
This is an example of a Campaign Donation Page created using GiveButter. It leads with a short and abridged summary of the campaign before providing more details below.
Customize your calls to action
It’s a small thing, but it really can make a big difference. Instead of only using generic language for your CTAs like “Donate,” try using a variety of language that aligns with your campaign’s impact, like “Support Child Literacy,” “Provide a Family With Shelter,” “Invest in Marginalized Youth.”
Campaigns are designed to help audiences translate dollars into impact. As the campaign’s final touchpoint prior to conversion, this is just as true of the CTA as it is of other campaign assets.
Communicate your campaign’s progress
Audiences become more inclined to donate the closer you get to your campaign’s goal. Leverage that fact by including a progress bar or some other feature that shows audiences what you have and what you still need in order to reach your goal and make your impact.
This is an example of a campaign donation page with a “thermometer” or progress bar for the donation goal. While deciding which platform you’d like to use, consider adopting one that has a similar feature. The example page above uses GiveLively.
Optimize your page experience for mobile
In 2021, 56% of donation page traffic came on mobile devices. Many donation platforms allow you to check the mobile view from your desktop browser. Make sure that the layout makes sense, pictures and graphics all display correctly, and that users don’t have to scroll too far to find a donate button. What seems like a quick scroll on desktop can feel like ages on mobile. Never make them work to find an opportunity to donate.
Integrate your donation platform and CRM
Make sure to integrate your donation page with any CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to make sure you’re collecting emails and following up after users donate. Many platforms include their own CRMs, but assuming you’re not planning to use this page indefinitely, you’ll want to make sure to import that information into whatever CRM tool you’re using to track donors and supporters throughout the year.
Conclusion
A lot of work goes into a good campaign donation page. The good news is that, if you do it right, you will already have 90% of the creative and strategy in place, as well as plenty of useful copy that you can repurpose across a variety of channels to drive traffic. The donation page is the hub of your fundraising effort and one of the hardest working assets your mission has. It’s worth taking the time to get it right.
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