Every nonprofit professional recognizes the importance of being able to accept donations online. In our increasingly digital society, such donations grew by an incredible 23% over the past year and continue to be on the rise for 2022. For organizations of all shapes and sizes, effective online giving channels can make it easier for constituents to contribute, increase your organization’s funding, and provide a more accessible collection of donor data.
What does it take to create a thorough online fundraising strategy? One of your first steps should be to invest in effective online donation tools. You should look into options that allow for secure payment processing, organized donor data storage, and multiple payment methods.
That being said, your technology alone won’t be enough to completely optimize the giving experience. You also need to pair your software with proven best practices to make it convenient, safe, and enjoyable for your donors to contribute.
To help, this complete guide will explore the fundamental components of securely accepting donations on your website before jumping into industry-leading tools that will enable you to do so. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- The Basics: An Overview of the Online Donation Process
- The Best Ways to Collect Online Donations: 4 Tips
- 11+ Top Tools for Accepting Donations Online
Here at iATS Payments by Deluxe®, we understand the importance of effective payment processing and how it catalyzes growth and progress. We spend our time continuously exploring industry insights and improving our technology to match the latest innovations. We’re confident that this guide will help nonprofit professionals like you nail down the basics of collecting donations online and find the best tools to make that possible. Let’s dive in.
The Basics: An Overview of the Online Donation Process
To create an efficient online donation process, you must first understand the fundamentals of doing so, including the reasoning behind investing in it and the typical workflow. Let’s take a quick look at both.
The Benefits of Online Fundraising
When it comes to running a nonprofit, every dollar counts, and many organizations have learned the power that digital fundraising holds. For one, it’s incredibly convenient for donors. They can donate at any time, whether they’re inspired to give at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. In our increasingly digital world, they can also donate from anywhere so long as they have their smartphones with them.
Furthermore, going digital empowers your organization to break down geographical barriers, enabling you to reach a global audience rather than being confined to people in your immediate vicinity.
Not only does it streamline your donors’ processes, but it also saves your staff’s time. Investing in modern online donation tools empowers your team to automate tedious backend processes. There’s no need for your team to be glued to your devices to facilitate your donation intake process if your software collects donations for you on your website.
Online donation platforms will also streamline data collection since your donors will naturally need to share their names and contact information when filling out your donation form. That empowers you to follow up with a customized thank-you message and send appeals that are tailored to their preferences, so you can kickstart relationships without manual data entry.
How Online Donations are Collected
While accepting online donations sounds like a simple concept, there’s a lot that goes on in the background to keep everything running smoothly. Here’s a quick step-by-step look at how you can empower your donors to give with help from your online donation tools:
- Your nonprofit creates an online donation form. Your form should be straightforward and easy to access. Once you define what information you’d like to gather, embed the form into your website, empowering your donors to easily find it whenever they need it.
- Your fundraising team sends prospects a link to your form. Whenever you send fundraising appeals, be sure to include a link to your donation form. Be sure to leverage a multi-channel approach to maximize your form’s visibility across various marketing platforms, primarily including email, social media, and text. You can even incorporate it into your physical appeals by adding the link to any direct mail or flyers.
- Donors navigate to the form. They’ll securely fill out their name, contact details, payment method, and any other information you request. After double-checking the information they’ve provided, they’ll hit the ‘submit’ button.
- Your donation tools process the gift. If the donor paid via credit or debit card (the most common option), the payment processor contacts the card association that issued your donor’s credit or debit card. The card association passes that information along to the donor’s bank, who then confirms or denies the payment. Explore the process more in-depth with our complete nonprofit payment processing guide.
- Supporter data is funneled into your donor database. Your nonprofit can then use this data to stimulate further donations. Start by sending an initial thank-you as a first step to retaining their support. Then, you can follow up with them to request future donations that match the amount and frequency of their past gifts.
When you walk through these essential steps, the result will be a seamless online donor journey that leaves a positive image of your organization in your donors’ minds. While a lot of the process will be automatically handled by your fundraising tools, it’s crucial that you understand these steps, so you can revisit them down the line and pinpoint any opportunities for improvement as they arise.
The Best Ways to Collect Online Donations: 4 Tips
With a solid understanding of the basics of accepting online donations, you can move on to perfecting your online fundraising strategies. How will you create an experience that inspires prospective donors to complete their initial transactions, then stick around for the long haul? Let’s dive into four of the best ways to improve your online donation collection process.
1. Optimize Your Online Donation Form
Your giving form defines the entire online donation experience. A streamlined form that pushes visitors through the process will help you maximize gifts. On the other hand, a poorly designed form with too many fields or other elements will inhibit the donation process, leading to form abandonment.
One of the first steps your team should take when accepting donations online is to create a form that’s optimized to drive conversions. Here are a few ways your team can accomplish this:
- Only gather essential information. Overloading your form with too many fields will slow down the process. As a general rule of thumb, keep your form embedded into one page. The more clicks it takes to fill out your form, the more likely it is that your donors will grow frustrated. Request only the essential details like their name, contact information, donation amount, and billing information. If you include additional fields, make sure to mark those as optional.
- Ensure it’s mobile-optimized. Mobile giving is growing each year. In fact, mobile users made up 33% of online donation transactions last year. Ensure your form is accessible on mobile devices and will automatically resize the page’s elements to fit different screen sizes. This will empower your donors to easily give without having to zoom in or out to view the page’s content.
- Brand it to your organization. Donor engagement is at its highest when someone’s donating. Correlate those positive feelings with your nonprofit by connecting your form to your cause. Your donation form should include your organization’s logo, colors, typography, and any other recognizable elements. Even the banner photo you choose should align with your nonprofit’s brand.
Spend time optimizing your nonprofit’s donation form, so your donors don’t feel like it’s a chore to give to your organization. The above list only skims the surface of what goes into an effective form. Drive donations to completion by exploring our complete guide to donation forms, which dives into actionable advice paired with examples you can emulate.
2. Offer Multiple Ways to Give
Each donor has his or her own giving preferences. Make sure the options you offer accommodate the wide range of ways your donors like to give. For instance, you might consider the following:
- Recurring donations. Build a steady stream of revenue for your organization by enabling recurring gifts. Your donors should be able to easily opt into your recurring giving program by simply clicking a checkbox on your form. When you can automatically charge your donors regularly, they won’t have to return to your giving form each month or so to submit another donation.
- Multiple payment options. Make sure your payment processing tools empower you to accept donations online via various payment methods. At a minimum, this should include debit cards, credit cards, and ACH direct deposit.
- Matching gifts. This form of giving empowers your donors to multiply the gifts they’re already giving. Matching gifts are a particular type of corporate giving program in which companies offer to match their employees’ charitable donations. If possible, integrate a matching gift tool on your giving form to help donors determine their eligibility. After all, corporate giving research has found that 84% of donors say they’re more likely to donate if they know their donation will be matched.
By offering multiple ways to give, your donors will recognize and appreciate the effort you put in to accommodate their preferences, resulting in more donations for your cause.
3. Improve your donation CTAs
When you spend time perfecting your giving form, you naturally want people to be able to find it. That’s where your donation CTAs come into play. Well-written and well-placed CTAs will maximize your donation form’s visibility.
Start by including a button in your navigation menu. Doing so ensures that it will appear on every page of your site. From here, include buttons in various marketing collateral as a way to guide your donors to the appropriate next action (AKA donating) when they feel inspired by your messages.
In terms of design, use colors that pop out to draw attention. Be sure that the text font and color you choose are legible, too. Further, the language you use should be short and impactful, such as ‘Donate Now.’ That way, people know exactly what they’re clicking. You might even vary the text based on the appeal. For instance, your donate button might say something like ‘Join the Fight Against Hunger’ or ‘Donate to Support Animal Rights!’
4. Invest in a Secure Payment Processor
Anytime you exchange information online, security should be a primary concern. Ease your donors’ and your staffs’ worries by investing in secure online donation tools.
First and foremost, your payment processor should be PCI-compliant, meaning that it complies with a set of standards set forth by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. Some of these standards include:
- Maintaining a firewall to protect cardholder data
- Encrypting data transmission across public networks
- Restricting physical access to cardholder data
- Regularly testing security systems
Ideally, built-in fraud protection and advanced tokenization and encryption should come at no extra cost to your organization. That way, you can securely accept online donations without digging into the revenue you work hard to earn.
10+ Top Tools for Accepting Donations Online
As we previously mentioned, your online donation tools are the driving force behind your digital fundraising efforts. They’re the entire reason why you can accept donations online in the first place. With all that relies on them, you’ll want to spend plenty of time researching the best options available that offer a secure, streamlined experience for your donors and staff.
1. iATS Payments: The Best Way To Accept Donations Online
If you’re looking for a payment processor that’s exclusively built for the nonprofit space, iATS Payments is created with your organization’s goals in mind. Because this tool is dedicated to ensuring philanthropic success, it’s designed with an emphasis on driving your mission forward.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
As a nonprofit professional, you recognize that high security measures and seamless CRM integration are paramount to a successful online donation tool. A breach in these items can mean a tarnished reputation for your team and lost donations for your cause. With this in mind, iATS Payments offers:
- Several security measures, including tokenization and encryption of sensitive data, Level 1 PCI compliance, and customized fraud protection measures
- Integrations with hundreds of technology partners to centralize your nonprofit’s work
- Online forms designed to accept donations online, including one-time or recurring gifts
- An end-to-end solution designed to accept payments wherever, whenever, and however you need
With more than 20 years of experience processing nonprofit donations, our expertise is unparalleled. Not to mention, we recognize that nonprofits like yours need to invest as much money as possible into their missions. That’s why we offer competitive rates, no hidden fees, and one flat monthly rate. Contact iATS Payments for specific pricing offerings.
2. Raisin
A.K.A New Media’s Raisin tool helps your organization acquire more donors for your cause through streamlined online giving. They’ve partnered with multiple state-of-the-art systems to create a stack of fundraising channels, ensure secure data integration with your CRM, and optimize every other part of the giving process.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Beyond its network of integrations, Raisin can help optimize your donation process with these key features:
- Customizable donation forms that are created with the user in mind
- A recurring donation option for ongoing giving
- Rich data reports for use in future fundraising endeavors
When your nonprofit invests in a tool that is built with the donor journey in mind, you’re sure to provide a positive experience that can encourage repeat giving. Contact Raisin for more information.
3. CanadaHelps
If your nonprofit operates exclusively in Canada, your team can look into accepting donations online through CanadaHelps. Leveraged by more than 24,0000 charities, this provider offers an end-to-end solution for your nonprofit, enabling you to leverage efficient technology solutions and easily implement best practices.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
When your nonprofit partners with CanadaHelps, they quickly and securely transfer donations to your team. This solution also provides:
- Instant tax receipts to help maintain your donors’ records
- Recurring gift options to enable a reliable source of donations
- Peer-to-peer fundraising to expand your donor network
- Donation data tracking to optimize your giving processes and outreach
Create a fundraising campaign to accept more donations and collect accurate data online through CanadaHelps.
4. Causeview
Causeview provides essential gift processing apps that enable organizations to work toward their fundraising goals. As a nonprofit professional, you’re likely familiar with Salesforce’s robust application suite. Causeview applications are Salesforce-native, meaning they are built on the Salesforce platform and can integrate well with your existing technology stack if you already use Salesforce.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Causeview enables you to choose specialized product bundles based on your organization’s needs. For instance, they offer one package designed for nonprofits and another for higher education institutions. Here are some of their applications’ top features:
- Online and offline donation processing
- Custom forms with recurring gift options
- Automatic thank-you acknowledgments
If your team considers Causeview as an effective way to accept donations online, you’ll need to reach out to their team for a custom quote. Be sure to refer to their pricing page for more information on their different packages.
5. Drupal
Drupal is a robust content management system designed to help you optimize your online presence. With a suite of fundraising tools, your team can collect donations online efficiently and effectively. For example, suppose your organization launches microsites for your fundraising campaigns. Drupal can seamlessly help you manage your content and digital strategy and help your team accept donations at multiple points.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Drupal’s tools are scalable to your nonprofit’s growth, meaning they’ll expand alongside your goals and capabilities into the future. With this platform, your nonprofit team can leverage:
- Digital content management tools to create a customized and organized website for your cause
- Campaign microsites that you can connect to your main website
- High-level security measures to protect financial and personal data
With Drupal, your nonprofit can amplify its mission and provide a positive supporter experience online, whether they’re wanting to donate or simply learn about your work. Pricing information isn’t available online, but you can contact Drupal’s team to learn more.
6. Engaging Networks
Engaging Networks is a donation management software made for organizations operating worldwide, allowing you to accept donations online in any currency and create forms in any language. With a wide range of functionality, this tool can centralize your online advocacy, fundraising, communications, events, and data management into one system.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Engaging Networks can help elevate your fundraising and impact with features like:
- Integrations with multiple payment gateways
- Customized and mobile-friendly donation pages with pre-populated supporter data
- Fundraising thermometers to track campaign impact
With this tool, your team can collect donations online for your organization’s advocacy campaign and organize the data you receive from your donors. New clients should check out their resources to get started with their platform.
7. Frontstream
Does your organization host mainly peer-to-peer fundraising events? If so, Frontstream offers end-to-end software for your endeavors. From walk-a-thons to 5K runs, this solution can provide custom, branded, and accessible donation pages online to drive campaign contributions.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
If your team uses this platform for fundraising online, you will gain access to:
- Customizable cross-channel engagement tools
- Real-time activity tracking to move your events to the online space
- Comprehensive post-event reports to refine future campaigns
Schedule a consultation with Frontstream to learn more about leveraging this product, so you can easily accept donations online for your next peer-to-peer campaign.
8. iDonate
Marketed as a digital giving platform for today’s nonprofits, iDonate emphasizes an easy and positive user experience for both you and your supporters — even when you’re on the go. This is a great tool to accept donations online if your team wants to enhance the web experience, leverage peer-to-peer fundraising, or enable mobile giving.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
To help launch your fundraising efforts forward, iDonate offers these key features:
- Branded peer-to-peer fundraising tools to empower your supporters to fundraise
- Text-to-give for convenient mobile giving
- Event pages where you can sell tickets, offer discounts, and process donations
No matter how you like to fundraise, iDonate is a great option. To accept donations online in various ways, request a demo to try out iDonate.
9. OneCause
Originally created as an auction management platform, OneCause is now a comprehensive online donation tool that provides a variety of ways to optimize your organization’s donor journey. Using this platform, you can set up custom online donation pages with a secure check-out and data storage process. If you’re looking for a platform that helps simplify the donor journey and boost fundraising, look no further.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
If your nonprofit wants to engage potential donors in a variety of ways, OneCause will empower your team with features like:
- Free-standing microsites and embedded forms in your campaign efforts
- Gamification to drive funding forward
- Customize donation amounts and donor data questions
When your nonprofit can implement custom microsites and pointed questions, your data collection through donations becomes that much more efficient. Reach out to OneCause to learn more and request pricing information.
10. Neon Fundraise
Neon One’s fundraising platform Neon Fundraise offers a complete suite of digital donation tools that are great for hosting anything from a small campaign to a nationwide fundraiser. Through optimized digital marketing strategies and crowdfunding efforts, you can attract more donors than ever before.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Backed by intuitive technology from Neon Fundraising, your team can customize your fundraising process with features like:
- Crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising capabilities
- Customizable donation pages that support one-click donations and recurring giving
- Virtual event management with livestream fundraising
Request a demo with Neon Fundraising to find out how it can help you create a better donor experience and accept more donations online.
11. Sumac by Silent Partner
Sumac by Silent Partner is a leading all-in-one CRM and payment processing system. This means your organization can invest in its tech stack so that data flows seamlessly from your donation form to your CRM for optimized constituent relationships and communication opportunities.
How this Tool Helps Accept Donations Online
Simplify your donor’s online giving journey with efficient tools like:
- A customizable CRM where you can store donors’ information
- Forms that offer recurring donations and can autofill information to eliminate extra work on the donor’s part
- Built-in email marketing to send personalized emails to donors
With specialized add-ons and customization options, this online donation tool can help you develop a streamlined giving process. Take a tour of Sumac to learn more.
Additional Online Fundraising Resources
By fully understanding the basics of digital giving and researching powerful tools to accept donations online, your organization can launch more effective strategies to reach your fundraising goals and increase donor retention. Prioritizing security, donor experiences, and customization means your team will heavily benefit and strengthen its base of support.
When it comes time for you to pick an online donation tool, the guidance we shared should help you narrow down your options and test-drive demonstration opportunities. Backed by the right tools and best practices, accepting donations online will ultimately be enjoyable for your donors and your staff.
For further reading, explore the following resources so that you can create a positive giving experience for your donors:
- 10 Donation Page Best Practices (& Examples!): When searching for your virtual donation platform, be sure your chosen provider allows you to implement these best practices to encourage giving.
- Donation Forms: An Overview and 7 Templates: Filling out your donation form is the last step before a donor contributes to your cause online. Ensure yours is as effective as possible.
- Donation Software for Nonprofits: 20 Top Solutions: If you’d like to explore more online donation tools, explore this list of 20 top providers that’s backed by thorough research.
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