After all the effort of getting a donor to the point of entering their details to make a donation using the GiveNow platform, you want to make the experience as positive as possible!
Keeping the friction on the process as low as possible is not only good for transaction conversion (making sure everyone who starts the process does finish) but also leaving your donors with a good feeling once they hit "submit" for their giving.
Our tips to optimise settings for your donors are:
1. Reduce the amount of thinking for your donors, right from the beginning!
1.1 Remove the number of donation frequencies to reflect your campaign: If you are running a daily or weekly fundraising campaign, then leave these frequency types on and remove quarterly and annual frequencies.
But if you are running a general campaign, remove daily or weekly donation frequency options, they are rarely used by donors without being asked.
And if you are running an EOFY campaign, we would suggest reducing the choice of frequencies to one-off (most likely at this time of year), monthly (most common frequency option for Australians) or annual (just in case your donors are planners for future EOFYs!).
1.2 Set defaults of most common transaction: If you are on the Pro Plan, help your donors by setting the suggested donation amounts to your donor profile. And then set the middle option as your default. It encourages donors to give to what you are hoping for!
Setting the default frequency should be directly reflective of your campaign strategy - if you want larger donations now, set the default to one-off. If you want committed connection from your donors, set the default to monthly.
2. Remove un-necessary data fields:
2.1 Title: In today's day and age, do you really need to know the title of the donor? Very few people opt to complete this information, so leave this data field off your form.
2.2 Phone number: Often donors see this data field and think you are going to call them in the future, to ask for more donations. In 2024, donors also see this information as a unique identifying piece of data for their digital identity. If you won't use it, don't ask for it!
2.3 Physical address: You might be an organisation who still wants to send donors something in the mail. If that is you, then retain this data field. But for most donors, this is THE biggest data block to completing the donation process. We strongly recommend removing!
3. Ask only the questions you need: On GiveNow we have 3 default questions set,
- "Would you like to notify someone", which was useful 10 years ago, but worth removing now that social media has replaced this ability to share a donation.
- "Do you want to send a GiftCard", is useful sometimes, especially if you are in palliative care or health services, but again is rarely used. We recommend removing.
- "Leave a message" for the organisation or the CrowdRaiser - this is a useful question for many organisations. We recommend keeping this one!
- Add a custom question if you need to ask your donors a query, but make sure you make it as simple as possible with drop-down or check-box options. Don't make them think too hard!
4. Ensure "Enable donors to cover the GiveNow platform fee" is switched on. 90% of the time donors will pay this on your behalf, as they understand even not for profits have to pay for essential services, and so fundraising tools do come at a cost. Given our plans are only 1.5%, 2.7% or 3.5%, the request of your donors is also very modest.
Of course, on GiveNow the donor can choose to remove the fee if they want!