6 Tips for When Your Online Fundraising Goes Flat

May 15, 2019/ Mark Becker / Fundraising / 0 comments

Several recent reports point to continued growth in charitable giving. Consider these two statistics:

The Blackbaud 2018 Charitable Giving Report showed that overall charitable giving in the United States increased 1.5 percent on a year-over-year basis.
According to a report from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and consulting firm Marts & Lundy, charitable giving in the United States is expected to increase 3.4 percent in 2019 and 4.1 percent in 2020.

At the same time, online revenue doesn’t appear to be growing quite as fast. According to the Blackbaud 2018 Charitable Giving Report, it grew 1.2 percent in 2018, and represented about 8.5 percent of overall fundraising revenue, excluding grants. According to the 2019 M + R Benchmarks Study, online giving grew 1 percent.

What to do when your online fundraising goes flat

Of course, your nonprofit may see results that vary from these data points. But, it does point to the possibility of your online donations flattening out. So, what do you do when you see your online fundraising losing momentum? Or even better, how do you get ahead to make sure it doesn’t slow down?

Here are six tips to help breathe new life into your online fundraising campaigns:

Make a simple change to your online donation form — As you likely know, when someone makes a donation to your organization through your website, you’re typically charged a transaction fee by your payment processor that effectively reduces each donation by some percentage (often around 3 percent). But, you don’t have to settle for that.

By simply providing an option on your online donation form for donors to cover the cost of transaction fees, you can significantly boost your overall funds raised.
Review your sustaining gift credit card expirations — Sustaining gift donors don’t always remember when their credit cards are expiring, or they don’t remember which cards they are using for which ongoing payments. This inevitably leads to declined transactions, and then you’re left to follow up with your sustaining donors to update their information — possibly missing out on months of sustaining gift donations in the process.

Be sure to proactively review sustaining gift credit card expirations so you don’t miss out on those donations.
Polish your email communications — If your organization is like many, you may find yourself struggling to create emails that engage constituents and move them to donate or take some other action. Read these tips for writing emails that help grab your constituents’ attention and get your message across.
Think “peer-to-peer” — Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns can be complex, but they don’t have to be. A peer-to-peer fundraising campaign can be as simple as providing your constituents with an online portal where they can sign up to support your cause and ask their friends and family to donate to their campaign on behalf of your organization.

No matter what type of peer-to-peer fundraising campaign your organization embarks upon, The Nonprofit’s Guide to Peer-to-Peer Fundraising can help. In it, we’ve pulled together some top learnings from our work with hundreds of nonprofits on their peer-to-peer fundraising technology and campaigns to provide tips, tricks, and techniques for successful p2p fundraising.
Consider Google Ad Grants — Google Ad Grants offers eligible nonprofits $10,000 per month of in-kind AdWords advertising to promote their mission on Google search result pages. Cathexis Partners has created The Nonprofit’s Introductory Guide to Google Ad Grants to get you started.
Get to know Facebook fundraising — Social media is important to peer-to-peer fundraising, and Facebook remains a relatively popular social media platform today. Facebook fundraising, which allows you to leverage the Facebook platform for peer-to-peer fundraising, has a lot to offer nonprofits. But, it isn’t really a stand-alone peer-to-peer fundraising platform, and it has some downsides.

Read the article What to Know about Facebook and Peer-to-Peer Fundraising for more information.