State of Global Online Fundraising

A study from NextAfter and Salesforce looks into online giving and email communications of 630 organizations from 9 countries.

95% of organizations around the world have some element of friction in their online giving experience proven to hurt donation conversion rates.

And still, the majority of Nonprofits will state “finding new donors” as their biggest challenge.

Few Nonprofit organizations are hoping to become the next Netflix and Spotify by harnessing the power of the subscription economy. Nevertheless, the majority of them fail to provide any reason why donors should give them monthly.

“43% used the same suggested gift array/strategy for recurring donors as they did for one-time donors even though the difference between $100 and $100 per month is significant.”

Talking about the reason:

“6 out of 10 organizations did not provide a ‘strong’ reason to give on their donation page for one-time donations.”

The above data is part of The Global Online Fundraising Scorecard (Get access to the data collected by NextAfter) done by NextAfter and Salesforce.org.

The mystery donation exercise was carried out in 630 different organizations across 10 industry verticals in 9 countries — Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The report says:

“After analyzing 535 email signups, 585 online donations, and 5,976 email communications in the 9 countries it’s clear that, while progress is being made, there is a continued need to be testing, optimizing, and refining current practices to provide a better donor experience that can help organizations achieve the impact they want and is so needed in the world today.”

Here are my key learnings from the extensive study:

Thank You pages are underused

The simplest things in life are often ignored. The point in case here is the “Thank You page” that is popped up right after a donor makes a donation.

This is simultaneously timed with an automated email that appreciates the donation and also acknowledges sharing relevant campaign information and the impact work going forward. For a non-donor or subscriber, it is the simple “Thank You email” - an automated communication but also the beginning of a dialogue.

However, in reality, 9% of organizations failed to confirm the email signup. “For those that did confirm the signup, 45% of organizations sent subscribers to a new, separate, and specific page while 42% of organizations had a thank you/confirmation message appear on the same page.”

From a user experience point of view be it on the web/mobile try to have the minimum number of new instances. Imagine you are on mobile and every action takes you to a new page. Just creates more friction.

But the Thank You page needs a new instance since you have a small thank you note and sharing options. In large part, because so many organizations did not use a dedicated thank you/confirmation page after email signup, 7 in 10 organizations offered no next step or action after email signup. 

When a next step or action was presented, the most common actions were to Read Something (13%), Social Share (12%), and Make a Donation (11%).

My recommendation: Keep a simplified thank you page - A hero image, followed by a small note of thanks from the CEO/Founder of the Nonprofit and relevant social sharing options.

Cultivation emails are underused

Data says Nonprofits don’t waste time and energy in building or cultivating a relationship with donors but are only interested in asking for more money.

Globally, only 83% of organizations sent at least 1 email to the Online Donor, of any kind, over the 90 days. That means that 2 in 10 (17%) organizations sent their donors no emails in 90 days. It was worse for the Email Subscriber, as 3 in 10 (27%) organizations did not send at least 1 email in 90 days to the Email Subscriber.

Of those that did email the Online Donor and/or Email Subscriber, only 78% of organizations sent at least 1 cultivation in 90 days to the Online Donor compared to 89% of organizations sent at least 1 cultivation email to the Email Subscriber. 

Nonprofits rarely invest in Email Subscribers since they are not donors or don’t want to convert them to prospective donors. To do so Nonprofits will have to build a relationship and that is an effort better to be ignored.

Generally, it has been also observed that your first two or three emails (content and frequency) decide the relationship with your donor. These first few weeks are critical. 

Globally, 88% of organizations sent at least 1 email in the first 14 days to the Email Subscriber while 98% of organizations sent at least 1 email to the Online Donor. This is due to the vast majority of organizations sending a signup confirmation or donation acknowledgment/ receipt email. 

The report finds it to be good but looking deeper it found that, globally, organizations sent an average of 2 emails in the first 14 days to both the Email Subscriber and Online Donor.

“This indicates that very few organizations are looking to send more emails or use a 3+ email welcome series for example.”

My recommendation: Build a “Welcome Series” email process. But will only happen if you value cultivation and have different user journeys or scenarios in place.

Donation pages lack compelling reasons to give

From my experience, we will put all the crap of the world about the Nonprofit organization on the donation page to make the donor do a scavenger hunt on the donation page to find the ‘WHY’.

6 in 10 organizations did not have a strong reason to give on their donation page. The study found that 3 in 10 organizations used no copy or text on their donation page at all and 4 in 10 used more than 4 sentences of copy or text on their donation page.

Bigwidesky’s State of Online Giving 2020 also highlighted a similar story related donation process - “This year the study finds that only 19% of nonprofits use a lightbox (aka a popup or modal) that asks for funds, and only 24% ask for donations in the hero area of their homepage.”

My recommendation - Simplification is the only way. Emphasis on the reason. The cause is bigger than the organization. Embed a video, if you can’t then incorporate blog links for further details. Also think, execute and test mobile-first.

Too much friction in online giving experience

Friction can be defined as the psychological resistance that your visitors experience when trying to complete an action (in this case a donation). It is a conversion killer says NextAfter.

Take Field Number Friction for example. This is the idea that the more form fields you present and the more information you are collecting the greater the chance that someone will abandon the process particularly if that information is required.

There is also Steps Friction which is the concept that the more full steps (not just clicks) you have required to complete a transaction the greater the chance of abandonment.

The number of steps also feels compounded when you change domains — 13% of organizations had their donation page on a 3rd party domain and Canada was the country most likely to do this and the Netherlands was the least — or open a new tab/window.

94% of organizations had a mobile-friendly donation page with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands most likely and France and Germany least likely — it is still harmful to donor conversion rates. 

My recommendation: ask bare minimum personal details - Name, Email, and Phone(if you want to share WhatsApp updates but mention it), giving should complete in three steps, and think mobile-first.

Emails could be more personal

Donors are not dumb that they would expect you to write personal love letters to them. We live in a world where we know that email automation is a reality. But still, we can have a personal message without a jazzy template and minimum links.

The study mentions that after looking at every email received over 90 days, it found that, globally, organizations personalized the email with the Email Subscribers name just 42% of the time. For the Online Donor, organizations personalized the email with the donors name 69% of the time.

My recommendation: personalization goes beyond adding just the name but that’s the beginning which also involves the subject line and the sender of the email. The more authentic and personal it is better the chances of subscriber/donor opening the email but again testing is important.

This is the reason why you define segmentation and create personalised emails depending on the segments.

Better reasons to sign up for email updates

Just because you have a newsletter signup form doesn’t mean people will want to fill it out.
They need a reason to but just 1 out of 4 organizations globally provided a ‘strong’ reason why someone should sign up for email,” informed the report. 

This was largely because less than half the time (45%) it wasn’t clear what someone would be receiving from the organization if they did sign up. And that was largely due to the fact that organizations on average used only 1.1 sentences to communicate the reason to sign up.

Just 1 in 4 organizations (25%) had a “Strong” reason for someone to give up their email while just over half (53%) had a “Very Weak” reason.

One reason for the low scores on why someone should sign up is that 86% of organizations, globally, were asking for people to sign up to receive an email newsletter as opposed to an eBook, a petition, an online course, a specific email series, or something else. 

Regardless of what the organization was offering, even if a newsletter, less than half of the time (45%), organizations were not clearly communicating what you’d receive if you did sign up for email updates.

My recommendation: Inbox is a private space and people are already dealing with lot of garbage in their inboxes. Don’t be another garbage. Give or communicate more with the subscriber than saying “Stay informed and receive our newsletter.” Tell them ‘WHY’ and maybe test by providing a preview of what others are receiving.

And don’t keep the subscribe option hidden in your website.

Golden rule of success for online fundraising

Is Testing.

There is no silver bullet to define how many emails one should send in 14 days or at what time of the day or how personal one should be in emails.

But there are some basic checks that one can do such as having a working donation form, automating an email confirmation page, a simple “Thank You” page, and so on and so forth.

This report from the experts at NextAfter is a goldmine. Spend time, understand and implement to build a robust online fundraising framework.

Or else you can ask your agency to give ‘X leads’ for bare minimum cost and keep calculating ROI.

Damn! donors are not leads.