Make it Easy for Your Donors to Give

At HGAFundraising, we go out of our way to make it as easy as possible for folks to work with us, and we encourage non-profits to do the same. When you look at donors on a fundamental level, they are consumers. Consumers like convenience. They don’t like friction or having to jump through hurdles in order to buy something, or in this case, to give.

If you’ve worked with us, read our blog, or watched our webinars before, you will have seen us talk about making things super easy. We encourage non-profits to be transparent rather than hiding things between curtains and opt-in pages. Here are some things you can do to reduce the friction in your fundraising.

Create Flexibility in Your Processes

Processes are a good thing when you’re planning a fundraising event. Having processes in place will allow you to organize the night in a manner that maximizes giving opportunities and stops the night from running long.

With all that said, we have seen situations where rigid processes have stopped people from giving when they’ve had a check in their hands. The most common example is where an event is running slightly behind, so the auction is hurried along to make up the time.

We also saw a donor who wanted to give a non-profit organization a check for $10,000 and was asking to be recognized for his donation. He wanted what we call a ‘Shine-on’, which is where you make an announcement at the event and celebrate the donation. This is great because the energy gets more donors involved, and the donor can even challenge other people to match his donation. In this instance, though, the non-profit said they couldn’t do that, and so they left $10,000 on the table.

A little bit of flexibility within your processes breeds creativity and allows you to see how your donors like to give. Not all of your donors will be the same; some like to give quietly and would hate to have a fuss made about their donation. Other donors would love a fuss to be made over them and would give more if they get it.

Prioritize Donor Ease

Every fundraising event should have some kind of raffle, whether it’s a Golden Ticket or a door prize. At some point during the night, your team will be walking around the room selling tickets. Where we see non-profits add unnecessary friction is they walk around with a bag of cash and a card machine to take payment immediately. People are holding glasses of wine and having conversations, so in order to give, they need to set their glasses and programs down to reach for their wallets.

This is the perfect example of how, at times, what is easier for your non-profit will not always be easier for your donors. It would be easier for donors to give you their bidder number rather than grab their wallets. It is easier for you to take the money straight away because you’re worried about people not paying. You may have one or two people who don’t, but you’ll still make a lot of money from the raffle.
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We’ve seen a charity that gives their guests bracelets with their table number and bidder number, so taking that information in order to buy raffle tickets becomes frictionless.

Streamline Bidding

Look at every aspect of your fundraising processes and ask yourself, where can we make it easier for people to bid? A great place to start is by moving silent auction bidding onto event software so people can bid while they’re in line at the bar or while they’re sitting and talking to friends. By removing the friction of getting up and physically going to the table, people can check on their bids and continue to bid more easily throughout the evening.

In our experience, non-profits that switch to using software for their fundraising make 30% more in donations on average just from that switch. It makes it easier for people to give both leading up to and during the event. The cost is something you can ask a donor to underwrite if your board is reluctant to pay for software.

Also, look at how many pages and clicks it takes to place a bid or make a donation on these apps. Human attention spans are short, especially at a fundraising event where people are chatting and enjoying entertainment. Anything more than 3 clicks to make a donation or place a bid and you’ll lose people. Look for ways to streamline the process as much as possible.

Where we see many non-profits go wrong is they try to collect as much information as possible from donors, which in turn, makes the donation process more involved. Instead, consider whether the information or the donation is more valuable to your non-profit. Would you sacrifice records if it meant you could double your donations?

The only information you need for a donation is an email address and a credit card number. Keep it simple.

Learn more about making it easy for your donors to give from Jason Ledlow and Trevor Nelson on Episode 94 of our free webinar for non-profits. They share examples from the countless fundraising events they’ve attended and answer questions from non-profit professionals like you. 

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