As we head into the heart of year-end giving season—GivingTuesday is on Dec. 3—now is an excellent time to check whether your donation forms are optimized for success. The last thing you want to do is create an unpleasant experience that discourages a donor from giving.
Here is a list of six areas to consider (plus a bonus one for internal purposes):
- Responsive: Make sure your donation form works well on both desktop and mobile devices, as well as different web browsers and screen sizes/shapes. Responsive Viewer is an excellent tool to use for this.
- Inspirational: Does your donation form convince the donor to give, or is it just a basic form that’s cold and uninviting? Some folks just need one last push to encourage that gift, and this is your opportunity.
- Frictionless: Is your form easy to use? Does it load quickly and function properly without error? Is the copy easy to read? Is the form simple and short? These are all factors that must be considered.
- Personalized: Today’s donation forms shouldn’t be one size fits all. Dynamic gift arrays are an excellent way to maximize gift potential. Learn more about how our Identity tool makes this possible.
- Customizable: Do you have different donation forms for different campaigns? Again, creating a seamless, positive experience for the donor elevates your chances of receiving a gift.
- Secure: Make sure your payment processing is reliable and dependable. While you’re at it, check to see if you’re providing the opportunity to give through PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, etc.
- Connected (Bonus): This is less about the donor experience and more about yours. Set up your donation form so that the data you receive on each gift is automatically delivered to your CRM.
Want a little more inspiration? Here are a few of our favorite donation forms.
ChatGPT enters the world of web search
The word “Google” has become so synonymous with web searches that we don’t think twice about using it as a common verb—“Just Google it real quick.” That’s because Google (the brand) dominates search, capturing 89% of searches in the U.S. in the last 12 months.
But some users have gotten frustrated by the ever-growing presence of advertising in Google’s search results along with the dilution of real answers by the flood of content marketing and SEO. They’ve started turning to voice assistants and AI for answers.
Enter SearchGPT, OpenAI’s long-awaited tool to search the internet directly in ChatGPT. According to Search Engine Land, “OpenAI’s ChatGPT search has an opportunity to challenge Google’s search monopoly with a much different user experience (e.g., less clutter, less search features, no ads).”
Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and its Bing browser present the biggest threat to Google in years. Time will tell how users respond, and nonprofit marketers and fundraisers should consider how they allocate their paid search budgets accordingly.
Source: Search Engine Land
Is it time to consider Threads or Bluesky?
We don’t want to get political here, but politics has played a significant role in changing user behavior on social media sites ever since Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X.
Consider the following:
- Meta just reported that Threads, its rival to X that launched in July 2023, has reached 275 million monthly active users
- Bluesky has jumped up to 20 million users, with 5 million new users since the U.S. presidential election
- Twitter/X has seen an 8% decline in monthly active users from 2022 to 2024, but still sits at 336 million
The political polarization across the U.S. appears to be causing a social media polarization. Consider which platforms make the most sense for your nonprofit organization as you plan out your organic and paid social strategies for 2025.
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