nonprofit
I’ve looked at a lot of nonprofit websites in Kentucky over the past year. Food banks, animal rescues, youth programs, community theaters. Good organizations doing real work.
And about half of them are losing donations because their donation page doesn’t work right on a phone.
Not “doesn’t work perfectly.” Doesn’t work at all. Or loads so slowly people give up. Or looks sketchy enough that someone who wants to give you money decides not to.
Mid-summer is the perfect time to fix this. Fall fundraising season starts in about six weeks. Your donation page needs to work now.
Not the desktop version made smaller. Pull out your phone right now and try to donate $25 to your own organization.
Does the form fit the screen? Can you tap the donation amount buttons without accidentally hitting two at once? Does the credit card field accept input without the keyboard covering the submit button?
I watched someone try to donate to a local arts nonprofit last month. The donation amount buttons were so small she kept selecting $250 when she meant $25. She gave up.
Most donation traffic is mobile now. If your page doesn’t work on a phone, you’re turning away the majority of people who want to support you.
People will wait maybe three seconds. That’s it.
If your donation page takes eight seconds to load because you’ve got a giant hero image and twelve tracking scripts and an embedded video that auto-plays, they’re gone.
Quick test: Open your donation page on your phone using cellular data, not wifi. If you’re sitting there waiting, so is everyone else.
Common culprits:
You don’t need most of that stuff on your donation page. The page has one job: make it easy to give you money. Everything else is in the way.
When someone’s about to enter their credit card information, they’re looking for reasons to trust you.
Your donation page needs:
I’ve seen donation pages with expired SSL certificates. Broken lock icon right there in the address bar. Nobody’s donating on that page.
I’ve also seen pages with zero information about the organization. Just a form asking for money. That’s not trust-building.
Your donation form should collect: name, email, payment information, donation amount.
That’s it for a one-time donation.
If you’re asking for phone number, mailing address, employer information, how they heard about you, whether they want to volunteer, and would they like to sign up for three different email lists… you’re losing people.
Every extra field drops your completion rate.
Yes, you want that information for your database. Get it later. After they’ve donated. Send a thank-you email and ask then.
The donation page is not the place to collect your entire CRM dataset.
Monthly donors are worth roughly twelve times what one-time donors are worth. But most donation pages bury the monthly option or make it confusing.
Your donation amount section should make monthly giving equally visible to one-time giving. Not hidden. Not default-selected in a sneaky way that makes people feel tricked. Just clearly presented as an option.
“Give $25 monthly” should be exactly as easy to click as “Give $25 once.”
And explain what monthly giving does. “$25 a month provides meals for four families” is more compelling than just “monthly donation.”
You’ve got time to fix this before your fall campaign launches.
Grab your phone. Go through your donation process start to finish. Actually enter a card number and donate $5 to yourself.
Does it work smoothly? Does it feel trustworthy? Is it fast?
If not, you know what to fix.
Most of these problems don’t require a developer. They’re content and configuration issues. Remove the giant images. Cut the extra form fields. Add your EIN to the page. Make the monthly option visible.
Your fall fundraising depends on this page working. The people who want to support your work shouldn’t have to fight your website to do it.
Let's have a real conversation about what's getting in the way — and how we fix it.
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