5 Tips So Your Website Wins the Fundraising Challenge

To stay in business and make the world a better place, nonprofits need to raise funds. Not an easy task these days!

Recent research indicates that charitable impulses are just barely keeping up with inflation but not really adding much in the way of new resources to the overall funding pool for which all nonprofits compete.

About one-third of nonprofits don’t expect their fundraising results to improve in 2014 and almost half only held steady during 2013, according to 2014 Fundraising Technology Trends Study by Find Accounting Software. These fundraisers also noted that finding contributors, deepening relationships with them, and standing out from other nonprofits were their greatest challenges.

So how do you make sure that your organization has what it takes to pay higher rent, increased utility bills, and upgrade to needed new software? One way, according to the Trends study, is to leverage your website. These days, your nonprofit’s website is likely to be the first point of contact with clients, donors, members, and volunteers — whether on a desktop computer as in the old days — or on mobile device as is more likely.

Maximize the impact of your website and you can take on those three fundraising challenges: find contributors, deepen relationships, and stand out.

Focus on your audience

The key to successful website design is user experience. The members of each target audience must easily find the content they seek, in language they understand, and in a design that is visually enticing. The key word in that formula: audience. The website should focus on the audiences you want to reach, and the messages and images that will resonate with them.

Make your case

If you want to reach donors, think like a donor. They want to know what you do, how well you do it, and why you are a better recipient of their generosity than the nonprofit at the next URL. And they don’t have all day to get the answers to those questions.

The design of your nonprofit’s website should give donors those answers quickly while evoking a visceral response that “these are really good guys.”

Keep it simple

Don’t get carried away by your enthusiasm! While it’s good to be passionate about your cause, it’s unlikely that you can share every aspect, and every experience that you and your staff have had that fuels your excitement. Scrolling through lengthy text will not engage people.

Be real

People need people, even when surfing the web. Your website will be more powerful if it has a human face, literally in the graphics, and figuratively in the personality, content, and language it uses to describe its reason for being. Let donors know who they are dealing with. Don’t always ask for something. Give something as well — information, kudos, etc. That’s how relationships are built: person to person.

Make it easy

Have a very conspicuous donate button as well as easy to find links to social media sites so donors can let their friends know they donated and why.

As an added incentive for a website makeover, consider this: Online donations increased 12.7% for three months, ending August 2014, compared to the same period in 2013. But overall charitable giving increased only 4% in the same time period.