7 Rules for Great Donation Pages

1. Don’t call it “donate”

A lot of churches have scuttled the language of “donations” for “giving.” Giving, givers, gifts, has a warmer context than donor, donation, and donate. Plus, the concept of gifts is more Biblically grounded.  The three wise men, the gifts of the Spirit, etc. Donating is a concept of the secular world while giving is from the heart.

2. Use Recurring gifts

NPR has done a great job asking for “sustaining gifts”, ones that occur every month. They ask for them first, and way before they even suggest a single gift. People who believe in your ministry will want to give continually but may have a hard time staying cognizant of it or remembering to do the leg work. Recurring gifts makes it easy.

3. Keep it simple

I’ve seen a lot church website move from having a lot of information about giving and a lot of giving options, to having just an image and a single light form. Here’s a page from Action for Children UK that I really like:

Action for Children Donate Page

Notice how it defaults to a monthly gift.

4. Use Suggested gifts

Suggest a giving amount, one that you think will be reasonable for your audience. This takes the onus off them guessing what is acceptable and removes a step from the process making it that much easier to give.

5. Personalize the giving

An easy way to personalize giving is to put an image of a person that the giving is effecting. For churches, this might be an image from one of your most important ministries. There are also times where the church will have identified a specific need that you are raising money for, be sure to feature that by itself on your giving page.

6. Use challenges

These work. Find someone from your congregation to agree to match a gift for a time period, an amount, or for a specific project. Another type of challenge it to get your leaders to do something crazy if a certain goal is met. Finally, let people know when you are closing in to meeting a goal; people like to know they are the one’s that finished it off.

7. Be unapologetic

Let people know what their giving does and don’t water it down. Giving may not be the greatest sign of spiritual health, but it is one. People who believe in your mission should be expected to give to it if they have the means. If they don’t, we should be encouraging them, and helping them to work up to it.

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