How to create a donation form that's optimized to convert

Erin Booker

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August 30, 2024

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5 minutes

Nonprofit Trends

The Giving Experience

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If you're here, you know that your nonprofit needs an online donation form. But knowing and doing are two very different things, and sometimes taking the first step will get you over the biggest hurdle.

With that in mind, we've broken down the tasks involved in building a highly successful, high-converting custom donation form as well as donation page best practices. Instead of having to start at Step One, you can jump in wherever makes sense for you, whether that's deciding on a type of donation form, tweaking the deets or automating the follow-up communications.

But before we start talking about how to create a donation form, we're exploring the whys and wherefores of customizing your donation form, and how your decisions can increase your donation conversions.

Benefits of building a custom donation form

A customized donation form offers all the benefits of a standard donation form, plus some that make it worth your while to take the time and effort to add in branding, specialized fields, and automations. Those benefits include a higher conversion rate, deeper relationships with supporters, and more information with which to steward your donors.

Funraise's donation form conversion rate

Speaking of donation form conversion rates, Funraise's average conversion rate is 50%. That's right; website visitors who interact with a Funraise donation form complete a donation 50% of the time.

We dare you to beat that conversion rate! You can do it—especially if you start with Funraise's best-in-class donation form.

How do I make a donation form?

Nonprofits looking to make an online form should start by contacting Funraise. Funraise has the most user friendly, innovative donation form builder in the nonprofit industry—and a donation conversion rate of 50%. Funraise's donation forms are customizable, easily place-able, and extremely cost-effective. Plus, donors love 'em!

To make it even easier, Funraise offers donation form templates and examples so you can see it before you believe it.

Take a gander at this lil' instruction video showing you how to create a Funraise giving form.

Identifying your donation form audience

Understanding who your potential donors are not only helps you tailor your online donation form to that audience's needs and behaviors, but also infuses the overall user experience with a powerful sense of teamwork, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates. Figure out where the dips in donations are, and build up in those valleys.

But to identify that audience, you need to take a look at your current donor base and find out who's seeing you online and engaging with your nonprofit but not donating. Which supporters are online donors? Which give through a mobile device versus a laptop or desktop? Who reposts your social media content or volunteers to make your programs happen but hasn't come through with a financial gift?

Once you identify the current supporter base + opportunities for expansion, you can broaden your reach and apply your learnings to a wider range of potential donors.

3 stages of building a donation form

All of the tasks involved in building a donation form for nonprofits fall within one of three stages:

Preparation
Implementation
Follow up

1. Prepare to fundraise

As you may imagine, these are things your nonprofit needs to do or decide before pushing your donation form live.

Focus the user experience

Instructions to focus something are often just a business-y way of saying that you need to simplify that thing. And yep, that's the case here; "custom" doesn't necessarily mean fancy or complicated. In the very best cases, it means smooth, streamlined, free from distractions.

Break it up

One way to simplify or "focus" a donor experience is to implement a multi-step form. Rather than a wall of fields to fill out, a multi-step form offers only a few fields at a time, making the entire form more accessible, faster to complete, and less of a PITA.

And if you have a longer form, consider adding a progress bar. Especially if you're doing a lengthy survey or event signup with pages of multiple-choice questions or custom fields, a progress indicator makes sure users don't get lost in the sauce.

Format the form

A standard donation form is called an embedded form. It's the kind that you see plopped down in the middle of a page, like a neon sign: "Donate Noowwwwww"

Funraise offers gorgeous embedded forms—take a look at how easy it is to embed a placed donation form.

The other popular option is a pop-up form, otherwise known as a contextual giving form. Organizations like Action Against Hunger have used forms like these to guide donors through the giving process at the moment of greatest emotional impact.

Make it easy for donors to trust

This is a Wizard of Oz behind-the-scenes feature, but it's one of the most important steps you can take: donor data security. Ensure that your donors can trust you by implementing donation security measures and carrying your branding through from beginning to end.

Emphasize impact

Back to that pop-up contextual giving form... As you plan your nonprofit's storytelling content on your fundraising campaign page, go through and identify the moment of greatest emotion as the place to drop the donate button. When donors get to that impact crescendo and hit the donation button, they'll be kept in that bubble of intensity as they move through the donation process.

Connect impact cards

Impact cards provide a clear-cut path for donors to decide how much to donate to a nonprofit organization's fundraising campaign. And you can connect them directly to a nonprofit donation form so that when the donor enters the donation process, they see the amount associated with the impact they want to make.

Test your donation form

This is the most fun part of the preparation process! Going through the system as though you're a donor is pretty exciting. And you need to do it. Every time you set up a new donation page or form. Every time, believe us.

As you move through the checkout process, flag obstacles or pain points so that you can either fix them or build out alternative donation forms. Putting A/B testing strategies in place will help you identify whether the green or red button gets more clicks, whether people want to cover transaction fees, and whether the embedded or pop-up form gets more chances of conversions.

2. Implement your donation form

Once you've done all the prep work, it's time to push your form live. Upon publishing, these are the things to keep in mind.

Make the donation form accessible

Accessibility doesn't just mean that people with low vision can use your form (although yes, that's part of it). It also means that there are a variety of payment methods, that your forms are mobile-friendly, easily translatable, and don't overwhelm donors, among other things.

Keep the branding consistent

Creating branded nonprofit donation forms and pages is much easier than you may think. We want you to think beyond the form, though, to your ask communications, to your donation pages, through the form, and on into follow-up comms. All of those stages should incorporate your imagery, logo, colors, and anything else that's core to your brand.

A good online fundraising platform (like Funraise) will allow you to put your own stamp on your assets, and a great online fundraising platform (like Funraise) will make it easy to brand your campaigns, keeping your fundraising efforts focused and showing donors they can trust you.

Personalize the giving experience

Autofill form fields with your donors' information when possible—name, email address, location, and so on, sure. Definitely. But also. Use machine learning to implement personalized ask amounts using AI; personalize the donation experience by setting ask amounts based on signals like time of day, device type, giving history, and other established behaviors. Build a donation form that speaks directly to the amounts and methods that make your loyal donors feel comfortable giving.

Include special features to maximize form efficacy

Oooh, special features! Ooooooh, maximizing form efficacy! Two of our favorite things. If we're building something custom, we definitely want to add some sparkle, even if it's something that only we know about.

Payment methods

All the payment options we can cram onto a form: credit card and debit card, ACH, eChecks. And also digital wallets, crypto, stock donations, corporate donation matching, and any other ways of collecting financial contributions that we can think of.

Suggested donation amounts

Setting suggested donation tiers is not only a way to gain more conversions, it's also a way to increase your average donation amount. When you set a bar for donors, they will rise to the challenge (obviously within reason—don't set your lowest donation amount at $1500!)

The lesson is: Never let your donors flounder for even a moment. Guide them every step of the way along a path that they have chosen to travel.

Recurring donation upsell

Implementing recurring donation options is another way to maximize donation conversions. Sometimes a slight nudge or suggestion is all that’s needed to move a one-time donor to a recurring donor, and the best time to make this suggestion is when the donor is already in the process of making a donation.

Funraise's one-click recurring upsell feature helps one-time donors understand that they can expand their impact by extending their donation across months or even years. And bonus! Combining recurring gift upsell with a multi-step donation form compounds the growth of your recurring program. It's just math.

Social sharing buttons

Incorporating donation form social proof is one of those special features that doesn't cost you a cent but can lead to growth and mission awareness. Add in a lil sharing button with your social media icons to set it and forget it. (Unless it's doing amazing, and in that case, don't forget it.)

Donors Cover Fees model

Traditionally, Donors Cover Fees tools have only attempted to cover donation fees associated with payment processing, but Funraise saw greater potential in the model and has innovated a method that covers both the cost of the software as well as the cost associated with payment processing.

Funraise's donation fee coverage tools have increased revenue for nonprofit organizations by more than $8,000,000. The Donors Cover Fees model is designed to cover both Funraise's online fundraising platform fee and nonprofits' payment processing fees.

Even after online fundraising platform fees have been fully covered, Funraise's fee coverage tools have covered $3,500,000 of processing fees for nonprofit organizations. Read real stories of real money received by organizations to cover real processing fee expenses.

3. Follow up on donations

Again, exactly as it sounds—these are tasks that should be completed after a donation is made.

Automate confirmations and receipts

We're not talking about handwritten thank you notes, although with Funraise, you can certainly set automated assigned tasks based on transaction activity or donor behavior.

We're talking about sending a charitable donation confirmation email and scheduling receipts to be sent to the donor. Make it easy on yourself and your donor after the online gift has been given.

Communicate with donors

Now we're talking about thank you notes, handwritten or typed out or skywritten—it's your call. However you follow up, just do it. And keep doing it, because repetition and consistency are the keys to building a trusting donor-nonprofit relationship.

Show their impact

A day after the gift, or a month, or a year after, donors still appreciate knowing exactly what they contributed to. And a reminder of their positive impact is the fulcrum to tip the scale toward another donation. And another.

Mobile phone with donation form and donation charts floating around the phone.

Woman looking at fundraising chart with button to book a call.

Yellow shapes in background with donation form in front with stylized text, build an intelligence giving experience.

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Donation form creation FAQ

How do I generate a donation link?

Your online fundraising platform should allow you to create a custom URLs to specific fundraising campaign donation pages, shortened URLs, marketing links that track traffic sources, text-friendly links, QR codes that link to your forms, links that lead donors to pre-filled donation forms, and links that draw on donor behavior to deliver personalized donation forms.

What information should a donation thank you page have?

A post-donation thank you or confirmation page should include the name of your organization, your EIN or charity identifier, the date and amount of the donation, and a big ol' Thaaaaank YOU to the donor. It can also include the portion of the donation that's tax-deductible and contact information for your nonprofit.

What information should my donation form collect?

Deciding which information your nonprofit should collect in the user experience depends on your nonprofit's needs, the needs of your programs, and your fundraising campaigns. Generally, you need name, location, preferred payment method (not payment details), recurring donation frequency, email or phone number, and preferred communication method.