Latest / The Nonprofit Podcast / Ep 228| 4 Ways to Fix Your Donation Page: The Science of Giving Pt. 2

Transcript

Ep 228| 4 Ways to Fix Your Donation Page: The Science of Giving Pt. 2 · The Nonprofit Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: What if the biggest barrier between your nonprofit and a record-breaking year-end campaign isn't your storytelling or your appeal letter, but your actual donation checkout process?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Every single year, potential donors land on donation pages in December, get hit with unnecessary steps, get frustrated, and leave without completing their gift.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the frustrating part, these are people who actually wanted to give.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're walking through a simple four-stage friction audit so you can find and fix those broken touch points before your busiest season of the year arrives.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Nonprofit Podcast, powered by DonorBucks.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Jenna Lynch, head of community engagement here at DonorBox.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Each week we bring you practical strategies, clear insights, and inspiration to help you raise more, reach further, and take your nonprofit to the next level.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is our two-part series, The Science of Giving.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here with my co-host, our fundraiser coach, who spends her time directly working with nonprofit leaders, Britt Stalkert.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Britt, how are things going in your world today?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Jenna, great.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Although I'll be honest, full transparency, I spent all of my morning doing something that I tell every leader I coach, which is pulled out my phone.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I made a little quick test donation, just on a few campaign pages, and let's just say it was totally eye-opening.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy, you really do like to live dangerously.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm almost afraid to ask what you found.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yes, oh yes, we're gonna get into it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just say I have some notes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, that's actually the perfect place to start.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Previously, we laid out the framework in Donor Box's field guide, the 10 principles of donor conversion and retention, the signs of giving, digging into the two forces that decide whether a donor gives and whether they come back.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Confidence and friction.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Last time was confidence, the six principles that make a donor believe that their gift is safe.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, that it's gonna matter.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And today we are focusing on friction, the four principles that remove everything that makes giving harder than it needs to be.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the guide puts it pretty bluntly: friction is what stops a donor who already wanted to give.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it is the easiest and probably the cheapest thing to fix and the most commonly ignored.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what I saw this morning, Jenna.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like these were weak organizations, their appeals were strong, they had vivid stories that were truly moving.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: It just was that the path to the gift completely kept getting in the way.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what I see every single year: subject lines get rewritten five times.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: We spend three meetings debating the hero image, which is that photo right at the top meant to stop someone scrolling and make them think, oh, I want to help, and then obsessing over the ask.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: But we almost never stop to check whether the donation process itself is blocking the money from coming in, which is wild when you think about how much time and effort goes into getting somebody to that donation page in the first place.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And by the point that you've already convinced someone to give, that is the moment that you make things difficult because everyone assumes you need massive dramatic appeal at the end of the year.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: But honestly, the donors, they're already inspired, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: The real work right now is you want to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the generosity that you've already built.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the guide even has a phase with this exact name.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's campaign sequence puts the friction audit right before launch because every day friction stays on your page.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: It costs you conversions.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the good news here is that a lot of these fixes are actually pretty small and really not intimidating.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how today we're gonna break it down.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna follow one donor through four stages.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: The first is impressions, right?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: In-person, offline giving, a checkout.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna talk about what happens after that gift.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And at each stage, one of the four friction principles is doing the damage.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we will call it out and look at the research behind it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then we'll give you a quick test to run with your team.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: By the end, you'll have a whole audit.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: It just takes about 15 minutes, which is one of the best parts.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get to it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so step one, it starts long before anyone's gonna reach your website because a donor, they're gonna see a social media post.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they got an awareness letter in the mail.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was that friend that forwarded an email.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: They hear about you at a community event, whatever it is, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every one of those is gonna come to you from a different starting point.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And every one of them has to go somewhere pretty fast.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: And this is exactly where the first friction principle lives, and that's attention.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: The research is so clear that the first moment of attention shapes the entire experience.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's what lodges your organization in the donor's memory.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And in giving seasons, specifically, attention is the scarcest thing there is.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh the same person gets dozens of appeals through the same inbox in the same week.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then let's be real, they're probably only opening maybe half of those emails while doing three to a thousand other things.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: You really only got a few seconds.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Jenna, let's talk about how organizations spend these few seconds.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Here's one I see all the time.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Someone opens a printed appeal at the kitchen table.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I open all my mail, is at the kitchen table.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: The story moves them, they reach for their phone, they look at the bottom of the letter, and then there's a web address, 40 characters long, slashes, tracking codes, like the works.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, no one's gonna be typing that into a phone.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just nobody.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, nobody, not a chance, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: So then they put the letter down, they mean to come back to it, maybe bring it to their computer later instead, where it's easier to type, but then the gift is gone.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's just gone.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And there's an easy fix, right, Jenna.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like get those long web addresses off your print entirely.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It might be a QR code that you want to use.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: It might be a short text-to-give number.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Have that on your mailer instead because it's those things are going to take you straight to a mobile checkout and there's not going to be any searching involved.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: You've already gotten their attention and you've inspired them to give.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: That is a big big deal.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't want them to have to figure it out or make it feel like a task when they're ready.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: But attention doesn't stop by getting them to the page.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: The page actually has to hold their attention as well.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the research in the guide has a few surprises.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Longer appeals can actually lose donors outright.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, clear, readable copy really softens that, and vivid, emotive visuals contribute pretty significantly to online fundraising success, especially when they signal a real need and a real reason to act right now.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that's something you really want to consider when you're thinking about your appeals.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing, Jenna, I think what I'm hearing a lot from leaders in many of my coaching sessions is they say, well, Britt, our donation page is great.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: We got the appeal, we got our newsletter sign up set up in place, a volunteer link.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: We got it all, the whole shebang.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: What do we call that?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So actually, I like to call that the everything but the kitchen sink donation page, right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's got all the things.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: We're so excited about all the things, but that can actually be a problem.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Our guy calls it the attention bottleneck.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that is the more technical term there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: The attentional bottleneck.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Donor focus is pretty strictly limited.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And a second call to action doesn't give you a second opportunity.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: It distracts them, it pulls away attention from the one thing that you need your donor to do.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you definitely don't want everything but the kitchen sink, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: No kitchen sink.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: We just want one page and one ask.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the donate button should be the most visually dominant thing on that page, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: High contrast, like a bright shiny beacon.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the research even shows that high contrast text and backgrounds really improve readability and help hold visitors' attention on the page.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why donor boxes omnigift forums put a high contrast donate button front and center by default.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And thinking about this more, there's one test in principle seven, which I absolutely love because it runs against instinct.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that kind of questions the things that we do, I am all for it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most teams we obsess over the hero image.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the guide, it's going to tell you to test something else first.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to surprise you.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to let people find out what that is for themselves.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Intrigue.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you it is a good one.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a stage one.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: We want to test.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Start cold.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Pick up a phone that has never visited your site and count how many seconds it takes to land on an active donate button.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because if the answer is, well, however long it takes to search Google or dig out an old email, that's going to be your first fix.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so we've talked about getting somebody's attention and getting them to your donation page.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: But what about the donor who's standing right in front of you?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: So stage two here is the in-person side: galas, pop-up, tables, school fairs, holiday services.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it brings us to the fourth friction principle, which is accessibility.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're taking it a little out of order because I think this is just where it hits the hardest.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And accessibility in the guide is it's going to be broader than most people expect.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it comes down to one question.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Can the donor give the way they want to give wherever they happen to be?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And offline still matters a lot.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And one survey, the 10 principles of donor conversion and retention guide sites, two-thirds of participants had donated offline.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really significant.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oof, two-thirds, huh, Jenna?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the room still matters.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: The room still matters a lot.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And having worked plenty of fundraising events myself and Britt, I know you have too.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I can tell you the last thing you want is to lose somebody's enthusiasm while you're trying to figure out how to take their donation.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, someone gets inspired right there at your event.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And instead of an easy way to give, they're handed a paper pledge or a tiny pencil.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm guilty of doing that in the past, too, or pointed towards a cash box.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this is really not ideal.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oof.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or my personal favorite, Jenna, which is 40 people, they're trying to pull up the donation page at the same moment, and the venue Wi-Fi gives up, which we all know that happens more than often.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: That is the ultimate nightmare.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to plan for that because we don't want to just cross our fingers and hope for the best that the Wi-Fi is going to hold up.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It happens constantly and it costs your organizations real money.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So again, the fixes, we want to make sure the setup can take a card tab on the spot, right?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because we want to allow guests to give the same way that they pay for coffee.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Easy peasy.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't want to lean on a QR code.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the guide, we're very specific about that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And QR codes, they have their time and place, great in a mail appeal and all of these.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I think this is exactly where a dedicated giving station helps.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: DonorBox Live kiosk turns a tablet or phone into a giving station and it holds transactions securely offline and syncs the second that the connection comes back on, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: So you never have to worry about connectivity.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: So a spotty router never costs you a gift.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this is such a biggie.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jenna, let's talk about speed, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because this one applies to every donor.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just the ones in the room.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think that this is the one stat that everyone should be worried about.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: When a page takes more than three seconds to load, three seconds.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's one, two, three seconds.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: 53% of mobile users abandon it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's more than half.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gone before they've even read a word of your appeal.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's horrible.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have a lot of patience nowadays, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: We really expect quick, easy experiences.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the guide's name for this is friction cost.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Small obstacles cause severe drop-offs.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: A three-second delay isn't a minor glitch.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: It costs you most of the mobile donors who showed up.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the stage two test, switch off the office Wi-Fi for a minute and load up that donation page on your phone.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: You want to time it because you're going to find out that Office Wi-Fi, it will flatter you every single time.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And while you're on that page, I would say look for a phone number or an email address because our research shows that a visible route to a real person increases trust and takes friction down even further.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Visible Human makes people hesitate less.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So if they're unfamiliar with your organization, they're looking for something, someone to trust.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And especially if somebody has a question or if something goes wrong, you really want to make it easy for them to reach out and get help.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we've made it to the donation form now.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Surely we are in the clear now, right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, not quite.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hate to break it to you.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Stage three is the engine room.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is the checkout.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: This is the stage that decides whether your giving season hits target or potentially falls flat.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's it's where the third principle does the most damage.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: We call it in the guide, reduce cognitive load.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jenna, do you want to set the scene a little bit on what that is?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: This one really bugs me, Britt.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: A donor's on their phone, standing in line for coffee, every field and every option on that form costs them a little mental energy, right?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: In the research in the guide, it finds that when donors are feeling these overwhelmed, kind of competing emotions, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's negative, positive, sadness, and hope, they don't know what to do with it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know how to resolve those emotions.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Which can be most appeals, to be honest.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Most appeals.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And donors, think about it, donors under that kind of cognitive load, they're going to be less motivated to take the appeal in fully.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to get frustrated and they're going to be, see ya, I'm out.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: And here's why it keeps happening.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's the curse of knowledge.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Inside the office, staff think, oh, it's just four extra fields.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: It just takes 30 seconds.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: To a donor tapping on a small screen, going about their day, already expecting convenience and having that convenience everywhere else.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Every one of those fields feels like homework.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to name two things that kill a mobile gift faster than you can imagine.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: One is forcing someone to create an account, and then guess what?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: They got to set up a password before they can even give.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants a username.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants a password to make just a one-time$25 gift.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: I barely remember the passwords for the accounts I already used, to be honest.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second one I want to mention is making them type a 16-digit card number and everything that goes with it on a tiny little keyboard.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: No one's going to do that.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's slow and it's exactly where people are going to give up.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this is exactly where accessibility shows up again in the guide.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: The advice is to offer at least one digital wallet, like Apple Pay or Google Pay.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: It removes that manual card entry completely.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: And a two-minute form then becomes a five-second tap, which is just the best.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're sending donors off your site to a payment page that looks nothing like your brand, what's going to happen?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's going to be a confidence problem from the get-go.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: We call that congruence in the guide.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The donor's going to start to wonder whether they're still in the right place.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure that your branding is consistent, whatever donation form that you're using in alignment with your website.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: You want to, if you can, keep them on your own branded page the whole way through.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's why embedded forms like OmniGive are so important.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: The donor never leaves the site that they already trust.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just this continuous experience that feels really familiar.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Especially when they're entering payment information, you don't want to give them a reason to second guess anything.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, hey, wait a minute, am I in the right place?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: So now the one I argue about with many of my coaching clients is suggested amounts.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm listening.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So organizations they want to give donors every possible option.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: They throw out those donation form presets to the wind, 10, 25, 50, whatever it is, and they hope it hits the mark.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: It feels generous to them.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm with you on this one.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: The research points the other way, right?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: The science calls this choice overload.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: When you're faced with too many choices, people default to making no decision at all.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'd say fewer gift options produce more completed gifts.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is what the research says.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the guide gives you the exact number to aim for.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there's another second fix in there that is going to remove a whole decision from the form.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jenna, you want to talk about that?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's so simple, it's almost annoying, but I will actually leave that one for people to find in the guide.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: So make sure you download it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really is simple and you'll you'll find it super helpful.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: There is one more source of friction load nobody sees, and that is redundancy.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: If your page tells the same story in a block of text, and then again in a video, the two compete for attention and they weaken each other.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is a big one as well.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and for whatever reason, pages are getting heavier.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, Jenna, if you think this, they're getting heavier every year.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's like this ethos of the more the merrier, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Someone's gonna add a banner, someone's gonna add a message.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: No one owns taking anything off.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I get it, we can be so excited about our causes that we want to give everything we have, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: We want to put it all up there, front and center.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that's a really good question to ask when you're reviewing your donation page.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just what we can add, but what we can take away, right?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is how I think about costume jewelry before I'm going out for the night.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I always take off one piece before I go.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's a good rule of thumb.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: What can you take away?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: What can you take away so that there's more space to think?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: So while you're auditing your form, check whether donors can choose to cover the processing fee.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is another one that I will say is a helpful addition.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Many supporters will tick that box if you simply ask, and it keeps more of your gift working for your mission.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: So something to consider as you're reviewing that whole journey.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I love the ethos of removing things that cause friction.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what comes to mind here at stage three test is pull out your phone and make a$5 donation.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Count the number of taps in the fields.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Again, is there an opportunity to remove anything?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You want to remove every field that isn't legally or operationally required or serving your organization.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this isn't going to be a website rebuild in November, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's two or three minor small little tweaks that you can make before all of that traffic arrives.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's say the donation went through.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is great.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: We're done, right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not if we want the donor to come back later.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: We are not done.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Stage four is what happens in the 62nd after someone hit submit.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it brings us to the last friction principle, easily repeated.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, and I I don't want to be like melodramatic about this, but this one, it does kind of stick with me.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps me up at night sometimes.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know what?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: As uh fellow nonprofit nerds, it should.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: The 10 principles of donor conversion and retention calls inconsistent repeat giving the single biggest leak in nonprofit revenue.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: Roughly half of all first time supporters never make a second gift.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And one study found that only 43% of donors gave again to the same organization the following year.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this is pretty serious.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is serious.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one that I often Reference in many of my coaching sessions, about half of the people who give to you for the first time this December, all of the hard work, the love that you poured into cultivating those relationships, they won't give again.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not because they stopped caring.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Usually nothing after the gift made giving again easy or made them feel part of something ongoing.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where nonprofits should really pay attention.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Does the donor get an instant brand and tax receipt that reminds them what their gift is going to do?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it a plain text email they get two days later that looks like a transactional invoice?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a call back to part one.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: That receipt is your first act of reciprocation.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: It is your first moment of stewardship.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: It matters more than you think.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: So if you miss that episode 226, go back for that segment alone.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good one.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there's another big opportunity of recurring ask right there on the confirmation screen.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be your best chance you'll ever get to invite someone to become a monthly donor.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the guide is direct about this.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Offer the recurring option on the donation form itself, not in the follow-up email three weeks later.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want to capture their goodwill right in the moment at its highest.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I would frame the monthly ask as a smaller number, not a longer commitment.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: $20 a month lands very differently from join us for the whole year.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: One feels very manageable and unintimidating.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the other one sounds like you're asking them to sign a contract.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: We want to keep it easy.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: We'll keep it simple.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we want to remove cognitive or choice overload, because it shows up here too.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: We want to have one clear monthly option.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a menu of frequencies.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the guide has a great line on this.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: More generosity in the menu is going to produce less generosity when it comes time for the checkout.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'd say make the second gift easy.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: When donor details are saved, giving again takes just one click.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what quick donate does in donor box.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: A repeat gift becomes a single click.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a great example of this in the guide.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Maya's Hope, an amazing organization focused on child poverty, doubled its donor numbers after switching to donor box.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Part of that is automated secure login, which keeps the donor safe and makes giving again easy at the same time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And think of January when it rolls around, when the giving season noise dies down, the relationship, it's going to keep going.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is where you want to segment your giving season donors because yes, you're going to send out that December newsletter, but in addition, for the first time, you're going to have clear insights where you can make a personal update on what their gift did and really personalize that outreach.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: I wish more orgs thought about January while they were planning December.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: I know that feels like a lot of work, but it's really important.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the timing of that second ask matters more than most teams think.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: The guide gives a specific window for it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: Most organizations miss it because their focus has already moved on.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so stage four test.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Make a test gift to your own organization and time how fast the receipt is going to hit your inbox.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: If it isn't immediate, if it isn't on brand, again, that's another fixable gap.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Then you're going to want to check whether that monthly gift sits on the form itself.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: If it only shows up in an email weeks later, this is another place where you're missing second gifts that you don't even know about.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Britt, I think we've given everybody plenty of reasons to pull out their phones and test their donation pages.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: So if we can leave you with one thing today, I would say it's this.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you wait until December to test your own donation page, you're not running a campaign anymore.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: You're basically fixing the airplane mid-flight during your busiest month of the year.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, every extra field, every forced account, it's going to act like a small tax on your donor's generosity when they want to give.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd say cut out enough of those extra fields now, and you don't have to push twice as hard in December.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: You're just getting out of the way of people who already decided to give.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And for the teams out there who want the full checklist, the guide has a simple principle self-audit at the back.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to find one honest test per principle.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anything you score, no, think of it as a specific, as a fixable loss.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a shortcoming.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a general uh weakness.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So give yourself a little bit of grace.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it covers the four friction principles from today and the six confidence principles from part one.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: The 10 principles of donor conversion and retention, the science of giving, is linked in the show notes.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: So download it and take it to your next team meeting.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Britt, what's the single best action step for our listeners this week?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think I know it.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this one's easy, Jenna.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Here's your homework.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: It only takes 15 minutes.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Grab your team, pull out your phone, make that$5 gift right now to your organization.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the way a first-time donor would.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Again, use mobile data.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to use your office Wi-Fi.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Count every tap.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you hit a bump anywhere along the way, you want to fix it now before your campaign traffic arrives, not after.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd actually encourage you to get somebody who isn't familiar with your donation process to try it too.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: So after you've done your own audit, sometimes we're so used to our own systems that we don't notice little things that might trip somebody else up.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: So again, definitely walk through your own donor path before somebody else's frustration does it for you.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: And download and use DonorBox's 10 principles of donor conversion and retention, the science of giving to guide you through.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everyone.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Britt.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for joining us on the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: I hope you've left with the confidence to take a small step today that will make a big difference tomorrow.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Be sure to click the download button on your podcast player, then leave the nonprofit podcast a review, or give it a thumbs up if you're listening on YouTube.
• 28:24
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• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: You're here to help others, we're here to help you.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, stay inspired.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: That warm feeling when you help someone, it's not just happiness, it's fulfillment.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe it should be available to everyone, from frontline heroes to first time fundraisers.
• 28:44
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• 28:46
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• 28:48
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