Andrea Berry's blog

When thinking about your online donation landing page it is essential to consider the giving levels that you suggest to your potential donors. These little numbers end up conveying a lot about your organization and your fundraising priorities and can directly influence the giving amount that a donor chooses. Ask too little and you will likely receive less than a donor had planned to give, ask too much and you may deter lower level donors from giving at all. 

There are a number of different approaches you can take to crafting your online giving levels. Take a look at the ASPCA, Nature Conservancy and American Red Cross as examples.  The ASPCA lists dollar amounts from $20 to $100 working to elicit lower level gifts while the Nature Conservancy lists amounts from $50 to $10,000 implying an expected donation of much larger sums. The ASPCA is clearly speaking to first time or lower level donors while the Nature Conservancy has made a choice to address higher level donors with less attention to small gifts. Interestingly, and worth considering, the Red Cross chooses not to list suggested giving amounts at all. 

Okay, so assuming you do want to suggest levels, how do you choose what the right giving levels are for your organization? (For the purpose of this post let’s narrow the field to one-time donations as opposed to monthly gifts.  I’ll address that thought process at a later time.) For one-time donations, most often I see levels at $25, $50, $100, $250 and $500.  These numbers reflect a generic progression of gift size for small- or medium-sized organizations.  Let’s start here and ask some questions to see if we can make an argument to change any numbers in the progression.

First, take a look at your donation history overall. What is your lowest gift? If you get a substantial number of gifts smaller than $25, consider lowering the low point to $15 or $20 to include those donors in the online process. Plan on using the low number to try and push those low-level donations higher, so if you see a large number of $10 donations, consider making the lowest level donation $15 to encourage a slightly larger gift. (It is true that typing a 3 instead of a 2 is a lot easier than writing thirty instead of twenty on a check! So if you are seeing $15 via check, assume you can push at least a little online.) On the flip side, if you only get a few gifts lower than, say $35, consider that as your low level gift and work up from there. Don’t give your donors an easy option to give lower than their standard, make them type in $25 instead of $35 rather than providing a simple radio button for a lower gift. 

Next, consider your highest gift amount listed. What is a realistically high gift amount for your organization?  If you rarely see gifts larger than $1000 then don’t list $5000 as a top number! As with the lower level, you want to try and use these suggested amounts as ways to push your donors to stretch their gift.  So if most larger gifts register at $250, consider a high level of $300 or $350 to push that gift higher but not alienate your donors. 

At the high level, you also need to consider how much you are willing to give up in donation administration fees.  If you are working with a 4% fee for credit card processing, at $25 you pay a $1 fee- not much to think about, but at $1000 that fee is $40, which is a substantial amount to loose from the donation.  Make sure to calculate in your admin fees in the determination of the high value you want to encourage via online donation tools. 

And once you have you high and low value, use your common sense to determine price points in between.  Try to list somewhere between four and six values in total, with the increments being closer together at the low end and then farther apart as the amounts get higher. Always make sure to add an “Other” option, and do list that after the high end donation level to imply that this is for gifts larger than the top amount listed.

As a best practice, consider annotating (if your online donation too will allow) what each donation amount will “buy”.  Take a look at the ASPCA’s donation page for a fantastic example of this concept.  

Remember, the numbers you choose to suggest to your potential donors are pushing them to give at certain dollar amounts. Try to push your donors to give a little more, but make sure to provide them with options that meet their giving level. If you can’t find a reason to change the $25, $50, $100, $250 and $500 progression then go with it.  No matter what you choose, run the giving levels for a test period, then stop and evaluate the response and adjust accordingly. 

 What do your Facebook and Twitter posts say about your organization? In this video, Andrea Berry talks through how to define and control your brand on social media.

Want to learn more about how social media can help your organization's brand? Check out our recorded seminar, Branding Through Social Media.

 As fundraisers we dream about the new frontier of online giving as a potential golden ticket for reaching younger or more tech savvy donors. Driving everyone to give online, in monthly installments, is all the rage. But what happens when a donor wants to give $1000 or more? Is there potential negative organizational impact in accepting large gifts online?

Negatives to Large Online Gifts

There are fees associated with online giving that can add up quickly if you are not paying attention.  Paypal has the smallest fee in the field, coming in at 2.4% of each donation, and the percentage cut taken by online giving tools can go up from there to as high as 7.5% (or more). These fees may seem small when donations are a few hundred dollars or less, but when we start looking at donations in the $500 to $1000 range the bite that fees take out of a donation can become substantial. So at what threshold do you start considering counseling people away from online giving and towards check, stock or cash donations?

Consider what your average small gift donation amount would be- that could be $25, $35, $50- and use that number to determine the maximum amount that you are happy to pay in fees per donation. A good rule of thumb would be to aim for a payout to the online donation company that is equivalent or less than your average small donation. So if your average small gift is $25 and you are paying a 2.5% fee per donation, you might consider setting your maximum online gift threshold at $1000 ($1000 x 2.5% = $25).

There are certainly additional factors that can have a potential negative effect on your organization when accepting large online gifts. The timeframe in which the money actually becomes available to you is an important thing to consider. Many organizations set up accounts in which donations are delivered via a short term direct deposit, in which case the transfer time probably is not critical, however organizations who use online donation tools that pay in a monthly or a twice monthly lump check will see substantial delay in receiving large funds when an online major gift is made.

Strategies to Counseling Away From Large Online Gifts

It's tricky to direct donors to give via a specific avenue when it comes to major gifts, but there are some techniques that you can implore to help direct your large dollar donors away from online giving. The first to consider is your online giving menu. These are the dollar amount suggestions that you offer to potential donors via the online donation tool. You can suggest that larger donations are not made online by a setting the dollar amount progression to max out at your maximum online gift threshold.

Additionally, acknowledging to online donors that there is an opportunity to give off-line might provide enough of a hint for major donors to deliver their donation through a different avenue. Straight up asking that gifts larger than a certain threshold not be given online, with added explanation as to why that request is being made, feels like a somewhat risky endeavor and the etiquette around that is a little unclear.

There is also the potential to direct large dollar donors to give under a different online tool than your standard giving channel. Google Checkout is an interesting option in this area, as Google Grant recipients get access to this payment technique without any fees. The user experience is not ideal as it may be a little wonky, but for a donor who is determined to give a large amount through an online channel it may be a nice compromise tool to allow you to retain the entire value of the gift. Be cautious when going this route though, you don't want this process to seem overly complicated or to come off ungrateful.  Save this strategy for people whom you can be sure will understand the situation. 

Overall, remember, you don't want to scare away your donors due to an obsession with saving the fee, but a gentle nudge in the direction you want to move them can certainly help.

I just got Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software, and it's changed my life. Now, I'm not going to talk about how much I love the ability to speak and have my words recorded, which I do, by the way (if you want to know more about the tool see Steve Backman’s thoughts). Instead, I’m telling you about my new software love to empower you to find your life-changing tool. Productivity is essential for those of us who work at nonprofits, everyone really. Finding something that will help you do your job better and more effectively is absolutely amazing and potentially job-altering. We talk about this at the organizational level all the time, so why don’t we allow ourselves to spend that time personally, especially when it would improve the way we work?  My advice, from someone who has avoided spending this time for years: give yourself a little bit of time to look around and see if there are ways that technology can help you improve the way you do what you do.

What did I do to come to this revelation?  I asked myself, where do I struggle? What are the things I do during the day that I know if I had a little bit of help I could do better? For me it was writing. I write perfectly well, but slowly. I speak quickly and in full sentences however, and my thoughts come out of my mouth much faster, and often more eloquently, than when I type. That made the power of dictation software a no brainer. I wrote this post in about half the time it usually takes me, all thanks to my new best friend.  

Now it’s your turn. What do you that you could do better, faster, more efficiently? Do you struggle with tasks? Is there a tool out there that can help you manage your to do list? What about with time management? Can you find something that will help you stick to your timeline? There are tools out there that can help you in probably any area that you need support. Imagine the impact it could have on your day-to-day work. You’d do it for your organization, why not yourself?

It’s okay, you have permission now. Give yourself a little bit of time to explore and see if there is a solution out there for you. Spending some time upfront to find something that would really make a difference can be hugely worth it. It can change your life, I promise. And when it improves how you work personally, it will improve your organization’s capacity at the same time!

I've recently been doing a number of small "micro-consulting" call-in sessions with nonprofits looking to switch Donor Management Systems. At the conclusion of each call, I walk participants through a process for taking the conversation we just had to a more detailed level, arming them with a sort of DIY software selection roadmap. This step-by-step process can be hugely helpful in taking what seems to be a completely overwhelming process and sectioning it off into achievable, time-bound chunks.

So here it is, the Idealware DIY Donor Management Software Selection Process:

 1. Figure out if you really need a new system.