Reflecting on 2018 — Three Things That Have Made a Big Difference
With the year coming to an end, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share 3 things Donr learned over the past 12 months.
Selecting a Donation Amount
We’ve found people will donate higher amounts, but they’ll do this by clicking a button. They won’t enter £1,000 in a free text box asking how much they would like to give, but instead they’ll click a button with the amount on it.
For us, this has meant it has definitely been worth having our ‘donate a higher amount’ option on our donation pages, with corresponding buttons to allow supporters to donate £100, £250, £500 or £1000. Nearly all higher amount donations this year have been selected from a button click, rather than the supporter entering the amount they would like to give.
Choice
It’s really important to remember that people are reluctant to turn a couple of minutes’ learning about your cause into 10 minutes searching around the house for their credit card.
If people don’t have the option to donate via their preferred mechanic — the one that’s most convenient for them — then they won’t donate.
Similarly, we’ve also found that the drop-off rates for donations will increase as more steps are added to the donation process. If there are too many hoops to jump through, people give up.
The only question they should need to answer is: “Do I want to donate to this cause?” Once the answer to that question is ‘yes’ then each supporter should find their preferred donation mechanic available and be able to complete the donation process in as few steps as possible.
Social Media
In today’s modern world, a donation ask cannot sit on its own. It has to be pushed on social media. Unfortunately, social media is 24/7 and you get no say in when your post gets picked up or how people respond to it.
What you can influence, though, is how often you post: the more regularly you post — every day, every other day — the more chance you stand of something resonating with your followers and turning into a successful post.
It’s also worth remembering that social media algorithms are going to come into play and test which posts suit which followers. One post is not going to be seen by 5,000 people but rather 3–5% of your followers.
What charities need to be doing is to be creating engaging posts that their followers want to interact with: the more likes, clicks and comments a post gets, the more it gets pushed out to your wider follower base.
It’s also useful to keep in mind that a social media post only ‘lives’ for 72 hours before it’s dropped off people’s feeds… so regular posting is key!
