Creativity is Key to Attracting More Donors Via Your Web Site

By Jane Yuan and Michelle Naden

2. Information and education: Provide interesting knowledge that relates the audience to the cause.
Nonprofits should use simple but creative animation to keep the tone of a Web site fun and fresh. An interactive map was developed for the Plant a Billion Trees campaign so a visitor can explore the area and learn about the people, animals and plants that depend on the Atlantic Forest for life. The user can switch back and forth between political and geographic maps so that the area, foreign to many, becomes more relatable.

A donation counter on the homepage was applied to reflect the number of dollars raised, which keeps the audience informed and demonstrates that this is a very worthy cause to which to donate.

Coming up with a simple and clear tagline also is a big help. A tagline like TNC’s “One dollar. One tree. One planet” effectively delivers the mission and brings the cause home in a powerful yet compact way.

3. Color and creative: Use a vibrant palette rather than a darker one to move your audience to act.
People are more receptive to making a donation when they feel there is hope for a cause. Vibrant colors convey that feeling of hope and optimism.

To create that sunny feeling, Crew Creative created a bright logo based on TNC’s aesthetic and developed a site with bold colors that reflects its brand.

4. Personalization and social networking: Make your audience feel involved.
Widgets are important in generating “buzz” marketing, because users feel more involved when they can easily support the cause by linking the widgets to their social-networking pages or share them via e-mail.

For example, Crew built a widget to allow users to pick an animal or plant from the Atlantic Forest to display on their social-networking pages. There are 12 animals and plants in the widget. When clicked on, each displays information about that animal or plant. Customization is one of the “hooks” that help make widgets viral — in this case, users could pick which Atlantic Forest native they stood for in this fundraising effort.