Putting Donors at the Center of Your Thinking Can Cure an Ailing Fundraising Program

The time to make your Web site donor friendly is now. For the most part, that means using common sense. You have years of experience creating direct-mail reply devices that work. You know that each one needs to have these characteristics:

• Complete and compelling description of the fundraising offer.

• Motivating, emotional language.

• Simplicity and clarity.

• Choices for the donor.

• Relevance to the donor.

A good start for a strong online giving page would be to make it work like a good paper reply device. And then make it better. Online reply devices are more flexible than the paper model, so why not make them even better? They can do nifty, donor-friendly things such as:

• Forms already filled out (assuming you know who's visiting that page).

• Gift arrays based on where the donor came from.

• Instant calculations of the impact of a gift.

Study your Web usage statistics. They will show you exactly where your Web Blockages are — the points at which donors abandon their attempts to give. (If your Web people won't give you the information, fire them.) Be willing to make meaningful changes to remove every source of blockage. This may require different kinds of programming. (If your Web people won't fix it, fire them.)

If you rigorously test and improve your donation pages, you'll end up with a blockage-free Web site — ready for the coming day when online fundraising really takes off. (That day, some would say, is already here!)

The cure for each of these diseases is to treat your donors right:

• Respect your donors. Don't expect them to become carbon copies of you.

• Empower your donors. Give them meaningful choices about their investments with you.

• Serve your donors. Make giving easy and rewarding.

Be there for donors, and they'll be there for you. And they'll take you into an exciting (and healthy) future.

Jeff Brooks is the senior creative director at the Domain Group, an international direct-marketing firm serving nonprofit organizations.