What to Do If Your Monthly Donor Doesn’t Want to Give Online

While online giving is growing, it’s our assumption that donors are comfortable filling out their personal information into an online donation form and hitting the submit button.

Then, where does that information go? For donors, that can be unnerving. They’re worried that their credit card information can get stolen. After all, the credit card abuse, even with chip, is still rampant.

The first thing I recommend you do is to look at your donation abandon rate numbers. How many donors go to your monthly giving page and actually complete their online donation?

If you see that many donors stop and go away, this could be an indicator that: a) Your online form is too complicated, or b) the donor is just not comfortable giving out certain information online.

Let’s address the form for a minute. Depending upon the online processor you’re using, you may not have that much control over the form, but you can take out anything that might “stop” the donor. A couple examples: If you ask them to think about providing a “donor scroll” message, if you ask them to think about supporting a specific program or if you ask them how they came to your page.

You’re making them think, and you’re distracting them away from what they really came to do here: Become a monthly donor. So, take out everything that makes them stop and think too much. Rather, focus on the gift amount, confirming that they’d like to do this monthly, and of course, contact and payment information. Remember, you’ll send them a confirmation email, and you could ask a question there. You’ll have this monthly donor for many years to come so plenty of time to ask other questions later.

Now, let’s look at b) the donor is not comfortable giving out information online.

This is where a printable form is a good solution. It’s very easy to do. Just create a PDF of a monthly giving form, put it on your general monthly donor info page or next to a monthly donor-giving page and add it to your ways to give page. (You could simply say, “Click here to give monthly now, or print out this form and send it in to address.”)

You’ll know that a donor downloading this form is truly committed to making that monthly gift. You’ve just made it easy for the donor to give the way they may be more comfortable to give.

Here’ s a great example of how Habitat for Humanity does it. Scroll down to see the options. Remember, as fundraisers, everything we do is all about the donor. How can we make it easy for them to make a difference?