15 Great Donation Page Examples To Increase Donations

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7 Proven strategies to increase online donations

Observing bees can teach you a lot about increasing church giving online.

For full disclosure, I’m not a bee farmer.

But here’s what I know:

If you want to attract a swarm of bees, you have to use honey to attract them.

Obviously, this process is a bit more nuanced than what I’m leading on to believe, and you’re probably thinking, What does attracting bees have to do with online giving?

Simple.

To increase online church giving, you have to provide and promote online giving.

You don’t have to be fancy or overtly creative to increase church online giving.

Simply promoting what you have to offer (honey) will attract the people in your church who prefer to donate online or with their mobile device.

To help you get started, here are four proven strategies you can use:

Utilize a single point for giving
Include a donate button
Make giving mobile-friendly
Understand your supporters
Use consistent branding
Optimize your donation page
Integrate your giving page with your database

Let’s take a look at these in detail.

1. Direct traffic to a single point for online giving

You might already provide multiple ways for congregants to support your church, including an online giving page, crowdfunding campaigns, or text in church tools. It’s essential, however, to ensure that your digital giving outlets are as unified as possible. That is, you should direct people who see your posts on social media or visitors to your church’s website to the same giving page.

Having too many separate, ongoing digital giving outlets can become confusing for supporters and overwhelming for your team.

There are many benefits to directing your congregation to a single giving page, including:

Streamlined marketing and promotional processes
Clearer web traffic flows to your site and donation page
Ability to more accurately track giving and marketing data
Prevents confusion for potential givers on your website

Creating a clear link structure between your web pages, social media posts, online campaigns, and email newsletters to a single giving page is an effective (and easy) way to boost its overall utility!

2. Include donation buttons

Your church website receives hundreds or thousands of visitors every month. Many of the people who visit your website to donate are church members or people interested in supporting your ministry. Based on research, many of these people will be inclined to give to your church. In fact, we found that most giving actually takes place Monday through Saturday—not on Sundays.

Know how people give throughout the week?

Most of them make a donation online or with their mobile device.

Make it easy for people to donate to your church during the week by including a donation button on your church’s donation page. Many churches find it helpful to add a clickable “Give Now” button in the primary navigation bar of their website.

For examples, make sure to scroll below to see how many churches include an eye-catching donation button on their website.

Regardless of where you add a button to promote giving, be sure to highlight it in some way to create awareness.

3. Make your donation page mobile-friendly

When it comes to online giving, you may be missing out on one-half of your opportunities. As of 2017, more than half (51%) of global Internet traffic originated from a mobile device. Depending upon the demographics of your church, the number of people visiting your website from a mobile device may be higher or lower.

Not only are people visiting your church’s website from their mobile phone, but they’re also inclined to donate with their phone.

Mobile donation continues to increase year-over-year, and, according to The Millennial Impact Report, the number of millennials who want to give online is 84%.

With Tithe.ly, you’ll get a simple, clean, and user -friendly donation form for mobile devices.

Check out this example:

As the trend of online shopping, banking, and giving continues to climb, it won’t be long until most of the people in your church will donate with their mobile phone... so why not give them a free mobile giving app to use when giving to your church?

4. Use consistent branding

Branding can be somewhat of a taboo topic in the church. But when it comes to talking about online giving, branding actually plays an important part. Including elements of your church’s branding on your donation form—such as your logo and similar colors—will instill a sense of confidence in your online visitors. By making your donation form look similar to your church’s website, people will feel more comfortably making a donation.

Don’t believe me?

Check this out.

According to a study by Network for Good, they discovered that generic donation pages performed 66.7% lower than branded donation pages. What is more, Network for Good also observed a 38% increase in the average gifts made through branded donation pages.

Here’s the deal:

When people click on your one page to make a donation, instead of leading them to a different site or third-party application, it’s best to keep them on your church’s website to increase the number of donations you receive.

Here’s an example of how you can create consistent branding:

Do your donation forms lead people to a different site or look different from your church’s site?

Switch to Tithe.ly.

Make your donation form look similar to your church’s site.

Then watch the number of people who visit your donation page and donation amounts increase.

5. Learn more about your online supporters

While many businesses and nonprofits race to capitalize on the immense value of data as an important resource, your church has one major advantage -- it’s a church. It has a more meaningful and trusting relationship with its members.

Your congregation will happily provide you with the important information and data you can use to make continually smarter fundraising decisions!

On your giving page, consider including an optional field on your giving form that asks for your congregants’ employment information. This simple act has the potential to provide your church with a huge boost in collections!

Corporate philanthropy programs, like matching gifts and volunteer grants, offer great opportunities for all kinds of nonprofits. Requesting and collecting your congregation’s employment information can be extremely useful, since you can use this data to:

Research corporate philanthropy funds and your eligibility
Develop personal relationships with local business leaders
Guide your marketing and event planning
Identify opportunities for community support initiatives

While it’s a best practice to offer matching gift search tools in your online giving process, directly collecting this information from your loyal congregants is an easy and foolproof way to identify new opportunities more generally.

6. Optimize your donation page

Not every donation form is created equal. There are practical things you can do to make it more compelling for people to donate. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Clearly communicate

Think about the title you use on the top of the page.

Be sure it clearly communicates what you want people to see and think.

Let people know about their giving options

You don’t have to be clever to encourage people to give.

Just letting people know about their giving options makes a big difference.

On your donation page, be sure to let everyone know how they can make a donation.

There are some great examples below on different ways you can do this.

This is a great example of telling and showing your church members how to give.

Make the donation page simple

Don’t make your donation page cluttered.

Focus on your main point (what’s called a call to action).

Keep things simple, clean, and pleasant to look at.

This will help make the donation process easier for donors and will increase recurring donations.

7. Integrate your giving page with your database

The best way to invest in your ability to actually use your data is to ensure that your giving page or collections platform integrates with your database software. This means that the data collected for each online gift, like the congregant’s name, employment information, the date of the gift, and the gift amount, should all automatically report to your database.

Gathering this info can dramatically boost the usefulness of your optimized giving page for several reasons:

Automatic reporting and organization of giver data, which saves you time
Easier ways to identify important trends, like drops or bumps in collections
Access to information that can greatly help with planning major events

For instance, if you’re planning a fundraising event, it might be useful to identify congregants who have made an online gift in the past but not for several months. Use event management software to build and prioritize lists, integrate your data, and automate invitations.

Interested in more tips on increasing online giving?

For more ways on how you can increase church donations, check out 9 Proven Strategies to Increase Online Giving in Your Church.

13 churches with great donation pages

Below are 15 churches who’ve added an online donation form to their donation page using Tithe.ly—one of the best online donation tools for small churches and large churches.

When you take a look at the donation page examples below, keep in mind the five best practices we just shared above. See how these churches clearly added a donation button, told a compelling story, or use consistent branding.

Rock Church

North Coast Church

Higher Vision Church

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St. Peters Evangelical Lutheran Church

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Cathedral Los Angeles

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Green Valley Church

Third Coast Church

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Freedom Church

Refuge Church

‍Grove Church

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Seattle Church of Christ

Canvas Church

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Ready to increase online donation amounts?

There are countless ways you can add a donate page for donors with Tithe.ly to your church's website.

Once you have these few steps down, it will make it easy for others to find your donation page and share your great donation page on social media. These same steps can be used for online fundraising and for a nonprofit donation page also.

At a minimum, make sure you:

Include a donation button
Make giving mobile-friendly
Use consistent branding
Optimize your donation page

Remember, your donation page doesn't need to be flashy or complicated—just effective.

At Tithe.ly, we make sure to make online donations easy (and beautiful) and you can be up and running for free in the matter of minutes.

More resources and tips about online giving for churches:

Editor’s Note: This post was updated on August 21, 2020 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

AUTHOR

Jesse Wisnewski

https://www.jessewisnewski.co/

Jesse Wisnewski is the founder of EverRaise, an AI engagement team that helps relationship-driven organizations keep more supporters and raise more money. His work has been featured in Forbes, CNBC Make It, The Muse, Observer, and other outlets. He holds a master’s degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a marketing degree from Marshall University. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his family.

As a church leader, how you respond to these changes will determine if your church giving will grow like 12-year-old Lebron James or rust out like an old junkyard card.

Do you want your church giving to increase with an optimized online giving page? Or do you prefer to stall and eventually make church budget cuts?

Let’s agree to enhance your church’s online giving, cool?

Let’s get started!