Social Media For Nonprofits » Fundraising

Top 4 Things to Ensure Last-Minute Giving Success

Rosita Cortez — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:45:57 +0000

In response to the many requests, I have had regarding “Last Minute Giving Success,” I have decided to re-post this insightful article by the renowned speaker, author and blogger Katya Andresen.

If you haven’t gotten out your year-end online appeal yet, don’t worry! You aren’t the only procrastinator – your online donors are just like you. At Network for Good, my nonprofit, we process donations for about 40,000 nonprofits annually, and every year, the biggest two donation days are December 30th and 31st. Generous procrastinators like to get their gifts in at the last minute for tax purposes. So it’s not too late to be successful. Here are the top four things you need to remember:

Strike now and then again at the last minute: The best piece of advice I can give you at this time of year is this: Send out an appeal soon – then send out a last-minute reminder appeal the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Surprisingly few nonprofits send out appeals then, so you get the double advantage of gaining visibility and reaching donors when they are most inclined to give.

Craft a great ask: Forge an emotional connection right away that tells the donor why they should personally care and what tangible difference they will make. Then put that appeal in the mouth of someone the prospective donor trusts.

Make sure your donate form is in perfect working order — easy to find, quick to use, and full of security assurances. You want it to feel simple and safe to give. Ask one of your more technically challenged friends to make a donation and see if they can do it. If they can’t, fix your form.

Receipt and thank quickly and graciously: Send out the receipt instantly and thank profusely. Remember: the number one irritation of donors is lack of gratitude or information on the impact of their gift. It’s the season to ask for money, but it’s also the season to give thanks.

Twitter Tips for Sucessful Nonprofit Fundraising

Rosita Cortez — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:11:49 +0000

Social networking sites are opening new doors for nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Through Twitter, many charities and nonprofits have been able to raise thousands of dollars while spreading awareness about social issues. Twestival is an example of a fundraising initiative effectively harnessing the power of Twitter to raise money. On February 2009, over 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised $250K+ for CharityWater.

People, aided by social technologies, are coming together to support causes they care about. Nonprofits can reach thousands of people with a “tweet” instantly. Physical and language barriers are no longer an issue. You can post a quick “update” right from your desk, home or on the go. Similarly, people can get your updates on their computer, mobile phone or PDA. Tweets can now be sent and received in over five different languages. Twitter has become an important part of any nonprofit social media strategy.

But it takes more than posting multiple tweets a day to get the job done. It is not quite as simple as informing followers that you need some money. Below are a 10 tips (best practices) which may help your nonprofit increase its fundraising success on Twitter.

Cultivate a community. Asking people for money can be daunting. For this reason, it’s important to build a community of people interested in your content and cause before asking for anything.

Make the message clear. State your purpose clearly and concisely. Highlight the “why” and “how” when making a call to action.

Create hype and excitement. Generating buzz and excitement around your cause is imperative. It’s important to stand out and set your nonprofit apart from the rest. Hashtags and unique avatar ribbons are simple features that can be incorporated to your initiative and to involve supporters. Be creative. Put an open call out to people to use their unique skills and talents. Get them involved. Get them excited.

Report regularly. Tell your network about your progress. Run donation totals on regular basis in order to maintain momentum and keep everyone excited about the cause.

Make your messages meaningful. Do not waste people’s time. Don’t ask for donations on every tweet. The most basic of fundraising secret is that people give to people. Twitter is simply one more tool to help your nonprofit connect with its supporters. Remember, social media networking sites are about relationships.

Ask your network to “retweet” (RT) your messages. A study conducted by Dan Zarrella finds that “calls to action (“Please ReTweet”), while they might sound cheesy, work very well to get ReTweets.” This is viral marketing as its best!

Timing is essential. People are less likely to donate at particular times of the year such as right after Christmas, during the Super Bowl or national holidays.

Give praise to volunteers, supporters and donors. These are your most important nonprofit resources. People want to know that they are making a difference. Showing appreciation also encourage a continued effort on everyone’s part.

Back up words with action. Use Twitter to let followers know what your staff is doing to help. Create a sense of community around the change you seek. Connect with your network members to build trust and maintain credibility.

Tweet about your cause in general. After the campaign is over, update people on the current state of the cause in general. Let them know where and how their efforts have made a difference. This keeps your nonprofit in peoples’ minds and primes them for the next round of fundraising.

Authenticity before marketing. Traditional marketing, development and communication strategies do not work on social networking sites. Web 2.0 is much more about having personality and building online community. Nowhere is this more true than on Twitter.

Twitter is a powerful and cost-effective social media tool for nonprofit organizations. It can help you boost donations and connect to your donors. Before Twitter, and other social media, there was no economical way for a fundraising appeal to spread like wildfire. Now it’s incredible how many people a nonprofit can reach with very few resources. Experiment with it and give your supporters the opportunity to get involved quickly and easily with your nonprofit and your cause.

Got Stories? 3 Secrets to Successful Fundraising

Rosita Cortez — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:35:38 +0000

Stories should be a powerful component of any nonprofit marketing and fundraising effort. Stories move us into the action. They allow us to experience the challenges and heartaches, as well as the love and hopes of the people involved. They are the inspiration for organizers to organize and donors to donate. Whether knocking door-to-door or using social media tools to raise funds, keep in mind that research shows that people are moved not by statistics but by tears.

Everyone is familiar with charities that present us with a story of a child in an underdeveloped country for whom only a few cents a day could bring food, shelter and clean water. Stark photographs are shown in order to add vividness to the story. This strategy emphasizes desperate circumstances and gives a glimmer of hope by showing that a different story — a better story — can be written, if only more volunteers and donors would join the cause. This is the combination typically used, but it may not be right for your nonprofit branding or fundraising efforts.

I tend to lean towards positive stories, those of success and transformation. They provide a sunnier side and are filled with hope and vision for the future. Positive stories lift people’s spirits and move them to wonder what they can do to help. An example of this comes from the world of guerrilla marketing, where the Dubai Autism Center created a shopping bag featuring an image of a happy child reaching up with her little hand towards the handle of the bag so that, when the bag is carried, it appears as though the girl is holding the shopper’s hand. This story telling strategy stands a good chance of attracting more donors because it ignites people’s curiosity and moves them from knowing about problems to addressing them.

New York Times columnist and author Kristof Nicholas says, “Good people engaging in good causes sometimes feel too pure and sanctified to sink to something as manipulative as marketing, but the result has been that women have been raped when it could have been avoided and children have died of pneumonia unnecessarily—because those stories haven’t resonated with the public. So for God’s sake, let’s learn how we can connect people to important causes and galvanize a robust public reaction.”

So, what does it take to tell your stories successfully? Kristoff offers the following insights:

Look for heroes, not victims
Search for positive, heartwarming accounts of triumph. Kristoff writes “we wanted to call attention to sex trafficking, acid attacks, maternal mortality, yet we knew a focus on such a litany of horrors would go unread. The solution we came up with was to find stories of women who had overcome adversity rather than succumbed to it. We explored sex trafficking through the story of a teenage Cambodian girl who was imprisoned in a Malaysian brothel—but who, after escaping, became a very successful businesswoman with the help of an aid group, American Assistance for Cambodia.”

Focus on an individual, not a group
Kristoff tells us of an experiment in which they asked people to donate to help hungry children in West Africa. “One group was asked to help a seven-year-old girl named Rokia, from Mali. A second was asked to donate to help millions of hungry children. A third was asked to help Rokia but was provided with statistical information that gave them a larger context for her hunger. Not surprisingly, people donated more than twice as much to help Rokia as to help millions of children. But it turned out that even providing background information on African hunger diminished empathy, so people were much less willing to help Rokia when she represented a broader problem.” Thus, you should try to build your story around one particular person. People want to help particular individuals, not causes. Give people a “face” they can relate to. As Mother Teresa said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

Make donors feel good
The secret to successful fundraising is securing gifts that donors enjoy making. So stop sending those “guilt” letters. While raising money to accomplish your mission is part of the job, you should do everything possible to make sure your donors also come out feeling like winners. Make people feel lucky that they have an opportunity to help others. Donors want “an emotional ROI.” Tell them how they can help not how dire your circumstances are. Make it about them.

Stories are a powerful way to engage people in what you nonprofit does and help them understand the meaning of your work. Stories help people gain perspective on an organization’s work and impact. What is your story?

Twitter Tips for Sucessful Nonprofit Fundraising

Email Marketing for Nonprofits: 3 Essential Techniques

Rosita Cortez — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:01:45 +0000

Does your nonprofit use email marketing effectively? If you don’t know the answer, then you are probably losing out on donations, community engagement and brand visibility. In my experience, most small nonprofits spend their time worrying about successful subject lines, how often they send or how pretty their e-newsletters are. Unfortunately, small nonprofits neglect the three most important issues in email marketing.

The key to creating successful, effective email marketing campaigns is tied to three critical (but little known) techniques:

1. Segmentation. Stop blasting emails to your entire contact list. Use segmentation to send ONLY relevant messages. As you might be aware, permission-based marketing is very important. It’s imperative to get permission before sending emails to your supporters. Even with permission, however, you’re still sending people emails they don’t want to receive. The solution: segmentation. Stop blasting emails to your entire contact list. No single email will be relevant to EVERYONE on your list. It does not matter how great your content is or how fantastic your fund-raising appeal is. The truth is that you will only reach a handful of interested people. All others will get irritated and either unsubscribe or completely ignore future emails.

Effective email marketing requires you to know as much as you can about your contacts. You need to know their interests, particularly as they relate to your programs and services, their donation history, the amount they donated, and whether they opened and clicked through the emails you have sent. The more details you know, the higher the chance you have to send targeted, relevant messages. This segmentation is what makes the difference between you and millions of other small nonprofits.

2. Consistency. Keep your email marketing consistent. I know most nonprofits are strapped for time and resources. However, this doesn’t mean you should neglect your contacts. They deserve consistent, relevant communication from you. Your contacts are more likely to donate, sign a petition and spread the word about your nonprofit if they trust you. But this trust can not be earned by sending them an email once in a while. Once in a while does not build relationships. Ironically, most nonprofits only send emails as part of a fund-raising event or campaign. A bad practice that views contacts only from the perspective of their pocketbook and risks turning off potential donors.

Devote the necessary time and resources making your email marketing consistent. If you promise to send a monthly newsletter, then you better send out a newsletter. Follow up with your contacts about upcoming events, program news and highlights, and even articles or news reports related to work your organization does. The point is that there’s no excuse for losing touch with your contacts. Consistently sending emails to your constituents on a segmented basis will help enhance your relationships and lead to a significant increase in donations, brand visibility and support.

3. Integrate your email campaign with other marketing channels. Show your contacts that they are more than just a name on a list. Send a postcard (along with an email) to remind people of an upcoming event. Send a letter and gift to new donors, followed by a phone call (or voice message) asking if they received it. Tie everything together and you’ll get a powerful, reinforced campaign.

At some point, of course, you’ll want to examine those smaller details, like the best words to use in a subject line or how to address your contacts. But for now, focus on implementing the three critical email marketing techniques and you will see a significant increase in response, donations and community engagement.

10 Must-See YouTube Presentations on Social Media

Rosita Cortez — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:23:17 +0000

Social media is quickly changing the way nonprofits interact with their constituents. Traditionally, communication has been a one way process. Business and nonprofits had focused on providing a web experience that was informative and structured. Organizational messages were carefully crafted and used precise professional language. Organizations also had full control over the information presented to their constituents. Yet, this approach lacked human context. Individuals, although committed to their causes, lacked the ability to impact and influence the decision process of the organizations they supported.

Today, “command and control” communications is slowly becoming outmoded. Social media is the new way to communicate with supporters. Why? Because it allows organizations to connect with potential donors, volunteers and constituents on a more personal level. Failure to realize the power of social media can cost your organization in the long run.

How does this shift in communications affect your nonprofit and how can social media strategies and tools help you raise money, recruit volunteers and increase brand visibility? These questions are explored in-depth on the video presentations below. Experts from around the country discuss the dynamic and expanding opportunities for nonprofits to capitalize on social media. What are you waiting for? Watch them now!

Gear Up for Giving: The Click Daly Show on Social Media for Nonprofits

Social Media Strategy for Nonprofits

Creative Fundraising Online

What the Heck is Social Media

Using Social Media for Good Causes

5 Facebook Tips for Nonprofits with Randi Zuckerberg

Transforming Your Cause Through Social Media

Nonprofit Defining Success Online

Using Video to Promote Your Cause

Guide to Online Video for Nonprofits – Marketing Your Campaign

Using Social Media to Connect with Wired Wealthy Donors

Rosita Cortez — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:31:23 +0000

by Cassandra M. Chiamis

Most companies and organizations want as much marketing coverage for as little money as possible. Well, who wouldn’t? Social Media allows organizations to easily access huge numbers of potential and existing constituents at little or no-cost. Social Media is driven by word-of-mouth, one of marketing’s most powerful tools, so why aren’t more nonprofits getting involved in this spanning media outlet?

There are several major nonprofits engaging in Social Media such as the American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, March of Dimes and City Year. However smaller and more local nonprofits have yet to understand the benefits of using Social Media and how to take advantage of this growing market.

There are three major “benefits” for the nonprofits that use Social Media:

Growth in online revenue: Online revenue has grown about 50% since 2008
The target market prefers to contribute via the web: 70% of the “Wired Wealthy” has claimed they would rather submit donations online
More effective form of communication: This market doesn’t want to be advertised to, they want to be connected with.

Online Revenue Growth

A recent report, released in March 2010 by Blackbaud, a software and service provider for nonprofit organizations, has shown that online revenue has grown 46% from the year before. Accordingly, nonprofits have reported a 65% increase in online revenue compared to 2008. These nonprofits also had a 21% year-over-year median growth rate in online revenue. That is a considerable amount of available and possible donations that any nonprofit not using Social Media is missing out on.

In 2009, Epic Change created Tweetsgiving which used Twitter to raise over $11,000 in just 48 hours to help build a classroom in Arusha, Tanzania. Over 98% of the donors had never donated to Epic Change before. Another example of a successful campaign using Social Media was “Dollars for Darfur” which raised almost $150,000 in 2007 to help stop genocide in Sudan. The Facebook group currently has over 5,000 student members and over 22,000 “likes”.

Target Market Expectations

A research study administered in March 2008 by Convio, a fundraising software and research company for nonprofits, revealed background information about nonprofits’ broad target market that’s already using and donating to nonprofits online. The study surveyed more than 3,000 donors from 23 major nonprofit organizations who donate a minimum of $1,000 annually to a single cause. These donors are considered the “Wired Wealthy.” The surveys revealed the demographics of this Wired Wealthy market. 25% of those surveyed were found to have household incomes above $200,000 per year, were predominantly baby boomers, have been using the Internet an average of 12 years, and were online an average of 18 hours per week. This market pays bills, banks, gets their news and makes purchases all online.

The Wired Wealthy, for the most part, wants their contributions to be instant and efficient. 51% of those Wired Wealthy surveyed said that they would rather make their charitable contributions online versus through the U.S. Postal Service. Their reasons are speed, efficiency, and instant gratification. 70% of Wired Wealthy explained they would rather contribute online because it allows gift giving to be immediate and when it is on their mind, which otherwise, they might forget.

Effective Communication

The Wired Wealthy, like most consumers today, want to be communicated with, not just spoken to. They are tired of constantly being advertised to, they want to be engaged with, they want the companies to understand and connect with them. Social Media allows organizations to engage with their viewers by reading what their target market is talking about and responding as a company.

Nonprofits, similar to other businesses and organizations, can reach their market using Social Media simply by joining in on the right conversations and engaging in what’s important to them. “Communications is about reach. Communication is about relational dynamics between people. Social media provides the means to effectively communicate with [the target] market.”

If nonprofits engaged with their target market through Social Media they would be connecting with them in a way that this market wants to be connected with, therefore making them more aware and active with the organization.

Designing Your Website to Draw in Donors

Rosita Cortez — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:33:54 +0000

Nowadays people use the Web to do just about everything. From reading books and conducting research to contacting others and charity giving, the Web is where it is at. An organization’s absence in the World Wide Web makes about as much sense as deciding not to have a telephone. Online giving is growing and fast. Large nonprofits are already reaching out and acquiring new donors via the Internet. How is your nonprofit doing? Do you already have an online giving program in place? If so, is your website helping you effectively achieve your fund-raising goals?

According to a report from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 4 out of 5 donors have made a gift online. Donors also prefer to use the Internet for donations. These statistics supports the trend in online giving. In 1997, online donations in the United States accounted for $300,000. By 2007, online donations totaled $314 billion. For many large nonprofits online gifts account for more than 30% of their new revenue.¹ Your nonprofit can take advantage of this opportunity but to do so you need to prioritize and focus on building a great website.

Here are ten simple ways to assess your website’s ability to help you raise money.

Basic contact information. Your website needs to state what your organization does, where it’s located and ways to get in touch with development staff. Your organization’s full name, address, telephone and email address should be displayed on your website’s contact page and on the bottom of every page.
Donation information. Provide your website viewers with easy access to information on how to donate and get involved. Don’t make them look around for it. Website users, in general, want to find information within a few seconds of entering your site. Otherwise, they are gone.
Tell where the money goes. Donors want to know how their money is spent. Provide a “donor update” every month or so.
Include a call-to-action. Lots of people miss the boat when it comes to this point. The goal is to convert visitors into supporters and donors. Insert subtle cues throughout your content and give visitors incentives to make that initial contact. Suggested reading “Increasing Online Giving: 10 Tips to Optimize Your Donation Landing Pages.”
Increase donor confidence: Place your Charity Navigator and Better Business Bureau badges prominently on your homepage and donation pages.
Integrate your online giving with other marketing channels. E-mail marketing still works. E-mail (e-newsletters) can feature content on your website. Always leverage offline promotion to compliment what you are doing online.
Freshness. Provide fresh and up-to-date content.
Use social technology. Provide tools for your visitors to share what they see via social networks. An easy and inexpensive way to do this is to include Twitter and Facebook buttons. There are also free “Tell a Friend” scripts that you can integrate on your website. Statistics show that word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools. People react positively to recommendations from their friends and colleagues.
Acknowledge your donors. Find a space on your website to publicly thank your donors.
Track users. The only way to improve your pages is by knowing your user’s preferences. Use a tracking tool to know where viewers go within the site and know how successfully you are leading them to donation or involvement options.

In sum, your website design should acknowledge your donor’s experience. Put yourself in their shoes and understand how they will interact with your communication. Your website design is experienced in stages — from the first impression to the last click. It is not just about your donation page. Recognize that more and more donors are taking action online. Use the 10 tips above to enhance your messaging or engagement strategy today.

10 Easy Tips to Optimize Your Donate Now Button

Rosita Cortez — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:19:08 +0000

Studies show that about half of those who receive an appeal for funds in the mail will checkout the organization’s website. Are you capitalizing on this? Is your organization optimizing its web pages to increase fund-raising? Having clever and inspirational online content coupled with optimization techniques can make a big difference in converting advocates, subscribers and other supporters into donors.

Although it may sound silly to you, the donate button your nonprofit is using can greatly affect online donations. If you are using the small, gray standard “Submit” button, you might be waving good-bye to a lot of donations. A study conducted by Donor Digital finds that color, size and the copy on the donate button are crucial in enticing people to donate.

Take a look at a few tips about optimizing your donate button. Remember, small changes to your web donation page can dramatically increase the number of visitors who actually make a gift.

Location. Put your Donate Now button “above the fold.” Eliminate the need to scroll to find the button. The upper right corner is prime website real state. Make it obvious. Make it impossible to miss.

Use large Donate Now buttons. Donor Digital finds that size does matter. Similar to the industry learning that large font is more eye-catching, we’ve learned that bigger donate buttons help convert more donors.
Use color. A little color goes a long way. Colorful, high-contrast donate buttons work better than gray buttons.
Use specific language. Buttons with a specific call-to-action (“Donate Now”) perform better than a gray button that says “Submit.”
Stand out. Make sure your “Donate Now” button stands out from the rest of your website.

Frame the button in a compelling way. Make it about the donor. Why should they care? What can they help accomplish? Make sure you have a strong persuasive message above the call to action. Use it to persuade donors on the fence.

Test your links. Once it is up on your site, make sure it takes donors where it should. There is nothing worse than a broken link.
Put it on every page. The act of giving is immediate. We can not predict what page someone will be on when they are inspired to donate. Increase your chances of receiving a donation by putting the button on every page.
It is not just for your website. Include the Donate Now button in every communication (blog, e-newsletter, email signature).
Test it out. It shouldn’t take someone more than 3 seconds to find your “Donate Now” button.

Take away: If you want to see an increase in online donations, you need to optimize your donate now button, not just your website and your donation landing pages. Give your button the emotional tone that touches people and invites them to donate.

10 Tips to Effective Search Engine Optimization for Nonprofits

Rosita Cortez — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:48:31 +0000

Many people feel intimidated when approaching Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They think it’s super-technical or requires a huge budget. But the truth is that SEO is not brain surgery. Search Engine Optimization doesn’t require an expert to do. The only things that are really necessary are time, the willingness to learn and a tad of patience.

Does your nonprofit have a website that would benefit from an increase in targeted traffic? Would you like to rank higher in search engines? Would you like to increase your online fund-raising and brand visibility? Don’t sweat i! Do-it-yourselfers can do as good of a job as professionals when it comes to SEO. After all, you know your organization — and all its nooks and crannies — better than anybody.

Let’s be clear: SEO takes some time. There are no short cuts or quick fixes. Good results almost always takes many months. But don’t despair. If you follow the 10 tips below, you’ll be paving the way for your nonprofit. Although the tips below are a mix of on-page and off-page optimization techniques, they work together to increase your nonprofit’s ranking in organic search results.

1. Clarify your goals. Good SEO requires concrete, laser-focused goals. Spend sometime clicking around your website. Think in terms of:

a. Presentation (is your information up-to-date? Are your forms asking the right questions?)

b. Functionality (Can people make donations online? Do you have a strong brand identity?)

c. What do you want your visitors to do on your website? It is your party. You decide what you want your guests to do: make a donation, view a certain page on the site, subscribe to your mailing list, etc.

2. Audience. Who is the target audience for your website? Surely it includes potential donors. But don’t forget that it may also include members of the press, employees at your organization, current and past beneficiaries seeking support. Describe your target audience(s) with as much detail as possible.

3. Keyword selection is key. Keywords are the heart of any SEO campaign. Organizations who are on top of their SEO game have a list of top-priority keywords that they use on their site with reasonable repetition.

4. Pay attention to Meta tags. They are what we called “invisible text” because metadata is not displayed on the page, but is added to your html code to be analyzed by SEO robots. Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords and images.

a. Page title. Most search engines assign great importance to page titles when indexing content. Writers who use descriptive headlines can become magnet for SEO attention.

b. Friendly titles. If your nonprofit is using a CMS platform, make sure that it does not assign content ID numbers to page titles.

5. Clear and compelling content. I cannot say it enough: content is king. Content should be fresh, interesting and directed to your users. Your content needs to be formatted so robots can read it. This means HTML text, not graphical text, which search engines can’t read.

In addition, within your page body, there are 5 important elements from a SEO perspective:

a. Anchor text (also called linking text). Text that is clickable on a webpage. Aim to anchor text that contains your page’s targeted keywords. This can help you boost your page rank.

b. Breadcrumb trail. It gives users a way to keep track of their location within your site. Usually, breadcrumbs appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually below title bars or headers.

c. Heading tags. After the title tag, the headline tag is the next most important SEO on page element. Although HTML supports up to six levels of heading tags, typically I don’t recommend using more than the h1 and h2 tags on a given page.

d. Body text. Use no more than 450-600 words in total on each page. Use bold and italics to pick out keywords on the page. This helps search engines as well as humans readers to identify your key text. Do not use the underline tag on your page as it confuses users expecting to find a link.

e. Image ALT tags. As we discussed before, robots cannot read graphics. Make sure that all your images have an ALT tag that describes the image clearly.

f. Internal links (also known as cross-linking). Greater SEO value is given to internal links. Have keyword-rich navigation within your own site (in addition to the breadcrumb trail).

6. Inbound links. SEO considers inbound links to be the gold standard for content quality. Think of links as online recommendations.

7. Create and file a sitemap. It allows robots (and users) to quickly and easily find and index your content. Sitemaps help with usability and site navigation.

8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names.

9. Optimize other assets found on your website, including documents (.doc, .pdf), spreadsheets (.xls), presentations (.ppt), videos (.avi) and pictures (.jpg, gif, .png).

10. Track and evaluate your SEO efforts periodically. How will you know you’re successful if you have no way of measuring what you’ve done? Sign up for Google’s webmaster Central and Google Analytics to learn more about how the search engines see your site, inbound links, source of traffics, etc. Measure, analyze and adjust your strategy as needed.

Increasing Online Giving: 10 Tips to Optimize Your Donation Landing Pages

Rosita Cortez — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:28:29 +0000

Do you find yourself a bit envious of all that money and manpower of bigger nonprofits? Don’t be. Optimization can be the field leveler you need to compete with large companies.

If you spend most of your time thinking about developing compelling campaigns on and offline, and finding new ways to engage supporters, as well as writing great fund-raising letters, your web donation page design and content is probably the last on your list. Yet, studies have shown that a well-optimized donation page can help you convert visitors into donors.

Most organizations (including large ones) have donation page conversion rates below 20%, some even less than 10%. These poorly designed pages are driving away potential donors. Why should you care about that? Improved conversion on these pages mean more dollars raised with no increases in outbound marketing.

10 Tips to Optimize Your Donation Landing Pages

Use large donate buttons. Larger donate buttons convert more donors than smaller buttons.
Use color. Colorful, high-contrast donate buttons work better than gray buttons.
Simplicity. Flash designs are very often the culprit to a low converting landing page. Simplify the design utilizing static images.
Streamline your forms. Remove unnecessary fields from the personal information form (such as “title” or “suffix”).
Stay focused. Give your landing page visitors only one action to take, not multiple actions.
Avoid distractions. Don’t give your visitors a reason to detour from the page before completing the action you want them to take. In other words, avoid putting full site navigation and links on a landing page that will encourage visitors to abandon the page.
Write donor-friendly content. Generally, when it comes to content, it’s best to keep it short and simple. Use concise language that’s easy to understand and straight to the point.
Show where the money goes. Use charts and diagrams to show donors how their money will be used. donors want their philanthropic investment to have a measurable, significant impact on a cause they care about.
Prominent email capture. Not all visitor will be convinced to donate right away. Ensure you give them easy alternatives to engage with your nonprofit. Then work on the relationship.
Say thank you. By showing appreciation, you invite donors into the “organizational family” and increase their sense of participation. Saying “thank you” will go a long way toward securing the next gift.

Take away: spend some time clicking around your donation landing pages. Take the time to evaluated each page against above 10 optimization elements.