Best Online Fundraising Tools for Nonprofits of Every Size

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We've already established that raising funds online is essential for any nonprofit. Now we want to dive deeper into which platform is best for your organization, depending on your nonprofit’s annual online donation volume and needs.

Before we get to three systems that are good for low, medium, and high volume, we want to lay out the five most important criteria for any online donation platform: security, branding, ease of donation process for the donor, customer relationship management (CRM) system integration capability, and competitive rates.

Security:

Making sure your online fundraising system is secure is critical to protecting your donors and your organization. You can't afford to jeopardize your relationship with your donors or damage your reputation.

Branding:

You've also spent a great deal of time developing and building your brand across all your media platforms and messaging. At the critical moment of securing a donation, you don't want to lose that branding and all the confidence you've built. So your online donation system must readily display your branding and be easily embedded into your website.

Ease of donation process for donor:

You've read our earlier post about the importance of making online donations easy and highly visible. Given that, you need to make sure the system you're considering has easy donation options including mobile, recurring gifts, and selectable amounts. Our mantra is — remove all barriers to donations. This certainly includes your online fundraising.

CRM integration capability:

Yet another critical consideration is integrating the online donation system with your CRM software. You want the data collected during the donation to readily move into your CRM tool so you can generate an immediate email receipt and a thank you note offering further information on the impact of the donation. And, of course, you'll use that information for future messages to this proven donor.

Competitive rates:

Finally, you need to make sure that transaction costs are kept low, whatever system and processor you select. We've found these fees are typically 3 to 5 percent, but you need to do the research on all the cost aspects of whatever online donation system you're considering, including setup fees, transaction costs, and other associated fees for using the system and the processor.

Now that you know that criteria to keep in mind when choosing an online donation system, let’s look at a few options by volume.

Phase I and Events: Donorbox.org

Donorbox is a lot like its name implies — straightforward and simple. It provides a donation form that readily integrates with your website. It will also provide a stand-alone webpage that will hold your donation form. The form is white labeled and will readily fit within your current website's branding. Security is certified by Comodo Secure. It has a simple donor data export function. It does not, however, integrate with CRMs.

The Donorbox service is free for the first $3,000 in donations each month. Donation amounts that surpass the $3,000 monthly level are charged a 2 percent fee. The payment processing fee is 2.9 percent, plus 30 cents per donation. There may be payment processing fee discounts available for registered nonprofits.

Who is this a good system for?

Think Square. It’s probably not the tool you want to use for $50,000 donations for a few reasons, but it’s often great for small events and beginners testing the waters.

Phase II: Fundraise.com

So you’re starting to pull in some higher dollar donations and want to keep as much of those dollars as possible. It might be time to consider a tool like Fundraise.com that’s more sophisticated and has a different fee structure.

This tool allows you to build a great page with photos, social sharing, goals, countdown clocks, videos, and "donate now" entry windows with suggested amounts.

The backend not only provides the tools to build your campaign but also a dashboard to monitor progress, post Facebook updates, and send email campaigns. It has an event ticketing system and many of the tools needed to manage your live event. It further offers embedding codes so you can easily place the donation form anywhere (ideally everywhere) on your own website. It’s security is also certified by VeriSign, which is important for reassuring donors of the safety of your site.

The use of the system is free. The charge for services happens when someone donates. Fundraise.com charges 4.5 percent on each donation, in addition to the credit card processing costs. As for CRM integration, it allows you to export your donors' information via a spreadsheet. This then would need to be uploaded to your CRM system. While this manual process might not be ideal, it’s a start and can get the job done.

With the possible exception of the cost element, this system meets all of the five considerations we've noted above. We particularly like its easy-to-use web interface.

Who is this system good for?

This is a great tool for an organization looking to consistently bring in a growing number of donations with fairly easy setup that still has some quality features, making it easy for them to grow.

Phase III: Build Your Own Platform

If your organization’s online donations are really taking off and becoming an integral part of total donations, it might be time to look at building something custom fit to your needs.

While this can cost a few hundred to thousands of dollars, it is very much worth every penny for those who want to be able to integrate complex platforms, such as their CRM, to pull more donor data and increase automation. There are a few parties involved to make this happen, so be sure to do your homework to make sure you’re going with a company you can trust to get it done right. This platform will involve at a minimum a payment processor, a developer or development team, and an experienced data firm to manage the project.

Who is this type of system good for?

Creating a customized platform that talks with your other sophisticated systems is usually best for organizations doing at least a couple hundred thousand in online donations per year and growing.

What is your organization using? Tell us below!

Looking for an experienced data team to assess your online donation process? Great! Contact a Campaign Now specialist today here or call (855) 329-4327 for a 30 minute complimentary assessment.

 

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