How To Accept Online Donations For Your Charity

Whether you're an established charity or starting a new one, we bet you’re eager to make the world a better place. An essential start is to get fundraising and collect donations to help your cause. To make a bigger impact, you’ll want to accept donations online. In this blog, we’ll show you how it’s done!

Why accept online donations?

While you can knock on doors or stand in shopping malls, taking charity donations online has many benefits. Firstly, donating online is usually the preferred method for many donors, and they are also more likely to donate a larger amount (vs loose change).

Secondly, they are more likely to donate regularly (especially if the process is easy).

Thirdly, online charity donations allow you to stay in contact with the person who has donated, thank them for their generosity and ask them to donate again.  

And finally, taking donations online saves you time, which also reduces your staffing costs, allowing you to put your cash toward more fundraising efforts. 

Now that you know the benefits, here are 5 steps to getting started (and what you need to look out for). 

1. Choose a payment processor for your charity.

In order to choose a payment processor that is right for you and your charity or non-profit, you need to be aware of what features you require. Are you needing detailed reporting and insights, extra tools for fundraising,  debit card and credit card processing, a secure transaction experience, a simple payment process for your donor?

It is also important to look out for a few things during your search for the perfect payment gateway. Some payment processing companies come with a high transaction fee or unflexible terms attached, so make sure you read the terms and conditions thoroughly before you sign up for anything. 

Finally, ensure the payment processing tool can integrate seamlessly into your existing website setup and plan. You might have got donors ready to take action on your website, but then they are taken to a third party website that they don’t recognise, and you lose them.

2. Increase revenue with recurring payments.

By offering a recurring donation option, you are opening up a whole new revenue channel. You may have seen our past blog post where we spoke about the benefits of offering monthly giving programs for your donors. One large donation can feel daunting, but offering a recurring gift as a payment option can seem more manageable for the donor. 

Recurring donations give you stability with guaranteed revenue coming in each month, rather than constantly looking for new one-off donations. Receiving small monthly/weekly amounts might not seem like much at first, but they quickly add up.

It’s also convenient for the donor to enter their credit card details, set them, and leave the payment to be taken as a direct debit from their bank account every month.

3. Give donors more customisation with personalised options.

When setting up your recurring payments, it's a good idea to give your donors more customisation by offering weekly, fortnightly or monthly options. Unfortunately, many payment processing services do not offer this customisation, so keep this in mind when you are searching for the right payment processor for you. 

Here at DonationHub, we’re all about customisation (it’s a big reason we got started in the first place). Not only do we allow donors to donate to multiple organisations at once, they can fully customise the payment amount and frequency. Not only that, we have very low fees.

4. Make your website compelling and show donors where their money is going.

To get donors excited, make sure your website is as compelling as possible. Ensure the content is engaging so people want to donate to your cause, and there is a clear call to action so people can easily find the donation form and begin the donation process. 

Try to put as few steps as possible in between landing on your site and making the donation. This means allowing them to create an account or sign up for the mailing list after they have donated.

Once they’ve reached the donation page, give them confidence by showing them where the money is going. E.g explain what that money is used for, how much it costs to achieve a goal (e.g $30 feeds the animals for a day) the percentage that goes to administration etc. People appreciate transparency.

5. Start accepting payment.

Now you’re set up, it’s time to start accepting payments! Share your charity on social media, email your database and tell everyone you can. The great thing about accepting donations online and setting up your payment processor is that you can only need to do it once!

Get set up with DonationHub.

If you want to skip the headaches and start accepting payments with low fees, high security and a seamless process (for both you and your donors), DonationHub can help. Simply click here to read more about how it works, and send us an enquiry to get started.