I’ve made donations to a number of top UK charities. They use these techniques to encourage donations:
- Promote regular giving
- Amount shopping lists and user choice
- Ease of use
- Images of people
- Social proof, trust seals, where your money goes
- Emotional reinforcement
- Use donations as part of a multi-channel relationship
I’ll now elaborate a little on the processes of Macmillan, Cancer Research UK and charity:water
Macmillan’s single donation process
The Macmillan homepage focuses on people and their stories – each of its sections is lead by a photographed person sharing their story.
The donation ask comes either in the rotating carousel or through the site-wide donation button at the top right of each page.
This provides a clear, route to making a donation for those who want to, but the site as a whole leads with support.
The donate page:
- Focuses on people and feelings.
- Directly addresses the visitor as essential, and asks how much they’d like to give.
This appeal directly builds on the core Macmillan brand message “so no one has to face cancer alone” - Empowers the user with choice – of donation type and amount.
- Shows, for each of the different donation amounts, how many people are giving the different options. This provides social proof.
- Prioritises regular giving over single donations, because regular giving is more useful to charities.
Two ideas for how this page might be made even more effective:
- Reduce the number of options at the top of the page – they may distract the user and reduce their propensity to give.
- Change some of the accompanying images so that they show people. The image that accompanies the £25 donation features a nurse and a patient or family member smiling at each other. I suspect that this is more compelling than the £50 level which shows a plate of pasta.
Here’s what you see if you choose to make a single donation page:
- From the user’s perspective, the entire process happens on the Macmillan website, and with the Macmillan brand.
- Emotional reinforcement through the form.
- Trust seals increase credibility
- Clear phone number to contact in case of difficulty
- People can see how far through the process they are.
After the 3d secure step, which I won’t show here, you’re taken to the thank you page:
The thank-you page:
- calls you out by name and praises you and your impact.
- Gives additional actions – sharing through different channels, or campaigning.
- Isn’t the end of the journey – the user also receives a thank-you email:
The thank-you email:
- Gives users a chance to find out more about their donation – which is working to build support or implicitly to upsell.
- Outlines Macmillan’s offer of support – building a reciprocal relationship.
- Begins to build a multi-channel digital relationship with the donor.
Cancer Research UK’s single donation process
The Cancer Research UK homepage:
- Use lots of social proof.
- Features a clear box for people who have already decided to donate before coming to the site.
- Incorporates the site-wide donate button.
The Cancer Research UK donate page:
- Uses human pictures
- Is focused and calm, despite including a range of options. Clearly the different options have been prioritised.
- Prioritises regular giving.
The single donation form:
- Subtle attempted upsell to regular donation
- Empowers visitor with choice about where their money goes – but a simple choice.
- Gift aid option explained visually.
- Visitor empowered to choose the easiest payment options that suits them. I chose to pay with paypal.
After taking payment, I then had the opportunity to choose my communications preferences:
I was then taken to the thank-you page:
As with Macmillan, the email thank-you message was used to drive multi-channel digital engagement:
The email shows the difference that your donation makes, but also has secondary actions: taking an exciting quiz on improving lifestlye; an opportunity to get support or to connect; and an invitation to deepen engagement with research.
charity:water’s single donation process
The donate page:
- Uses powerful visuals, communicating the impact of donations.
- Reassures you about where your money goes.
- Is clean and focused.
- Makes paying incredibly easy
Marvel at the ease of use of the Stripe popup. Why aren’t more charities following the lead of ecommerce and using Stripe?
The payment form only asks for the bare minimum it needs to take your payment
The thank-you page:
- is focused, and shows the impact of your donation.
- upsells to a bigger supporting action – using the principle of consistency.
The email thank-you leads with an image, and articulates the impact of the cause.
I’d be interested to see this exercise carried out on mobile. How well do the top charities compare?