Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
Is Your Donation Page Leaking Donors? Here’s How to Fix It
88% of potential donors ABANDON donation forms mid-click! If you are driving traffic to your donation page only to watch donors disappear, you may have a conversion problem. But don’t worry - I’ll help you close the “conversion gap” and reimagine the donor experience.
In this episode, I’ll walk you through 4 strategic donation page formats, when to use each, and how to analyze your Google Analytics data to diagnose mobile drop-offs, funnel performance, and campaign effectiveness.
Whether you're sending paid traffic to a Giving Tuesday campaign or trying to capture a donor mid-blog post, these tips and tricks will help you match the format to the moment, reduce friction, and finally fix the page that's costing you the most.
Resources & Links
Check out iDonate’s blog, The 4 Types of Online Donation Experiences (and How to Use Them to Convert More Donors).
The Recurring Giving Workshop: A Working Session to Increase Online Donations - 9/24 @ 2 pm ET - RSVP HERE!
This show is brought to you by iDonate. Your donation page is leaking donors, and iDonate's new pop-up donation form is here to fix that. See it in action.
Let's Connect!
- Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!
- My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
- Want to book Dana as a speaker for your event? Click here!
Hey, hey, welcome back to Missions to Movements. I'm your host, dana Snyder, and today we are getting into something every nonprofit leader, digital marketer and fundraiser really anyone who's listening should be thinking about right now, and that is you don't have a traffic problem. Maybe you do that's a whole other sidebar but you do probably have a conversion problem. And shout out to Adam O'Brien Maybe you do that's a whole other sidebar, but you do probably have a conversion problem. And shout out to Adam O'Brien he is a former colleague team member over at iDonate for putting out this idea front and center in an incredibly smart blog post. It is literally called you Don't have a Traffic Problem, you have a Conversion Problem. I read it and I was like, okay, we have to talk about this on the show, because here's the deal. We spend so much time and budget trying to get people on our websites right. We're boost content, we send emails, we're paying for ads and then we lose the gift on the last click. So shout out to the iDonate team for this amazing post. You can read the full blog posts in the show notes.
Speaker 1:And when Adam wrote it, he called this the conversion gap, the CVR gap, and it's basically the space between someone feeling moved to give and actually doing it. So let me hit you with a stat about this 88% of people who click on a donation link don't complete their gift. Let that sink in for a second. And then, even worse, most of your site traffic is probably mobile. You can figure this out on Google Analytics. If you're not already looking at Google Analytics on a monthly basis, you definitely should be to see how much is on desktop versus mobile. But, knowing this, most mobile users convert at just 8%, and compare that to 11% on desktop. Now that might not sound like a huge gap in a difference between mobile and desktop, until you remember that about 60 to 70% of traffic is now mobile. So that's a lot of generous people, a lot of generous hearts bouncing around your website before they ever give, and that's not a dip, that is a canyon that I really want to express, and so I share those numbers. It's very beneficial for you to know your own numbers. So I definitely suggest go on to Google Analytics. It's totally free. Go into GA4. Look at your mobile versus desktop traffic. Look at your conversion rates on your forms. How many visitors do you have versus how many people are donating during that given period of time, your donation tools should hopefully be able to provide you with that conversion rate as well.
Speaker 1:So what's happening here? It's not your campaign messaging If it's getting people to your site, it's not your CRM. It's not because people don't care, it's a misalignment problem. You are leading people with emotion and purpose and heart and then they land on your page and it's like hitting a brick wall of required fields and awkward layouts and zero momentum. You've seen them right fields and awkward layouts and zero momentum. You've seen them right Forms that probably feel more like a tax return than a meaningful next step. Ew, right, the experience doesn't match the moment. The moment poof disappears. So how do we reimagine the donation experience? And this is really where the blog post comes to life. On flipping the narrative, it's where your donation page isn't where the transaction ends. It's where the belief becomes behavior, where emotion turns into generosity. It's the most fragile and powerful part of your donor journey. So if your page isn't removing friction, if it isn't matching the donor mindset, if it isn't feeling mobile first and effortless, the chances are you are losing more people than you know. So back up, right, you're like whoa, whoa, dana, slow down. How do I know that I have a conversion problem? If you know me, I love teaching and making things very practical, so you might be thinking this all sounds great, but I want to know my conversion rate.
Speaker 1:So quick start guide using Google Analytics for GA4. First things first. If you can ideally make sure your donation platform redirects to a unique thank you page after a completed transaction, why? Because in Google Analytics, that page now becomes your goal completion trigger. So, no matter what system you use, you need a trackable success page to tell Google Analytics. Okay, that's the first things first. You can rewind, replay that, but set up a thank you page that will showcase that a transaction, a donation, was made.
Speaker 1:Number two is you want to check a page path funnel. So in GA4, on the left-hand side when you log in, there's three options. I forget what all three are, but one is explore and if you click on that, it gives you an option to click on something called funnel exploration and you can create a funnel that starts you customize it to do this starts with your donation form page or any pages that are going to have an ask on it, and ends with your thank you page. This will give you a super clear. Look at how many people landed on that form page, how many actually finished the gift and where drop-offs happen. That percentage, that is the conversion rate. If it's under 10%, welcome to the club. That is probably most organizations. So now we want to fix it. And if it's above that, that's amazing. Snaps I'm getting some snaps on the microphone, but it's always better to make it better right?
Speaker 1:Number three if you can, within Google Analytics, also segment by device. This is where it gets a little spicy. Segment that funnel now by device type mobile versus desktop and you will probably see what Adam talks about in the blog Desktop doing better, mobile dragging behind. So if you find that mobile users are bouncing off like crazy, that is a big old red flag that your form is probably not optimized. Number four we want to compare traffic sources. So which emails, which social posts or campaigns are actually converting the best to receive that use UTM links when sending people to your donation page. So in GA4, you can look under traffic acquisition and you can filter by something called session source backslash medium and you can track which campaigns are driving conversions, not just clicks, because I don't know about you, but clicks are not helping to pay the bills you got, but the donations obviously will and are the ones that make the difference. Okay, so that is a little snapshot of how you can do some of the analytics research.
Speaker 1:So back to the blog post from iDonate because this part is gold talking about donation formats and we talked about kind of the problem. So what do we do about it? Not all donation pages are built the same, so what we have here is an outline now of four different donation formats and when to use each. So let's break them down. Number one is a single column page. Think, clean, focused, no distractions might be great for giving Tuesday sending ad traffic, which is normally a cold audience. High intent email sends typically converts at over 13%. It works beautifully on mobile because it's that single column page.
Speaker 1:Number two, a pop-up form. This one is called or I like to call it a magic moment catcher. Use this on blogs, campaign pages or anywhere where there's emotional momentum peaks. Pop-ups keep people on the page, they convert in the moment and it's also great for recurring gift upsells. So, as an idea for you to think about visually here, let's just say that you are directing people to a blog post. That normally just tells a story, but there's been no ask there in the past. What if most pop-ups have some sort of timer, like after 10 seconds, show this pop-up, or one third down the page? You have your own parameters on your website tools of what you can use. I use Flowdesk for mine and so I know that's a couple of them. So let's just say, for instance, at the 10 second mark roughly, or at one third down the page, I'm going to be hitting a key impact, key emotional moment where it would be perfect for that emotional moment, peak, that magic moment for a pop-up to appear where somebody feels engaged to give. So that's a pop-up form.
Speaker 1:Number three is an embedded form. I like these pretty much all the time. These are great for any partner, microsites that wanted to share the ability for people to give to your organization. Storytelling campaigns you have impact pages, your homepage probably. It's seamless, it's scroll friendly and it really lets giving live inside the story that you're telling. So it fits, it doesn't feel segmented. And then four is an SDK driven form. This is for the very tech-forward organizations out there where you can have full control, personalized flows, built-in analytics Really great for global chapters, if that's you.
Speaker 1:So what I like about iDonate's blog is really connecting the format to the campaign type. So, for example, adam List Giving Tuesday single column, an emotional blog post that could be a pop-up. Or maybe it's embed An emergency match pop-up, a recurring donor upsell pop-up, partner microsite embedded. So every giving moment deserves the right format because it's about being intentional. And why does this matter now? Now, I'm sharing this because I am gearing up for the next round of my monthly giving mastermind and this idea it's foundational.
Speaker 1:This is something that we talk about a lot is the overall encompassing experience. It's not just building a program. Whether you're just launching a new giving program or you're optimizing for year end, right, yes, it's great to have more traffic, but definitely make sure you're making the most of people already raising their hand. So, fix the page, fix the problem, test it. Fix the page, fix the problem, test it.
Speaker 1:Your next big leap in revenue probably isn't about doubling your ad budget. Maybe it is. Maybe you have great traffic, maybe you have great conversion rates. After you check all this, fantastic Love that. Then, yes, double your ad budget. Really, it's about doubling down on knowing and owning your conversion strategy. Know your numbers, optimize the experience and match the moment. Huge thanks again, adam, as the author of the blog post and I donate, for putting this all into words. That made my marketer heart so happy. You can go check out the full blog post. You don't have a traffic problem, you have a conversion problem and I will drop the link in the show notes. So all right, rock stars, go turn those clicks into donors and I will see you next week.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review. Wherever you're listening, your feedback helps us reach more changemakers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode, and until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
