Charity Donation Pages: 8 Places Supporters Who Meant to Give Drop Off

The leak: a supporter opens your page on a phone, in the gap between other things, and something gets in the way — text too small to read without zooming, a form field that pushes the keyboard over the Submit button, a page that takes long enough to load that they put the phone down.

Check this on your own page: open it on your own phone, on mobile data rather than office wifi, and complete a real donation. Not a test in a desktop browser window resized to look like a phone. An actual phone, actually paying.

Where we sit: we give you pre-made templates and unlimited customisable donation pages, so you can launch a page in minutes rather than building one from scratch each time.

The leak: every field is a small reason to stop. Title, full postal address, phone number, how they heard about you. Each one is defensible on its own and they add up to a form that feels like an application.

Ask yourself what you will actually do with each field. If the answer is that it goes into a report nobody reads, it is costing you gifts. Check this on your own page: count the fields, then mark each one as required for the payment, required by law, or wanted by your team. The third category is where to cut.

Where we sit: you can embed donation and appeals forms directly on your own website and set them up to ask for what you need rather than a fixed template.

The leak: amount options do more work than they look like they do. Set them too high and a supporter who would have given feels their gift is not worth making. Set them too low and you leave money on the table from people who would have given more. The other common version of this leak is having no guidance at all, which quietly asks every supporter to decide what your work is worth. Many will decide not to decide.

Check this on your own page: look at your actual gift data from the last twelve months. Do your suggested amounts sit anywhere near what people really give?

Where we sit: donation pages can show one-time donations or regular giving options, and you can set the page up differently for different appeals rather than running one page for everything.

The leak: somebody who pays for everything with Apple Pay reaches a form that wants a card number typed in by hand. They do not go and find their wallet. They close the tab and mean to come back. This one is invisible in your reporting, because an abandoned payment leaves no record of what the person was trying to use.

Check this on your own page: list the payment methods you accept. Then ask three people in your own life how they paid for the last thing they bought online.

Where we sit: we accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Afterpay and direct debit. Our payment processing covers the methods people are already using rather than only cards.

The leak: a monthly gift is worth more over time than a single one, but on many donation pages regular giving is a small radio button below the amounts, or a separate page entirely, or missing. If somebody has to go looking for the option, it is not an option.

Check this on your own page: can a supporter switch a one-off gift to monthly without leaving the page or starting again? If you have a separate regular giving page, check how many people reach it from the main donation page.

Where we sit: supporters can select regular giving directly in the donation form, and you can have it land on the regular giving option of your choice. We then automate the ongoing payments rather than leaving your team to manage them. Through the Supporter portal, customers can also self-manage their regular giving and update payment methods.

The leak: the receipt is the first thing a donor receives from you after giving, and often the only thing for weeks. A generic payment confirmation from a gateway, or a receipt that turns up three days later because somebody sends them in a weekly batch, tells a new donor what kind of charity they have just supported. It also matters administratively, because a donor who cannot find a receipt at tax time will ask your team for one.

Check this on your own page: make a real donation to yourself and read the receipt as a first-time donor would. How fast did it arrive, does it carry your details, and does it say what the gift was for?

Where we sit: every donation through our pages gets an automatic, instant receipt stored in the CRM. You can customise it to include your details and the specific project, and set separate receipts for one-off and recurring donors. You can also activate automated email journeys to send a branded thank-you email alongside the receipt.

The leak: the money arrives, but the donor does not become a supporter record. Their gift sits in a payment gateway export, and the person is reconstructed later by somebody matching names to amounts in a spreadsheet.

This is the leak with the longest tail. It does not cost you that gift. It costs you the second one, because you cannot thank properly, segment or follow up somebody who only exists as a line in a transaction report.

Check this on your own page: make a test donation, then see how long it takes to answer a simple question about that donor from your database rather than your bank feed.

Where we sit: we create a supporter profile from each donation, so the gift and the giver arrive together in your charity CRM with the rest of their history.

The leak: you run four appeals a year through one donation page and at the end you have a total. You know what you raised. You do not know which appeal, which channel or which message brought people in, so next year you guess again.

Check this on your own page: try to answer one question from your current reporting. How did this year’s EOFY appeal compare with last year’s, on the same basis?

Where we sit: you can create time-based appeals and set up projects so you can compare specific fundraising appeals year on year, with dashboard and reporting tools to monitor campaigns and download the results. Appeals can also carry a real-time campaign thermometer, with embeddable widgets if you want it on your own site.

It is the page where a supporter completes a gift: chooses an amount, decides whether it is one-off or regular, enters their details and pays. It usually sits on your website and is often tied to a specific appeal rather than being one generic page. It is not the same as the appeal that brought somebody there. The appeal does the persuading; the donation page only has to avoid getting in the way.

Often for reasons unrelated to whether they wanted to give. The page does not work properly on the phone they are holding, it asks for information they did not expect to provide, the suggested amounts do not fit, their usual payment method is missing, or regular giving is buried. Someone who reached your donation page has already done the hard part of getting there, which is what makes these losses expensive. Most are fixable and most you can check yourself.

As few as the payment and the law require. Every additional field is a small reason to stop, and fields like title, full postal address or how someone heard about you are each defensible on their own while adding up to something that feels like an application. Go through your form and mark each field as required for the payment, required by law, or wanted by your team. The third group is where to cut.

The ones your supporters already use, which now goes well beyond cards. Somebody who pays for everything with Apple Pay and reaches a form wanting a hand-typed card number will often close the tab. This loss is invisible in reporting, because an abandoned payment leaves no record of what the person was trying to use. We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Afterpay and direct debit.

Yes. If a supporter has to go looking for the monthly option, or move to a separate page and start again, it is not really an option. A monthly gift is worth more over time than a single one, so it should sit inside the main form rather than below it or beside it. In our platform supporters can select regular giving directly in the donation form, and the ongoing payments are automated.

Immediately. The receipt is the first thing a donor receives from you after giving, and often the only thing for weeks, so a generic gateway confirmation or a receipt batched out days later shapes their impression of your charity. It also saves your team work, because a donor who cannot find a receipt at tax time will ask. Our pages send an automatic, instant receipt that you can customise and that is stored in the CRM.

Because this leak costs you the second gift rather than the first. If the money arrives but the donor only exists as a line in a payment gateway export, you cannot thank them properly, segment them or follow up, and somebody ends up rebuilding the person later by matching names to amounts. In our platform a supporter profile is created from each donation, so the gift and the giver arrive together with the rest of their history.

It depends on whether your charity has deductible gift recipient status, so confirm your own position rather than assuming. What matters on the donation page is the distinction between a gift and a purchase. A donation is a gift; a raffle ticket or an event ticket is not, because the buyer receives something in return. If your donation page also sells anything, check the two are not receipted the same way. Confirm your treatment with your accountant or the ATO.