Getting more donations from your foundation's website

A foundation's website has a harder job than a shop's. A shop asks someone to buy something they already want. You are asking someone to give away money and receive nothing, on the strength of what your page tells them.

That makes the page unusually important, and it makes most of the usual advice about buttons and colours beside the point.

Give before you ask

The mistake almost every small foundation makes is opening with the request. Visitors arriving from a poster, a race or a friend's post do not yet know who you are, and the donate button meets them before the reason does.

Lead with the specific thing you do. Not "we support research" but the actual activity, in a sentence someone could repeat to a colleague. The ask comes after, and it converts better because it now means something.

Be concrete about where the money goes

"Your donation makes a difference" is the weakest sentence on any charity website, because it is true of every charity.

Replace it with arithmetic the reader can check. What does one contribution actually buy — an hour, a place, a piece of equipment, a share of a study? If you genuinely cannot break it down, say what proportion goes to the cause and who decides. Specificity is the entire product here.

Never invent these numbers. A figure you cannot stand behind is worse than no figure, and donors are exactly the audience who will ask.

Make the amount easy and the form short

Three suggested amounts with one preselected removes the hardest decision. Include a free field for people who want to give something else, and make one of the options small enough that a first-time donor feels welcome rather than filtered out.

Then cut the form. A name, an email and the amount. Address only if you post something. Every extra field on a donation form costs you donations — the motivation is emotional and it does not survive a second page.

Say what happens next

Donors need two things the moment they give: confirmation that it worked, and the sense that they are now connected to something.

Say plainly what arrives — a receipt, a thank-you, a newsletter they can leave whenever they want. And do not let the newsletter box be ticked in advance; it has to be an active choice, separate from the donation.

Measure the one number that matters

Not visits. Not clicks on the donate button. Completed donations, counted monthly, next to what you changed.

A small foundation will never have enough traffic to test properly, and it does not need to. If you move the reason above the request and the monthly total moves, that is your answer.

Related: the same removal-first thinking applies to getting enquiries from any site, and if your page asks for personal details, collect only what you need.

Frequently asked

Should the newsletter box be ticked by default on a donation form?

No. A newsletter is a separate purpose from a donation and needs its own active, unticked consent. Bundling them is both the most common mistake on charity forms and the one most likely to be complained about.

How many suggested donation amounts should I show?

Three, with one preselected, plus a free field. More than three reintroduces the decision you were trying to remove, and making the lowest option genuinely small matters more than where the highest one sits.