We had a situation arise recently with one of our clients. In an unrelated email exchange they mentioned that their donation form “didn’t work anymore”. When I read something like that I immediately check it out. The client was right, the form didn’t work because the PayPal account connected to that form was deactivated. A former employee set up the PayPal account and then moved on eventually deactivating the account.

What I found next really surprised me. The form had collected 22 online donations in 2015.  In 2016, there were 0 online donations. That made me wonder what happened? No one was marketing the donation form to donors!!

I’m convinced that people don’t just give. You have to ASK them to give. You have to send them a link to the form and ask them to fill it out! Just because you have a donation form does not mean you will have donations. You HAVE to market your donation form.

How do you do this? Here are a few ideas:

• Post a link to the donation form in your social media posts.
• Email the link to your past and potential donors.
• Be creative and grab attention via social and traditional marketing. Use compelling imagery to tell the story of why they should donate.
• Create a ‘pull at your heartstrings’ video and post that link to the donation page.

Above all, keep it simple! Ask for the donation!!

(Oh, and test out that donation form…make sure the process and system works)