How we utilise donation platforms to maximise your charity fundraising

Introduction

In today’s digital age, having an efficient online donation system is crucial for charities aiming to maximise their fundraising efforts.

Online donations have seen a significant increase, with many donors opting for the convenience and security of digital transactions. For charities, leveraging the right tools can make a substantial difference in both donor experience and the amount of funds raised.

At Studio Republic, we frequently address this need for online donations for our charity clients. We work to enhance digital fundraising to exceed goals and empower more charities to increase their impact.

Let’s look at how we do this.

WordPress donation plugins explained

One of the key ways we help charities secure more online donations is by using WordPress donation plugins. WordPress (our CMS platform of choice) provides ample support and resources through its extensive community of developers and users.

Regardless of the donation platform you choose for your charity, we can tailor solutions to meet your specific needs, often using well-established plugins from the WordPress ecosystem.

These plugins can offer a seamless donation process, enhancing donor experience and encouraging more contributions. An intuitive and straightforward donation form can significantly enhance this experience by reducing friction and make it easier for users to donate. Having secure payment gateways within these forms is essential for protecting donor information and ensuring that the donation process is both safe and compliant with industry standards.

While there are many donation platforms available for charities — GiveWP, Donorbox, JustGiving, Charitable, and Raisely, to name a few — we at Studio Republic highly recommend FundraiseUp. Here’s why:

• AI-powered donation suggestions: FundraiseUp uses artificial intelligence to provide personalised donation suggestions, increasing the likelihood of higher contributions.
• Customisable donation forms: Charities can tailor their donation forms to match their branding and meet their specific needs.
• Recurring donations: FundraiseUp simplifies the process of setting up recurring donations, ensuring a steady stream of funds.
• Mobile optimisation: The donation forms are designed to be mobile-friendly, catering to donors who prefer to give on-the-go.

Integrating donations with CRMs

Many of our charity clients use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system – a software tool that helps organisations manage and analyse interactions with their donors, supporters, and stakeholders. For charities in particular, CRMs are particularly valuable because they centralise all donor information, track engagement, and streamline communication efforts. By using a CRM, charities can build stronger relationships with their supporters, personalise their outreach, and optimise their fundraising strategies.

Integrating FundraiseUp (or any other donation plugin) with a CRM allows for automatic syncing of donor data and transactions, ensuring that all records are up-to-date without manual data entry, ultimately saving time. It also offers other benefits such as gaining deeper insights into donor behaviour, tailoring communications, and managing campaigns with greater precision. 

FundraiseUp offers direct integration with several CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT. Additionally, by utilising tools like Zapier, FundraiseUp can be connected with virtually any other external system, providing complete flexibility and ensuring seamless data flow across whichever platforms our clients use.

This is exactly what we did for Alcohol Change UK – we faced the challenge of integrating FundraiseUp with their Access Charity CRM (formerly known as ThankQ). Since a direct integration was not available, we developed a custom solution. We used Zapier to capture donations as they were made and then seamlessly transferred the relevant data to Access Charity CRM via API requests.

“We recently worked with Studio Republic to Integrate Fundraise Up into our website and with our CRM.  Their knowledge and insight on this project was fantastic, the set up and implementation ran really smoothly and now we have end to end integration which has not only increased our website donations but allowed us to improve supporter journeys for our donors.”

Danielle Houliston
Executive Director of Income and Engagement, Alcohol Change