29. Ways to Collect Donations Online - Donation Tools and When to Use Them

Over the past few months, I've been talking a lot with my local nonprofit community, and I’ve noticed some of them are thriving in this new era of online marketing, or forced online marketing, I should say. Others, though, are having a hard time adjusting to this new technology need. 

For those of you who are struggling, who are maybe at the very beginning of accepting online donations, or for those of you who are thinking about shifting and changing the way you accept donations online, this post is for you. 

We’ll examine different ways you can collect donations online, whether through your website or through another platform. Hopefully one of the options we cover will seem extremely doable, and you can put it into action and start collecting donations online right away!

Ways to Collect Donations Online

1. Email Form
2. CRM Iframe
3. PayPal Button
4. WP Give Plugin
5. Social Networks 
6. CRM/All-in-one Donation Marketing Solution
7. Stripe Donation Form

Pros & Cons: On Your Website vs. Not on Your Website

Collecting Donations on Your Website  

There are pros and cons to collecting through your website, and there are also some pros and cons to collecting donations elsewhere.

Pros

1. When you collect donations on your website, you're driving people back to your marketing home, which gives you more opportunities and flexibility to share information about your organization. 
2. You own your website space, so you have the ability to adjust it the way you need to on the fly without having to answer to anyone else or worry about anything changing without you knowing.
3. Collecting donations through your website offers the freedom to implement something more robust than what third-party platforms might provide. This can present a challenge, though, that I’ll address when we get to the cons. Which is… now….

Cons 

1. If you’re trying to do something more robust through your website, the implementation process is not always super streamlined. You may have to do a little research and troubleshooting to get things set up the way you want them. 
2. Unless you have thousands of visitors coming to your website each month (or day, if you’re killin’ it), you don't have a huge community built up waiting to give donations. 

Collecting Donations Outside of Your Website  

Pros

1. Asking for and collecting donations in an external location, say on social media or on a website that specifically caters to generating donations for nonprofits, gives you an opportunity to reach a bigger audience because they’re already there. 
2. Those people are already familiar with the interface, which eliminates that barrier of entry
3. If there are lots of causes asking for donations on that platform, you could get new donors you've never met before because your cause aligns with their values. 

Cons 

1. Basically the opposite of everything we listed in the Pros list for using your website…

For a fully-formatted article version of this podcast, head over to our website: https://mayecreate.com/blog/ways-to-collect-donations-online-donation-tools-and-when-to-use-what/