The Importance of Including Impact Metrics on Your Online Giving Page

If you are a nonprofit, you live the daily challenge of getting the donors – who you worked so hard to get in the first place – to give again. Studies tell us 90% of first-time donors are being lost by nonprofits on an annual basis. It’s no wonder it’s a never-ending battle of retaining existing donors (and finding new ones to make up for the ones lost).

Do you ever wonder, “Why don’t donors give again?”

Why Donors Don’t Give Again

The number one reason people don’t donate again is that they stop thinking they (or their gift) matter to your organization.

While it might be frustrating to hear this, there is a bright side! If donors aren’t giving again it’s simply because they don’t know how their gift is being put to use, and you have the power to change that!

Why Impact Metrics Can Help Bring Donors Back

What do I mean by impact metrics? Impact metrics are a way of associating various dollar amounts with their corresponding impact on your organization (what it can buy, how many people it can help).

Supporters and donors want to know their contributions are making a difference. Yet only 4% of nonprofit websites explain how they use donation dollars.

You can overcome that by affirming the value of every gift. Include impact metrics on your online giving page, in emails, and on your website so that your donors know how their gifts will be used.

3 Ways To Include Impact Metrics On Your Online Giving Page

1) Describe The Impact Each Donation Amount Can Make
Establish suggested donation amounts and show what each amount can do. For example:

• $20 will provide a coat to a New Yorker in need
• $100 will feed 10 shelter dogs for 10 day
• $150 will provide a mammogram for a woman with a high risk for breast cancer

2) Clarify How The Money Raised Will Be Used
Provide the amount you need to meet to accomplish a goal. For example:

• $5,000 to provide warm meals to the homeless on Thanksgiving
• $25,000 to support 25% more people in the New Year
• $100,000 to build a new school in Africa
• $250,000 to fund a 2019 youth program

3) Show How Donating the Equivalent of a Daily Expense Will Make a Difference
You can also compare donors’ daily expenses to a donation amount. For example:

• “Instead of spending $5 on a food delivery fee or a Pumpkin Spice Latte, donate that same $5 today to provide 20 warm meals for a child in Uganda”.

Share The Impact Of Donations Throughout Your Campaign

In addition to including your impact metrics on your online giving page and website, continue showing donors the effect of their contribution in your campaign communications and updates. Provide campaign updates on how much you’ve raised, how close you are to the goal, and how the money is/will be used. Make donors a part of your story; a part of your success. Leave no doubt in the donor’s mind that they matter — that their gift matters.

Examples Of Metrics To Share Throughout Your Campaign:

• Total amount raised (to date, for the year, for the campaign)
• How the money has been used, the number of people who were helped
• Percentage of your capital campaign reached
• Number of items purchased or created (meals, gallons of water, coats)

As always, be sure to include compelling storytelling to get donors engaged with your organization and inspire them to give. The combination of compelling storytelling and impact metrics will make your donors feel they and their gifts are important and will want to give to your organization again…and again.

Our goal at GiveSmart is to help nonprofit organizations create and manage successful digital fundraising campaigns, raise more money and retain donors longer. Request a free demo with one of our fundraising experts to learn, step by step, how GiveSmart can simply help set up your campaigns while transforming your results.