 Hello and welcome, thrilled to have you all back with us today for another episode of the nonprofit show, and I'm thrilled to have with us Laura Ingalls joining us. Again, you've been with us multiple times I want to say since March of 2020. Laura is the co owner and CEO of a Bayhaw Solutions and she's here to talk to us about five ways that nonprofits block online giving. Before we dive deep into this conversation with you Laura because I'm really excited to learn more from you. We of course want to remind our viewers and our listeners, who we are in case we haven't met yet. Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy so great to have you on, and I'm always so honored to serve alongside you as your co host, I'm Jarrett ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group, and we continue to broadcast all of our shows and miss them again over 600 I think today is 612 but who's counting on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo and if you're a podcast listener, you can queue us up there too so go ahead and listen to the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast. We are honored to have the continued support from our amazing presenting sponsors. I invite you to check them out but in about 28 and a half minutes would be best, and we want to give a shout out to blue meringue American nonprofit Academy, fundraising Academy at National University, nonprofit nerd, your part time controller staffing boutique and nonprofit thought leader. Yes, we are counting our episodes because it's been a phenomenal milestone. I mean before we went live Laura did say congratulations you guys have really like found the secret sauce and what's working so coming from a former CNN employee Laura that is just like huge kudos to us so thank you. And of course we want to say thank you to our sponsors that keep us going and growing with our guests like yourself. So we have Brianna your, your business partner on gosh it's been probably three weeks. We talked about mail how direct mail really you know you can increase your return on investment there, but Laura Ingalls co owner and CEO at a bay hot welcome back to talk to us about how we might be blocking our online donors. I want to thank you for having me, you might seem really counterintuitive, even ironic to be bringing on someone who is a male specialist, you know, all these beauties that are now starting to go out for phone numbers. Yes. But what you might not know is that I used to run a national nonprofits digital team as well. And digital and mail should be best friends they should go hand in hand to increase your response rates. Yeah. I love that you said that because I, I think we were chatting about this in the green room. And that is, I think there's a sense that if you do one you got to ditch the other and instead of blending them and so we're really excited to have you talk to us about that. And one of the first things you talked about is that hiding the donate button on the homepage. What, what is that. You know, I, I mentioned ironic because I want to harken back to the oldies but goodies a lot is more set isn't it ironic. Nonprofits would hide the donate button on their homepage, but it happens. You know those donate buttons on your homepage need to be big bold and above the fold. And here's what I mean by that. I shouldn't have to hunt around you know I shouldn't have to put on my, my other glasses. To try to find that donate button on your website. Make it big. I want to see it large. Best practice websites like save the children and care. You do not have to hunt around for those websites, you do not have to scroll down to find those websites. It should be bold it should be red, orange, hot pink. It should not be, you know, it should not be harmonious and color with the rest of your branding. Too many people are letting their branding agencies sell them a bell of goods, it needs to be red or as you'll see that on those sites. And again, you shouldn't have to scroll down to that main donation page area or that main homepage slider on your website to find the donate button. Make it easy to find. I love that big bold and above the fold. And you will see, you will see tons of I was on our website yesterday where you cannot find that website that donate button because it's actually white on a light background. Oh no. I know I had to put on my special, my special all lady glasses for that. Question. So I'm, you know, in vernacular, we're saying things like investment contribute transformational. What should that donate button say, should it say donate should it say contribute should it say invest like what is the word we want to. You want to use the word that your donors use. Donors know what donate means and donors know what give now means. Okay, everything else is just fancy. And I'm a word Smith by I mean that's what I do I write donation letters, emails and landing pages to make sure that you have that seamless experience across all those things. Make it simple, keep it simple, and make it big. And is there a preference to left hand side or the right hand side of the screen. You know, there is a thing called the serial position effect in which people remember in a series of things they remember the first thing, and they remember the last thing they have and the things in the middle just don't really registered to them. So let me ask you Julia, where do you look on a website for the donate button. I think it should be upper right, upper right is where most people are looking. And I also want to point out some people think that they can be clever and put a little heart next to their black or white donate button. No one is seeing that you need to make go look at care go look at save the children, they're crushing that because they want people to be able to invest, give to their emissions. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so we started off with a barn burner for number one. I'm like super excited you sold me on that. Now, number two, you talk about this and I need some help because I don't think I know where we're going website header and footer navigation on donate page. So ideally, you're going to make one click from your homepage to get to your donate page that one click. Don't make me make multiple clicks. And when I get there, do not give me opportunities to leave your page. I'm a very distracted person. I have on my website, a an example of a nonprofit that gives 25 separate links on their page. They've got their header. They've got the footer of their website, and then they actually have side navigation that is tempting me to click off. Take my money. Yeah, simplicity. That's what I'm hearing like make it as simple as possible because we really don't want to lose that donor or distract them with another shiny shiny object off to the side. Wow. I've made it make my transaction you know what we you know what we haven't talked about yet is that of the traffic that comes to your website only 17% convert and make a gift. 17% so you are repelling 83% that's the average donation page, we can do better. And my mind just, it's blown 17% is the conversion rate so we're losing over 80% of the visitors. Now is that to our website Laura or to our donate page. That's to your main donate page. Okay, that's the latest information from M&R benchmarks. Yeah, so you know what I'm talking about print versus online. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about improving conversion rates on our donate pages. Far too many of the small and medium nonprofits I talked to are not even tracking that that data. And it's really easy to calculate right. Okay, let's let's drill down on that. How often should be we be tracking it like quarterly monthly, so that we can understand what's going on like that's my first question. I would, I would make sure that I optimize my donate page before every major campaign. I would look at the data from the last campaign is there anything that we can learn. And what can I do to update it to simplify it. There's a client right now that is testing. If they offer fewer options on the website page in terms of the amounts. Do people give more do that testing in the early part of the year. So by the time you get to the end of the year when most of your donations are coming in, you've got it mastered. In general, do you think our donate forms have too many options because, you know, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like so many of us want to give you know the whole buffet to the donor so that we don't lose them so they don't become that 80 plus percent. But I'm thinking maybe, maybe that's wrong. You know, if you are consistently asking people to give, thanking them for their donation and reporting impact back to them, you have opportunities to educate them about other ways to give. You do not need to have your donate page do that heavy lifting. And I think a lot of nonprofits who are not being consistent. They want that donate page to be the free for all of all the options. But what we know is, you know, in 2004, Barry Schwartz wrote a book called the paradox of choice. And while it may seem that giving people many options is the right thing to do. What his research found is that when you give people many options, they actually get paralysis, and they can't make a decision, and they're going to bounce off your page. I'm trying to think of what are what is the least amount of things I can ask people to do in order to complete the donation. Then I can serve them up information about other ways that they could give in the future to try to retain them. So I would say narrow those traces down. If you go to those best practice websites I mentioned, you'll see they really only ask people for three things. Wow. You are such a brilliant mind. And I love how. So talk to us, because maybe I will love it but talk to us about how the mail campaign and the donor online platform as you said like they should be best friends and so are you seeing with your mail campaigns, like a landing page that is super simplified. Is that what you recommend. I don't think you want to have a lot of folks. There are some payment processors that people put on their websites, and it's just basically a box that says give us money. They don't have the option to have the same photo that appeared on your design on your landing page, you should make that emotional connection. You made it a nail, you made it an email. That photo should also appear on your website or on your donate page so people know it's the same thing. You should tell a little emotional story, very, very short. And there's some other information you should provide, but you shouldn't give people a million choices. It shouldn't be daff and stocks and crypto and in memory of an in tribute of and I want to give to these 16 funds, especially not at the end of the year. You might add one special thing in for a particular campaign that you have. For example, if you've been around 55 years that you might have your $55 campaign. But do not provide 100 million choices for me to have to wait through to get my money, get my money then educate me about other ways that I might give. And that's the thing I've learned from you again like not not just big bold and above the fold but the other one is ask think report repeat and you just make that cadence seems so simple Laura and you know of course we know that but we try I feel to just make it so complex. Donate page should not be a catch all for the year. Your donate page at the end of the year in particular should be as slim as it needs to be to remind people why they love giving to you and to collect the donation. Yeah, let your other communications do that heavy lift, not your donate page. I love it. Now one of the magical things that I can't wait to have you share with us is the concept of the descending gift strings. That sounds pretty sexy, but it's pretty simple. It's either top to bottom, or left to right, you see folks start with the largest gift amount. And Julia, you said that's really, that's something that's really common in retail tell us. Yeah, yeah, pricing. Yeah, you know in terms of pricing because I you know it makes the cheaper handbag bag look more desirable when you talk chart out with the one that's super expensive. It has the opposite effect. It makes you feel like a cheapskate. First you get sticker shot you're like wow they're asking me for $5,000. I'm an individual donor. Well that's way more than I did last time. And then you go through these other gift amounts and finally get down to what you gave last time, and you feel like a cheapskate, and those negative feelings are not going to make me continue to give you my credit card information and make a transaction. Instead, conventional wisdom says use an ascending gift string to say yeah that's my gift amount that I, I gave last time that makes me feel real comfortable. I know I can't give this amount, but maybe I'll land somewhere in the middle because it's been a really great year. You know, and I love the emotional thing that they're saying about the women's lives that I'm going to change about the pets that I'm going to help save. I can do a little better this year, so that ascending gift amount has positive emotions while a descending one has negative. That is fascinating to me and now I'm thinking you know when I fill out a form either in person or online, you certainly do want to feel like a champion. Yeah, it seems like they use the descending. It almost seems like well what is my gift going to even do. Yeah, you'd like you've, you've narrowed the impact versus like wow I just you know going the other direction. Yeah, right now you know everyone's budget is feeling the effects of inflation. Yeah, you're better off to give people a positive emotion about the changes that they're making and allow them to better deal it a little bit and say, yeah I can give a little more this year because the need is so great. Now one of the things we talked about in the green room green room chatter is how some organization organizations are starting to adopt artificial intelligence right. And so can we and should we do the same ascending so if we're using AI and our donor forms should we then have that ascending as opposed to descending in that form. Are you saying that's too much for the online. No, I think. Well, number one, congratulations to digital for catching up to mail, you know, you can always have custom gift amounts on your reply slip. So I love that AI is now taking the data it has crunching it and making it work for nonprofits, as opposed to those static gift amounts. But now I think the same emotional journey that we take our, our donors on is the same. They need to not have sticker shock off the first off the top, and then come down to the thing that's cheaper. They need to feel good about their donation and say, yeah I can do a little better this time. I love that. I love it. And again, when you're talking about this before we go on to our next question with you, you're saying really no more than three levels. No, I'm saying, I'm saying that you should, you should not be providing so many options, their donation form. No, I think the most nonprofits offer somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six options with one of those being we're talking about gift strings. One of those being other. But I have seen, there is a nonprofit whose example is on my website, anonymized of course, that offers people 10 different gift amounts, counting down from $5,000. 10 is too many amounts for me to consider. I can consider four or five gift amounts plus another. It makes me think of the cheese factory. Right, we go eat at the cheese factory or any, any other restaurant that just has a horrible amount of menu options and it's like, where do I start. You know, absolutely. And, you know, the best gift to raise the best gift to raise actually tie those amounts to real impact in your, your organization. You know, you know, the cost of a door is going to help a child study, or is going to give a hard working parent privacy for a habitat group, for example, or the cost of a meal. The best buttons allow you to have that kind of conversation with your donor and not just offer, you know, not just offer pricing like a retail site. Right. I love it. Now one of the last things that you talked about is failure to provide decision stage content. Well, we don't want to fail so you got to tell us what this means. That's some fancy marketing talk isn't it. This is really good. I need to know this. So are you all, are you all familiar with the marketing funnel. Yes. Yeah, yeah, this guy here. Yeah, this guy here. Yeah, at the top is awareness, and there's consideration, then there's decision content. And then the second page is, you want people to make a decision on a page where this has already occurred consideration has already occurred, right, but too many nonprofits put put homework on their donate pages. I've got a video that I'm supposed to watch. I've got to read frequently asked questions. I've got to read the history of their organization. No, no, no, you may that's awareness content. That's consideration content. Yeah, give me content that allows me to complete my transaction. So, what kind of content is that. Well, people have questions right before they're going to make a they have objections, and they have questions right before they're going to make a decision. Some of those questions are, is this a real nonprofit. Where is my money going to go. Is this secure, this looks a little hinky, because sometimes nonprofits, maybe this is hinky security. Content, do you think you could put on a donate page that would answer those questions, ladies, what are your thoughts. Well, I'm definitely going to say our EIN number so our 501C number. Yep. And if you're in Arizona, your Arizona charitable tax credit number. Yes, we're a real nonprofit, and somebody recognize that by giving us an EIN or a tax credit number. What are some other things that that would make you feel better. Well, I think of like the logos that might come from some of the guard. Yeah, watchdog. You know, let's say, you know, that we're part of this and maybe even a logo that might say we're a part of this coalition or we're, you know, something that is. How about a gold, how about a gold style of transparency by one of the watchdogs. Yes, right. Right, I feel good about that. That's third party validation. Yeah, or what for what we're doing so those are some good things people have business bureau people have Chamber of Commerce accolades that they get all of those things make me feel better that you're a reputable nonprofit. The question is, and I'm not sure, because you mentioned something earlier, do we want to provide click through links or no because we don't want them to go anywhere else. Yeah, I wouldn't like those seals. Okay, don't do that. Good question. The only thing what the one thing that a couple things that I would provide for people to click. Yes, you should have a logo on this page. And yes, it should go back to your homepage. That's one thing that should be there. That should probably be the only thing in your header. And yes, you should have a link. So if someone has questions, do not provide frequently asked questions on this page. They should be able to contact a real human and give, you know, give in the way that is most comfortable to them. If for some reason this donated page has spooked to them. So yes, provide a person's name, provide a development email address, provide a phone number where they can go. Because remember, your average donor is probably 65 years old, and they still use the telephone. Yeah, they're going to call. They may not know who Alanis Morissette is. But they do know how to use the telephone, and they do know how to make a donation. That's right. That's awesome. So I'm kind of taken aback in that my sense of it is that we have to just like tell our story and jam everything onto the page and get all the information out. Your whole thing is to say no, reduce the clutter, put these this information on other parts of your website, but make that ultimate process. Simple. And then to track that because that number that you gave us 17% conversion rate. How do we stay in business and provide, you know, our communities with what what our mission vision and values are at that rate. Well, you know, online giving is only 12% of all nonprofit revenue. So it's, it's 12% it is growing that is exciting. But think about how much larger that number would be if we had a streamlined emotional donation donation page that made it easy to give and didn't provide those blockers. So think about this in the restaurant world because we say, you know, if you have a bad experience you tell everyone, well imagine walking into a restaurant and then leaving, like what if we're losing 80 plus percent of our patrons. Right. Like as soon as we walk into the door, they see the menu that's full of options and they're like, I'm just overwhelmed. I've got to leave like, that's what's happening on our donate site. And, you know, I don't want to overwhelm the folks who are listening to this who are hardworking at nonprofits, it's been a tough few years. You don't know to need to do all the changes that I recommended. And in some ways, it can be very challenging to do that because some people's websites, they don't even have the ability to change them in house. They have to go to an outside contractor. You can make small changes in the right direction that make an optimized simple emotional way for people to transact and invest in your nonprofit. You can make some small changes, particularly before year end. I'm not saying that because I certainly don't want anyone leaving the show right and thinking, Oh my gosh, I'm doing it all wrong. I just need to quit my job. You know, who do I think I am. But that big bold above the fold, that's what I want to drill down because I really do think that that is a simple. Let's make that bold on the top right corner. Let's, you know, create it so that it's, you know, it's there. It's, it's not missed. And let's also make sure that our content on our donate page, ask them to take action. That's what we're doing. And those are, those are the two that I would say, look at that before year end. Yeah, reduce the friction just make it easy and delightful to give. Don't give them homework. Don't make them have to swap out glasses to see. Where is it on the website. I'm only one years old and I have multiple pairs of glasses tasks. Don't have to do that make it easy to find, make it seamless to give and make me feel good about my donation. And then you can do some of all those other things later in your other communications. For someone who really is a direct male nerd. I got to give it to you my friend you're a digital nerd too so congratulations, you are just, you're amazing I love when we can have, you know, representatives from a Bayhaw so Laura Ingalls has joined us today co owner and CEO of Bayhaw Solutions, her business partner is Brianna, we've talked about her quite a bit as well. And the two of you really are, you know, I don't know you're just fantastic in our sector I'm so so glad to know that you're here because not only are you wicked smart. I think you're wicked funny so thank you. Great this is a really important time as we lead into this final push for the year and so check out a Bayhaw Solutions calm. So many wonderful points and ideas. Again if we haven't met or you want to be reminded who we are. I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I've been joined by my trusty co host Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven group, known as the nonprofit nerd but I always like to say she's my nonprofit. So yeah, that's right pull those glasses up. We want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who are with us day in and day out. The nonprofit Academy your part time controller nonprofit nerd fundraising Academy at National University staffing boutique and nonprofit thought leader. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. Many who have been with us since day one, which is actually just amazing. And so we want to make sure that we extend our gratitude and connect our sponsors to our viewers and our listeners. Okay, I'm telling you Jarrett, I, I'm overwhelmed, but I have a path. Yeah, yeah marching orders. Yeah, yeah, I'm not so intimidated by the concept and in thinking, Oh my God, we got to pull down this website and start all over. I love Laura's approach and it's very doable. Just always be learning. Don't set it and forget it. Just look at that donation page a few times type of the year and at the end of the year, ask yourselves, how can we make it even simpler and more delightful for our donors to give. That's right. I love it. Well you have been a delight. This has really been powerful and magical for us. And as we end every episode of the nonprofit show, we want to remind ourselves, all of our viewers and all of our listeners, stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow everyone.