 Hi, everyone. I just wanted to say hello and give everybody a few more minutes to get logged on. And while I have you, I just wanted to test my audio and my screen sharing. So I'm just going to flip through the first couple of slides. And if you could just let me know in the questions box, if you're able to hear me speaking right now, and if you were able to see me move my slides, that would be a huge help so that I know that everybody can see me and hear me for the presentation. So again, you could just go right into your questions box and type in yes or no, and just let me know if you're able to actually see my screen. That would be a huge help. Okay, thank you guys. Thank you guys so much. I'm going to put my, oh actually, it's three o'clock, so I will just go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to our March 1st, March webinar. Today, we're going to be talking about upgrading your website's donation processing. My name is Linda Gerhard, and I'm the Senior Community Engagement Manager here at Mighty Cause. And I'm sure if you've attended our webinars before, you've heard my voice in my field before. But just as a quick intro, I've been with Mighty Cause since 2016. And before that, I worked with nonprofits or for nonprofits, I should say, specifically animal shelters and animal welfare. So I have been in the nonprofit trenches. You can always reach out to me if you wanted to chat. My email is listed here, lindaatmightycause.com. And just so you know, we are recording this webinar so everyone will have access to the recording and the slides and we'll have some time for a live Q&A at the end of the presentation. So if you think of something while I'm presenting, go ahead and type that into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and we'll make sure to get to it at the end. Excellent. And I just wanted to start with a quick poll. So let me just start that up for you. All right. So I just wanted to get an idea of where everyone's at with your donation collection. So if you could just take a minute and let me know what you're currently using, whether you're using a button, a widget, a form, if you're using a combination, just so that we can get an idea of where everybody is so that when we move forward, we can talk about what the upgrades might be. So I'll just give you a minute to fill this out. And so far, it actually looks like the most popular option, which doesn't surprise me, is a button. That is what a lot of nonprofits primarily use. So I'll give you just another second. Coming in second, actually, at this point, it's a tie between a donation form and a combination of everything above, which is really interesting. All right. So I'll go ahead and close this poll and share the results with you. Yeah, so most everybody set a button and there was a tie between donation forms and a combination of the above. So yeah, that was just interesting to me. So I will go back to sharing my presentation. I lost my slides. Here we go. All right. So we're going to talk about all of those methods for collecting donations on this webinar. So it's good to see that a lot of people are starting with a button because that's kind of where we're starting with this webinar. And so we're going to start off with some donation processing basics and just go through what this webinar is about, what this donation processing is all about, just so we're all on the same page. The short answer to what donation processing is, is that it's a user interface that supporters use to make a monetary donation to your nonprofit, usually using a credit card or another digital payment method. It consists of two basic components, the donation processing interface itself, which can be a donation button or a widget like we just talked about with the poll. And this is where you'll collect your donor information and may be able to do a little bit of customization to change what kind of data you're collecting from your donors. And the second part is the actual payment processing, the transaction, the financial transaction that happens when a donor makes a decision to give your organization a certain amount of money. This process is or at least should be the central part of any nonprofit's digital presence. The donation processing is really the endpoint where you want all of your digital campaigns, your website, and even your social media presence to point. You want to guide users to donation processing. There are three basic types of donation processors. The first and probably the most common, which we all just saw on the poll, is a donation button. And what a button is, is it usually is a hyperlinked image that takes the user to an outside source where they can complete the payment for their donation. The best and most common example of this is the PayPal button, and Mighty Cause also has our own button as well. A step up from a button is a widget, which is actually embedded on your website, usually with an iframe embed code. And that basically imports the interface that donors use to donate from another website, another platform, and that inserts it onto your own website, which allows them to complete their donation without ever having to leave your website. Mighty Cause has one of those as well. And it's one of our most popular tools. That's actually how most people find out about Mighty Cause. And the easiest way to think about it is that it's inserting a tiny piece of Mighty Cause onto your website so they can make a donation and it's processed by Mighty Cause. Their donation shows up in your donation report, but they never actually have to visit Mighty Cause.com. And the last type is a donation form, which is usually also embedded on your website. And it's a longer donation form that's usually more focused on collecting donor information. So it has kind of the basic functionality of a widget, but it's longer and it leaves you a little bit more room for customization since a widget has a little bit of a space limitation. And the form gives you a little bit more flexibility to add some questions and some custom data collection. Now it's important to note that none of these types of donation processors are better than the other. And as we saw with the poll, a lot of organizations use a combination of these to collect donations at various points with users. Now there are some key functions of a donation processor that are going to be really important as we get into this webinar. And we just want to define what those key functions are. So the first thing is data. Every donation is an opportunity for your non-profit to form a long-lasting relationship with a donor. And if you are not collecting the right data, or if you don't have access to the data that's collected when the donation is made, that's going to impact your ability to follow up and start stewarding your donors, which is the process of increasing your relationship with that donor and getting them to come back and get involved with your non-profit again and again. And obviously the financial transaction part is super important. People need to feel confident that their payment is secure. And you need to be confident that it's reliable. If you aren't able to have donors complete a transaction, if they can't complete a payment, then you're going to lose those donors. And finally, donation processing should make it easy and convenient for donors and utilize the tools that are available, like Autofill, to make it even easier for them to make their donation and also accept multiple different payment methods. The easier something is for people to do, the more likely they are to do it. So it's really important that your donation processor be easy to use. So now that we've talked about the basics, we're going to talk about some best practices with donation processors, which hopefully will help you identify the ways in which your donation processor may not be working for you or there might be some room for improvement. One of the most basic and important functions of a nonprofit's donation processor is setting up recurring donations. Now, unfortunately, there are some donation processors that don't make this easy, like PayPal, and some don't even offer the option at all. But recurring donors are really the key to building a sustainable nonprofit. This is reliable, dependable income. So if you're not able to capture recurring donations, you honestly should switch donation processors as soon as possible, to be completely honest. The other side of this is when the recurring donation is set up, how can the donor manage it? Recurring donors may churn, meaning that they don't continue their donation. They end their donation if they can't update their card or change their amount of their donation or the payment date so that it withdraws on a different day. So not having a good system for donors to make recurring donations to set them up and then to manage them once they're in place can be a real hurdle when you're trying to grow your organization and grow your donor base. And our recommendation is that you really should only consider donation processors, whether that's mighty cause or not, that make recurring donations a priority. And because mighty cause is all about getting recurring donations going and making it easy to manage, donors can set up a recurring donation with the click of a button, and they don't have to restart a donation if they want to change the amount. They have full control of that through their user account. So that way you don't ever lose a recurring donation because a card expired, which is a really tragic way to lose a donor is that their credit card expired and nobody told them or it just completely canceled the donation. So having a donation processor that has some steps in place to let you and let the donor know if there needs to be an update is just sort of a basic thing that all donation processors need to do, but sadly, not all of them do. This is something you'll hear a lot in talk of e-commerce friction reduction. And basically what this means is making it easy for donors to make a payment and also making it easy for them to return and make another payment. So just as an example of how this works, I was talking to a colleague this week when I was prepping for this webinar, and she mentioned that she had gone to a nonprofit's website to make a donation. She had followed a social media post, but it didn't allow her to use the autofill function that would have allowed her to plug her payment information, including her credit card information into the donation processor. So she would have had to have stopped, got up, dug out her wallet, got her credit card, and then manually entered that information into the donation processor in order to complete the transaction. And she ended up not doing it. She didn't end up making that donation because it wasn't convenient for her, and it didn't work for her at that time. I believe she was sitting at her desk trying to work and wanted to do it very quickly, and she was not able to do that. So that nonprofit lost a donor because the donation processor had made it too hard for her, and she had all of the information literally at her fingertips, but that processor just didn't allow her to use them. So these seem like really small things. These are tiny technical details, but donors opt out of completing their donation every single day because of this. This is a really common reason why donors don't complete their donations. And it's also really a common reason when we talk about e-commerce, why people might abandon their carts. So when somebody takes the effort to put a bunch of things in their cart on a website like Amazon, and they end up going, oh no, it's partially in many cases because they have to find their credit card and complete that transaction. So that's what we're talking about with friction reduction. So a donation processor should be able to accept auto-fills, allow people to use saved cards, as well as to save their cards to the donation processors so that if they come back, they can just easily check out and allow for different payment methods. Some processors might not allow American Express because their fees are a little bit higher, Apple Pay or PayPal payments. And those things will cost you donors, unfortunately. And to that end, I also just wanted to quickly note because it's pretty exciting that Mighty Cause gives users the ability to actually pay through their bank accounts through an ACH withdrawal for donations over $100, which just adds another option for donors to make their payment. So friction reduction is something that you're really looking for when you're evaluating whether your donation processor is working or looking at a new one. This is an extension of friction reduction, and that's being mobile friendly. And this is because most of us are doing everything from our phones nowadays. So you should operate under the assumption that everyone is using their phones. That's actually how most websites are designed. They're designed mobile first. But sometimes these older tools, they are not mobile friendly. And I've encountered this a lot with nonprofit donation forms where I have to zoom in to even see the fields that are there. And some widgets and some donation forms will just completely not function on smartphones. So you will lose donors if you add extra steps for them. And so if I'm sitting on a couch, I'm scrolling through social media and I go to your nonprofit's website and I want to make a donation, I should be able to complete that from my phone. If I have to switch to a completely different device to make a donation, odds are you've lost me. And that's true for most people. Most of us also have our payment information that's just saved on our phones as well. I have a droid and if I just use a fingerprint, I can automatically load my payment information, all my contact information, my shipping address and so on. And if I can't do that, you're in danger of losing me. So unfortunately, I'm not in particularly in particular lazy, but most people are like this because we have all of these tools set up to make our lives a little bit easier and so we can get in and out of transactions easier. And if we can't use them, we're likely to just opt out of it entirely. So people should be able to utilize the features their phones have to complete their donation as well as your form or your widget or whatever you're using for your donation processor should look good and be readable on a smartphone. So moving away from things that are more donor facing, another best practice and important factor in donation processing is integration. Is your donation processor talking to other systems you use like your CRM or your donor base? Is it easy to get donor information out of one place and into another? And when we talk about fundraising techniques, there's a lot to consider here. So if you use a PayPal button, how are you going to run a peer to peer campaign? Does that mean that you have to use a completely different donation processor because you want to do a peer to peer campaign or an event? Do you have to start from scratch if you want to try a new technique for fundraising? This is going to have a huge impact on the admin side of your fundraising and also your stewarding. So make sure you're looking for a donation processor that can talk to the other tools and software that you use in your daily office work. The issue of donor data access is a real big issue. The best practice is to allow nonprofits to have full access to their donor data, but believe it or not, some donation processors don't do that. A good example of this is Facebook. Nonprofits basically get a list of transactions or payments that were made, but not the actual donor data. So you may not know who made that payment, where it came from, how that person's email address, how you can get in touch with them. And the reason for that is that Facebook wants ownership of your donor's data and they want to use it to they want to use donation processing. The reason they have that functionality on their platform is a way to reduce friction for other purchases and transaction on Facebook. So that data when you use Facebook is not considered to be yours. It belongs to Facebook and they do utilize it to increase their profit and further their business. But of course, you need that donor data so that you can follow up with your donors. You can get to know them. You can bring them into the fold at your nonprofit. And you also want to have some degree of control over that data so that you can make your donors feel secure. And they know that nobody is using their data when they make a donation to your nonprofit to sell them things or email them or whatever purpose may the purposes are commonly used when people buy lists. So a best practice here is to look for a donation processor that gives you full unfettered access to your donor donor data and the ability to customize it. And of course, Mighty Cause provides robust donation reports. We never use your donor data for anything other than passing it on to you. The only reason we'll even contact one of your donors is if their card for a recurring donation is about to expire or something along those lines. And that's because we really consider that these are your donors and this is your donor data. It does not belong to us. And so really that's a question you should ask with your donation processor. Do I have access to all of this donor data? And is there anything that I'm missing? And do I get what I need from the data that I receive? So next up is fees, which is a popular topic. So a good donation processor will allow donors to cover fees for you, whether they're platform fees or transaction fees. Mighty Cause always allows donors to cover fees. And I mentioned this because we find that donors are really happy to pick up those fees for you. It's usually a really negligible amount for them. And they want to help. That's the reason they're making a donation. So a donation processor should make it really super easy for donors to cover fees for you. In a lot of cases, it's not even a dollar that they're adding on to their donation. One donation processor that does not allow this is PayPal, which means that they come out of your payout and that the donor can't choose to chip in an extra 2.9 percent to help you out. And just to be clear, because there is sometimes some confusion about this, a platform fee would be what a charge that comes from the donation processor for using their service. And there's a different fee that we commonly call a transaction fee that is charged by the credit card companies, which is usually around 2.9 percent. So when you hear no fees, keep in mind that transaction fees are still present. They are charged to whoever is accepting that payment. It's just a question of who is paying for that fees. So you want to make sure that donors have the option to cover those fees for you because we have found over years and years of operating that donors are more than happy to do that. And lastly, I wanted to talk about branding, which is your nonprofit's logo and colors and the other visual signifiers that let people know that they are dealing with your organization. A lot of donors can be hesitant to give if they're taken to an outside website or payment processor because they want to be safe and protect their payment information. So if they end up going out to this other site and it's not something that they recognize and they don't see those visual signifiers that tell them that this is your organization, they may not feel comfortable making a donation there. So being able to add your nonprofit's branding is really important to make your donors feel comfortable and safe. And that's one of the reasons why using something that is embedded on your website is really ideal because they're staying in that space that belongs to your nonprofits and the donor never has to wonder if this link you sent them is legit or worry that it's maybe been hijacked. These are things that very rarely happen, but donors do worry about. And then they can just seamlessly complete their transaction on your website. Even if that's through an iframe, they're staying on your website and just completing it in that little piece that you're pulling in with an iframe in bed or with a forum in bed. So being able to customize branding and add branding to your receipts is really important because sometimes you'll get a receipt. That's just a payment receipt and they don't recognize the name of the company that processed their donation and it can be really jarring for them and not a great experience if they don't feel like, hey, this went to the right place. So that's just really important to consider as well is are you able to add some branding to your donation processing? Alright, so we're in the home stretch and now that we've talked about sort of what donation processing is and the best practices, I just wanted to wrap it up by talking about how you can optimize your donation process. So when you're looking to optimize your donation process, the first step is really taking stock of what you have in place right now. What does your donation process look like? What can donors do and what can't they do? What data are you collecting? Is there anything you need but are not collecting in your current donation process and asking questions like that? You basically want to look for any holes in your donation process that you can fill, whether that's on the user side, meaning what the user sees or from the admin side, but your nonprofit experiences. Are there any challenges you face in getting your donor data from one side to the other? Or are you having difficulties keeping your book straight because you're downloading a list of transactions and you don't know which transaction came from which donor? So those kinds of questions will really help you take stock of where you are and where you might need to go. The most common thing that I honestly see from people, especially when it comes to their websites, is that they have a place to donate, but it's not on their main navigation menu. So they'll have information there where you can find history of the organization, you can learn the names of board members, you can learn about upcoming events, but donate is not in that navigation menu. And that's really important because as a top-level option on your donation menu or your navigation menu, I should say, that's going to follow users everywhere they go on your site. So you don't want to hide that in a sub-menu. You don't want to have that just in one particular place. You want that to be a top level action item on your website. So that's something that I see a lot is that you have to go into a menu and find out how to donate. It should be a top-level option. It should be obvious from every page they're on on your website. So taking a look at where you are right now, that can help you figure out where you need to go and what you need to improve to make it a more optimized seamless process for your donors. And here are some simple things that you can do to upgrade. You can add customization, like adding suggested donation amounts and impact descriptions. These are things that are really powerful for donors because you're literally catching them when they're trying to decide how much to give. So you can use the suggested donation amount to sort of let them know what an appropriate donation amount is and what you're looking for and then add a description that tells them what that provides. So for instance, if you want to put $50 on your donation form as a suggestion and that provides a week's worth of food for a family at your food bank just to pull an example out of thin air, that can really push people toward giving in a certain amount. So using that kind of customization can be really helpful. And as we talked about, adding some branding is helpful too when you're looking at upgrading your donation process. And even if you're doing some of these things, think about what else you can add to the process, like adding a custom question that might help you collect important information from donors and then literally upgrade the processing processor that you're using. So if you're using a button, try moving to a widget or adding a widget. If you're using a widget already, why not try incorporating a longer form that you can embed on your website and you can increase the number of ways that you're getting donations. So I see this really commonly. You have one page on your website, which we just talked about, where people can make donations. But where can you add the ability to capture donations? Can you make it easier for people to find where to donate? Some things to consider would be, say, adding a widget to a blog post. If your nonprofit has a blog, you can absolutely embed a widget in there. And finally, take a look at your recurring donation situation. Are you collecting enough recurring donations? Are you making specific appeals for people to donate on a monthly basis? If you're using a PayPal button, for instance, you may want to switch to something else so that you can make this a lot easier for your donors to contribute on a regular basis. Because as we talked about, these recurring donors who give every single month provide ongoing support, they provide predictable revenue, and they're really the foundation upon which you'll build a robust fundraising program. And so before I go and we get to the live Q&A, I do need to sneak in some promotion of our advanced plan because Mighty Cause Advanced offers every single thing that we've talked about in this webinar from embeddable donation forms and widgets, recurring donation management customization and adding your non-profits branding, full access to your donor data and robust reporting, and integrations that make your follow-ups even easier. We have a Salesforce integration, a MailChimp integration, and we have integrations with thousands of apps that are on Zapier. So there's a lot of different ways that you can streamline your back office management through Mighty Cause Advanced. Everybody is eligible to get a free trial. So if you're already on Mighty Cause, you can just go to your organization's dashboard and go into payment plan, which is in your settings, and just start your trial right there. And if you're new to Mighty Cause, just go to mightycause.com or send me an email after the webinar and we'll make sure that you are set up with your free trial. And you may need a demo before Hansa will set that up for you. So just trying it out and setting up for setting up in a trial for advance is a great first step. If you're, you know, for instance, currently using a PayPal button and you're looking at taking the next step to streamline and optimize your donation processing. So we're happy to help you out. So just feel free to email me if you're interested in starting your free trial and I will do what I can. All right. So that was it. I kept it to 27 minutes, which I'm pretty proud about. So I just wanted to make some time for questions. So if you have a question, just go ahead into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel and we'll try to get to them. Okay. Did my audio cut out? I got a few messages saying that they were having trouble with audio. Well, I'll try sharing the recording. So if you signed on and there were some audio problems, I can certainly send you the recording and hopefully that is okay. All right. Okay. There is confirmation that you guys can hear me. I had a little bit of a panic attack thinking that no one can hear me. All right. It doesn't look like there's any questions. So I don't want to hold everybody up. Oh, actually. All right. Here we go. Can we use a Patreon page for getting recurring donations? That's actually a really interesting question that is something that you can do. But Patreon is really geared toward content creators like people who have YouTube channels and podcasts. So I'm not quite sure about the tax-deductibility situation. Certainly using something that's a little bit more geared toward nonprofits, I think is ideal. For instance, on Mighty Cause, we will send your donors a tax receipt. You can include a little message in there and with advance, you can actually completely use your branding and make it your receipt. And that way they have the record that they need to claim the deduction on their taxes. So I'm not entirely sure if Patreon does that just because the customer base that they serve is more content creators whose contributions to them are not tax-deductible generally. So I mean, it is an avenue, especially if you haven't gotten your 501c3 yet. Using a Patreon can be a way to get ongoing support. But if you're able to, I would really highly recommend trying to get something that's more geared toward nonprofits. Like Mighty Cause, there's other platforms as well. Obviously, I'm biased toward Mighty Cause. But Patreon is an option. I'm not super familiar with how tax-deductibility would work with them, though. Let's see. How soon can we access today's webinar? Will it be uploaded to YouTube like the last webinar? Yes. So I'm going to do my best to get that uploaded to YouTube and sent out to everybody very soon. Unfortunately, YouTube is a little bit slow, so it takes a little time to get it actually uploaded in HD. But it will be there, and I'll send everybody an email with the slides as well as soon as I'm able to. Let's see. Can you be more specific on the differences between advanced and free accounts? Yeah. So the basic difference is that you get access to some additional tools with Mighty Cause Advanced. You get to use our CRM tool. So if you don't have a donor base, if you're not using something like Salesforce, then Mighty Cause Advanced would have a donor database that's already there for you and that you can use so that you can professionalize your stewarding. You can also get access to embeddable forms with Mighty Cause Advanced. The forms are an upgrade. So if you're using a widget currently and you want to try out a form, I would try setting up a trial for Mighty Cause Advanced and seeing if a form is something that you're interested in upgrading to. In most cases, we do find that it is a better option for nonprofits. And our integrations are also a key feature that's available to advanced nonprofits. So if you use MailChimp, if you use Salesforce, and we do have some exciting integrations coming down the pipeline, I can't announce them yet, but we have some exciting stuff upcoming. And anything through the Zapier Library, they have integrations with thousands of apps. So Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Docs, all sorts of things through the Zapier App Store can be utilized through Mighty Cause Advanced. So if you're looking for integrations with different programs and pieces of software, that's a really key piece. And the other thing that is not as relevant now because we can't have as many live events, but we also offer text to give through Mighty Cause Advanced. So when things are a little bit more safer and everybody's vaccinated and we're having those in-person events again, text to give is something that you can add to your fundraising toolkit. And people can make donations on the fly from their smartphones. So it's really easy and you get unlimited keywords. And then, yeah, you can actually go to mightycause.com slash pricing. We actually have a chart there that tells you what the differences are between the different plans that are available on Mighty Cause. So that's mightycause.com slash pricing. All right. So what are the fees associated with your product? That's a question from Davin. I would go to the pricing page. You can see that broken down much more accurately than I would probably be able to stumble through right now there. And you can see the breakdown of the value that you get for each of the packages that are available. So that's mightycause.com slash pricing. And I'll actually include a link to that in the follow-up email as well. It's a question from Ryan. Does Mighty Cause's free plan include mobile phone donation? So there's a couple of different plans. If you've been a Mighty Cause customer for a while, please let me know if you won't lose any access to any tools. But yeah, you can donate mobile at any time through our website. We are completely mobile responsive and we are designed mobile first. So when you go to make a donation, it'll look good on a smartphone. It'll look good on a desktop computer. And people can make donations. So there's nothing special that's needed. However, if you wanted to implement text to give, which I think you might be asking about here, you would want to upgrade to Mighty Cause advanced. That is helpful in a lot of situations. That's where a donor would text a keyword and then be able to start their donation process from there. Obviously, since we aren't having a lot of live events, that's not something that's in super high demand right now. But anybody can donate to a nonprofit on mightycause.com through their smartphone. But if you're looking for text to give specifically, then yeah, you would want to upgrade to Mighty Cause advanced. All right, so I think that's it for the questions for today. Thank you all so much for joining me. If you think of anything after we say goodbye, then you can feel free to email me. I'm happy to answer any questions about donation processing that may come up for you. And again, you'll all have access to the recording and slides. And thank you all again so much. I appreciate you spending the time with me today. So happy fundraising.