Choosing the Best Digital Fundraising Platform for Maximum Impact

By Paul St. Onge

 Giving is an emotional decision. People support a cause because it speaks to their hearts, interests, and values. The start of a donor relationship begins by sparking those emotions. For example, the nonprofit Coast Guard Foundation set up an interactive campaign for their K-9 veterans (a team of highly-trained dogs that assist in water rescues). This page allows people to “pet” one of these brave rescue dogs to learn fun facts about them and send thank-you messages. After completion, the organization followed up with automated messages seeking support. This fundraising campaign exemplifies how using creative personalized content on digital platforms helped an organization reach a new dog-loving audience and fundraising goals.

The best fundraising platforms help organizations engage donors by developing and delivering compelling, gamified, and engaging content in a timely, personalized way. When choosing between a single digital fundraising platform and an optimized one, knowing which will fit an organization’s mission and financial goals is difficult. A comprehensive understanding of the pros and cons of the different platforms allows fundraisers to make the best decision.

Single platforms versus optimized platforms: how they work

The two major types of digital fundraising ecosystems are either a mix of single-point solutions or all-in-one (optimized) digital solutions. Single platforms often do one or two things well, such as platforms like FundraiseUp for donation forms and Mailchimp for email. Conversely, optimized solutions such as Engaging Networks, Blackbaud Luminate Online^®, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, bring more digital fundraising activities, including donation forms, emails, landing pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, and event ticketing, under one roof.

Single platform pros and cons

A single fundraising platform (also known as a point solution) may be the right choice to fulfill an organization’s requirements. Some optimized platforms are more challenging to manage and offer more features than an organization needs, while a single platform may be more intuitive for teams to operate and have a shorter learning curve. For example, Mailchimp’s email automation platform is intuitive and user-friendly, which requires less time and training. FundraiseUp’s donation form platform is straightforward to implement and deploy. Because point solutions provide a niche area of marketing or fundraising, they often excel at ensuring their email platform has the best email deliverability rates or donation forms convert at the highest percentage. Point solutions usually allow organizations to be fast and nimble because they are not slowed down by functionality and complexity from larger platforms.

On the other hand, a single platform needs to rely on data from other platforms to personalize and automate donor communications and touchpoints. With single platforms, it’s critical for organizations to ensure that data processes between systems are intact to effectively communicate and steward donors. For smaller organizations, relying on ad-hoc data processes between systems can do the job, but enforcing a formal integration between systems as organizations scale is vital.

Benefits and drawbacks of all-in-one fundraising solutions

Integrated fundraising platforms help nonprofits facilitate personalized cultivation and solicitations in one platform. This process works for annual fund donors all the way to major donors. All-in-one solutions offer the following benefits:

• Convenience for teams. Having everything in one place streamlines processes, enhances security, and makes it easier for teams to track every step of a constituent’s digital journey. There is no moving data between platforms using integration tools or spreadsheets, and just one platform for administrators to log into.
• Automated donor journeys. Nonprofits can leverage automation to enhance every level of the donor’s journey, from initial email sign-up for a one-time donor to monthly or major donors. This enables nonprofits to personalize donor experiences and streamline fundraising efforts. For example, Children’s Wisconsin built an entire campaign page inside its fundraising platform, including a thermometer and donation form. Following a donation, new donors received an automated series of messages from the same platform.
• Customized experiences. The entire donor experience can be customized and personalized. Most all-in-one solutions allow complete customization of landing pages, emails, and donation forms based on the donor’s interests, which are identified by a survey or clicking behavior.
• Enhanced reporting. An integrated platform facilitates more accurate reporting on digital fundraising campaigns by capturing all aspects of a campaign in one platform, from opens to clicks to conversions.

Despite their benefits, there are several challenges with all-in-one solutions. The first hurdle is implementing the new software. Some employees may find the new platform overly complex and difficult to navigate, which could require additional training. Second, organizations with smaller teams may not have the capacity to create enough content. For example, if the team only has the bandwidth to develop campaigns for one audience segment, an all-in-one platform may be overkill.

Identifying the right platform

The ideal all-in-one platform works when all stakeholders seek a more personalized and automated digital journey and want the ability to fully customize all aspects of the donor experience. Follow these steps to determine if an all-in-one platform is right for the organization.

1. Establish organizational goals. Start by answering some crucial questions. How is the audience segmented, and what are their interests? Does the organization have the capacity to increase digital engagement? Would the audience benefit from customized emails, interactive campaigns, lead magnets, or automation?
2. Identify content goals and evaluate staff capacity. Can the staff create enough content to truly personalize the organization’s communication across multiple segments and groups? For small teams, publishing one article a month might be a stretch, and asking that team to create multiple tailored pieces per audience may be next to impossible. Even with artificial intelligence (AI), human emotion and creativity are the most inspiring aspects that encourage donors to give. Hiring an agency or freelancers helps companies that lack the capacity for this approach.

Boosting donations with personalized content

Giving is an emotional decision. People have distinct reasons for supporting a cause. Understanding what donors care about is the first step to reaching potential donors and fundraising goals. Organizations can leverage data to identify audience segments based on behavior and interests to form personalized content such as interactive lead magnets, splashy landing pages, quizzes, surveys, and other useful resources. A lead magnet (free downloadable assets such as e-books, guides, templates, or checklists) can be offered in exchange for a potential donor’s contact information. The best lead magnets provide value and help to build trust with your audience. Another example of personalized content is interactive quizzes, like the “Guess This Park” page at the National Park Foundation, which allows potential donors to learn about the National Parks.

The future of digital fundraising

Digital fundraising will continue to evolve with new and emerging technologies. Integrating AI and adopting other technologies will enable better audience personalization and safer, more secure donations. For example, there are emerging AI platforms to help with data integration, such as Dataro, which recently developed processes to integrate data between customer relationship management (CRM) programs, email, and donation forms, combined with AI analysis to facilitate better personalization. Adapting to innovations helps nonprofits remain competitive, but don’t forget the real reason the organization exists: the people it serves and the company’s mission to help them.

Paul is CEO of Doing Good Digital. He specializes in digital fundraising for nonprofits. He emphasizes the importance of blending creative content with nonprofit technology.