Online Donations

In more than 15 years of working with non-profit organizations, we’ve experienced first-hand the many different ways there are to accept a donation on the Internet. Follow these steps to make sure your online donations system maximizes contributor conversion while maintaining security.

As a precursor, you need to know that there’s been a recent change in the industry related to security. It’s called PCI Compliance. PCI Compliance has been around for years, but this year in particular it’s become a hot hot topic. Merchant providers (that would be you) are being fined $100,000 per infringement where a hacker breaks in to a so-called “secure server” and steals the credit cards. So, if you had 100 donors with credit cards in your online system, and a hacker broke in, you could be fined $100,000 ! The exact number of what you would be fined doesn’t matter. It’s just an example, but displays the point anyway.

The short of it is that any system that accepts transaction data (credit card numbers, expiration dates) must be tested routinely for holes. These holes are what hackers use to break into systems to get access to peoples’ credit cards.

Many people are preaching that if you store credit cards online, your system is not PCI compliant. This is not true; it just costs a heck of a lot more money (into the tens of thousands of dollars per year) to configure, maintain, test, and upgrade a server so that it meets PCI compliance requirements EVEN THOUGH you’re keeping credit card info on the server over time.

Managing a secured server that does NOT store credit cards can be tested weekly for PCI compliance for just a few hundred dollars a year.

So, based on that little quicky about PCI compliance, we can now present a checklist of items we apply to every online donations system.

No Credit Card Information Shold be Stored on the Secured Server – Make your gateway liable for processing the credit card and maintaining PCI compliance. We recommend Authorize.net for the gateway.
Order Form Should Look Like Your Web Site – In the commercial world, sales conversion rates are usually not impacted by whether the order form page looks like the rest of the Web site, including graphics, colors and layout. But, in the non-profit world, donors expect their donations to be made through a seemless process. Any deviation in that process makes the donor wonder if the non-profit is getting the entire donation or if the processor is really getting a good chunk of it. Whether or not there are intermediaries involved in the online transaction process doesn’t really matter. It’s the fact that the donor will stop in their tracks when they see a different design on the donations form and any deviation from the process of getting a donor to donate allows the potential for them to not donate at all.
Encourage Prospective Donors to Contact You by Phone – Resist the urge to think of your online donations as a 100% substitute for taking contributions by phone. There will be people who decide to contribute “because” you have an online donations form but will still prefer to call you to give a credit card number. Inspire them to do so.
Adhere to Proven Internet Marketing Strategies to Maximize Conversion Rates – When someone is checking out your Web site and thinking about giving, it’s up to you to “convert” that visitor from a prospect to a donor. There are many proven Internet marketing strategies to apply to your online donations form to increase conversion rates. In this economy, who can afford to not use what’s already been proven?
Expect Support – The absolute most critical component in any online donations campaign is your ability to get help with a secure online donations form when you need it…and you will want to talk to someone on the phone eventually. This is the single most challenging component of any online transaction system; finding someone who will support their own system by phone. At HereNextYear, we support everything we do with English-speaking, American citizens. Our whole team lives in Colorado specifically. And, when you call needing help, whoever answers the phone will be familiar with your project and actually “enjoy” talking with our clients!

So, those are five main things to look for when you’re considering taking online donations for your non-profit organization. Here Next Year of course offers those services plus many more. In fact, we’ve outline our entire online dontations system for you to review.

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