Creatives, DesignDesigning for Donations and Giving Online
Donation design honestly hasn’t changed much in recent times. Sure, the strategy behind it may have and the delivery as well, but there’s only so much you can do to provide that “strategic link” to get a visitor (or congregation member) to donate and/or tithe online.
But I think we can do better.
I think we can do better not only by providing the best end-user experience but providing contextual guidance, design aesthetic, and even a bit of emotional-appeal to the process because giving is much more than the act of opening up one’s digital wallet; it’s a spiritual thing.
And we should give spiritual things the time and attention that it deserves. Here are some examples of a number of ministries who have “Give” buttons and then some ideas making it better.
North Point Online
Saddleback Church
Flamingo Road
LifeChurch.tv
NewSpring Church
Making it Better
I think there are a lot of opportunities to make the giving experience even better. Typically, most ministries use one of these types of engagements, or a combination thereof:
- Home grown application for giving
- Paypal integration
- Another 3rd party system
- Internal web service with login and registration
As a result, the typical experience follows one of these linear experience models:
- Give right on the same page, then links off.
- Link off to another landing page.
- Popup.
- Link directly to 3rd party system (paypal).
- Link to log in to internal system of giving.
But what if we provided even more context, guidance, and help? What if we “upped” the design a bit? Would that make things better? Would giving increase?
What if we designed it in such a way that would encourage giving more? Take, for example, these iterative design ideas:
We could add digits and/or simplify:
The act of clicking (and what type of “click”) is an art form. Drop down? Radio button?
What about giving people the choice of value? And perhaps adding a feature (via click) to increase their own level of support?
How about giving some context of impact?
Even more contextual impact?
Just a few ideas.
Again, I’m not an expert but I’d rather give it as much thought as possible for something so significant.
What do you think? Is this an area of improvement? Does the Church and Non-Profit sector have an opportunity to provide best practices?
I think so. Let’s go do it then!
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Yes- we do have an opportunity to provide best practices. What’s more disturbing to me is that we haven’t led the way in this. For the most part we’ve allowed others to come up with the technology, and then used it- mostly without improvement.
I really like the ideas for contextual and impact giving.
On another note. For too long church has meant, to many, a place that just wants my money. Why not prove it wrong? Why, dare I say it, NOT have an online giving option on our main sites? This doesn’t mean not utilizing online giving, it just means that we don’t have it hanging on our front door. I think this would allow for a deeper conversation about giving, ultimately generating more genuine interest, rather than “guilt-giving”. Wouldn’t we prefer to have people genuinely dedicated to what God is doing through us, over people motivated by a sense of guilt or obligation?
Just my thoughts.
love it. yes. we could lead, but I’m not sure we do.
let’s start.
ok.
haha.
The Church treads a fine line between a non-profit charity and non-profit… Charities have the right to a big, FAT donate button on the screen, since that is what they are all about-
They live off money. Churches live off God.
In our church, we specifically say that giving is not necessary for a first time guest, and it’s guilt-free – as such you have to dig a little in order to find our Online Giving. However it isn’t easy to use at all.
I am all for better user interaction!
And Saddleback’s ‘Tithe’ button is the biggest button I’ve ever seen on a website!
Love saddleback….!
personally I would like to see a run down of where money goes to and how it is used. Maybe this becomes an opt in for the recurring giver. This can be in the form of charts as well as evidence b.m.o. videos (like for a specific house building project – seeing the house being built).
Incorporating that in give it a much more human aspect – besides the feeling of ownership it emparts.
Ahhhhh. Transparency….!
Love it….!
love the article. It has made me think since I read it yesterday. There is def. room for improvement but I think the improvements should be on our teaching online what giving is instead of ‘persuading’ people to give more. I’m afraid that the church members of today has lost the biblical principles of what giving is for. Thanks for taking the time to write this article it has really made me think. (maybe I’m analyzing it too much.)
sure! what fun.
Text message donations seem to be very popular right now. Much of the money raised for Haiti has come via SMS. Are there any resources available to individual churches that would allow them to collect money this way?
there have been a number of them out htere. i think we’ve posted a few here before on churchcrunch.
Thanks for posting this one. I just met with our communications team about our new website this morning and we discussed the “Giving” link. Haven’t really figured out how it’s going to look yet but we’re getting there.
sure bro!
Love the iterative designs from Carsonified. Just the fact that they used Balsamiq gives the designs credibility, even if they’re a little over-simplified.
for serious.
A great resource for form design is: Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points by 37signals – http://www.amazon.com/Defensive-Design-Web-improve-messages/dp/073571410X
love that.