Easily Launch a Customizable Donation Form for Your Monthly Giving Program

To ensure your fundraising is sustainable, it’s important to work on donor retention—taking those newly-won donors and encouraging them to stick with you for the long haul. One way to do this is through a monthly giving program to convert your donors who give once into long-term donors who give on a recurring basis.

Having an online donation form optimized to drive monthly giving is an important component to include in your monthly giving strategy. A targeted, optimized donation form can help turn your donors into long-term supporters.

A CanadaHelps Customizable Donation Form is optimized and easy to set up so you can start collecting donations in minutes. Best of all, no coding or design skills are required!

Follow these 9 easy steps (and some additional tips) for launching an online donation form that will help you raise more:

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1. Log into your CanadaHelps charity account, then go to the Donation Forms tab.

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2. Click “Create new form” to set up a form specifically for collecting monthly donations.

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3. Give your form a name and choose a form type. You have 3 different options to choose from: Full form, Multi-step, or a One Page Form with Tribute First (which includes eCards).

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4. Under the General Settings section, you have the option of allowing your donors to choose which fund to donate to and whether you’d like to display your fundraising progress.

5. You may set up your form’s Donation Options for accepting both “One-time & Monthly donations” or only “Monthly donations”.

Tip: Choose the “Monthly donations” option to drive sustainable funding for long-term projects.

6. In the Other Customizations section, you can apply more settings, such questions to ask your donors, letting donors leave a message with their donation, and enabling an optional donation to CanadaHelps. You can also turn off tax receipts (which is turned on by default to instantly send tax receipts for each donation), as well as enable mailing list opt-in, and phone number collection.

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7. Under One-time Donation Amounts and Monthly Donation Amounts, you can let donors enter how much they want to give, or set up your own custom amounts paired with impact statements—a great way to show your donors the tangible value of each donation!

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Tip: Neuro-fundraising research shows that “anchoring” your donors’ minds by asking for a higher amount motivates them to donate more.

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8. To further customize your form, you can choose your settings and enter more details under the remaining sections:

• Custom Email Messages – this appears in the donation confirmation email that CanadaHelps sends to your donors on your behalf.

• Brand Form – get creative by adding some colours and a compelling image to make your form stand out.

• Brand eCards – for the One Page Form with Tribute First, display beautiful, ready-to-use eCards or upload your own!

• Analytics – if you have Google Analytics, enter your information here so you can track the performance of your donation form and get even more insights on each donation you receive.

Once you’re done, click on “Save & View” to see your new form!

Tip: Enhance your form’s branding by using your charity’s colours, make your form title compelling, and use a direct, short description so donors know who you are what you’re raising donations for.

9. When you’re ready to start collecting donations with your form, click on the Donation Forms tab in your account dashboard’s main navigation menu, and your form will appear in the list.

Select “Embed” to copy and paste the form’s code so that you can put it on a dedicated monthly giving page on your website. Alternatively, you can share a direct link to your form by clicking on “URL” to copy and paste the form code in emails, social media posts, and other communications to your donors.

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Tip: Having a donation form on your website keeps your donors where you need them to be in that crucial moment when they are about to give.

With these few easy steps, you can quickly start collecting monthly donations to create a steady, reliable source of recurring revenue for your charity. Be sure to try out Customizable Donations Forms for your other fundraising appeals and campaigns as well!

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