10 donor engagement strategies that let tech supplement tradition

What is donor engagement in the digital age?

Donor engagement is the process of making sure your nonprofit's supporters feel acknowledged, valued, and important — so they feel inspired to continue donating and championing your cause.

Previously, this meant keeping donors in the loop through newsletters, phone calls, and events. Put simply, it was a lot of one-way information broadcasting to your donors.

Today, donor engagement is far less transactional. It's focused on personalized, meaningful interactions — from your actual donation experience to your marketing materials — that foster strong, lasting relationships with supporters.

10 examples of digital donor engagement strategies

Here’s how to boost your fundraising ROI while building lasting relationships with your digital-first donors.

1. Guide donors with dynamic experiences (not static pages)

Your donors (and people who are thinking about donating) are bound to visit your website. When they do, giant walls of text, generic stock photos, and a single CTA buried at the bottom of the page probably aren't going to inspire action and enthusiasm.

Incorporating more dynamic website components makes your fundraising pages more engaging, helps donors feel like they’re a part of something meaningful, and can help create a sense of urgency. For example:

• Goal thermometers
• Animated donation buttons
• Impact sliders

Real results: Akashinga added a donate button to the header of its website and experienced a 41.6% increase in conversions from that button alone. Additionally, a Social Proof element on the website (which displays real-time notifications about recent donations) generated a 45.2% conversion rate.

2. Use personalized ask amounts (not generic “suggested donations”)

Suggested donation amounts have long been used as a tactic to inspire giving, but they can also miss the mark. Generic amounts don’t consider donor capacity, psychology, previous donations, or any other factors that have a significant impact on giving behavior. A $25 suggestion is too low for a major donor, but it could be too high for a first-time giver.

Forego the static donation amounts and use artificial intelligence to analyze patterns in donor capacity and behavior, and then suggest personalized donation amounts in real-time.

Real results: The Salvation Army UK uses AI to display personalized giving suggestions tailored to each donor. 70% of donors choose the AI-suggested giving amounts, and The Salvation Army UK saw a 49% donor conversion rate—far higher than the industry standard of 15% to 17%.

3. Reduce friction with an easy checkout (not clunky donation forms)

Looking at the world of e-commerce, the Baymard Institute says that 18% of people have abandoned a shopping cart just because the checkout process was too long or complicated. The same holds for your nonprofit: If you want people to donate, it needs to be easy for them to do so. Requiring account creation or multi-page forms increases their frustration—and makes them far more likely to abandon the donation process.

Minimize the complexity and reduce the number of steps required to complete a donation. Keep it to just a few essential steps, eliminate unnecessary form fields, and consider one-click donation options and mobile-optimized checkouts to make the entire experience as frictionless as possible.

Real results: World Hope International focused on optimizing its donor experience—including reducing the steps involved in completing a donation. As a result, the organization saw a 200% increase in online donation revenue.

4. Provide multiple payment options (not just credit cards)

While credit cards might seem like the universal payment method these days, there are still plenty of people who don’t have them (or just don’t want to use them). Requiring a credit card at checkout means alienating those supporters and missing out on a donation.

Allow people to donate using a diverse range of payment methods like digital wallets, bank transfers, and international currencies. Giving your donors options makes contributing easier, increases your conversions, and ensures everyone who wants to support your cause can do so.

Real results: Greater Good Charities optimized its donation experience, including offering a variety of payment methods for supporters. This contributed to a 161% lift in online revenue.

5. Make your donors feel celebrated (not cashed in on)

Understandably, you want your donors to donate. But constantly coming to them with your hand out will inevitably make them feel underappreciated and taken advantage of. Finding ways (even small ones) to recognize their support can keep your donor engagement strong.

Things like automatically generated lists of your top supporters, real-time notifications of donations, and personalized “thank you” emails can make them feel seen and valued—without being a super heavy lift for your team.

Real results: For its annual Radiothon, Pinky Swear Foundation incorporated displays of recent donations to instantly celebrate contributions and keep donors engaged and informed in real-time. The organization saw a $237 average event donation and raised more than $423,000 during the Radiothon.

6. Rely on strategic upsells (not aggressive monthly giving campaigns)

Think about the last time you were prompted to commit to a monthly charge for something. You were skeptical and hesitant, weren’t you? The same is true for your supporters. Jumping in mid-donation to ask for a recurring gift feels jarring and can prevent them from going through with their initial contribution.

Fortunately, intelligent upsell prompts are far less intrusive. They use AI to determine the right conditions and present an upsell at the optimal moment. It feels more like a natural progression, and less like an ambush in the middle of checkout.

Real results: UNICEF USA uses donation upsells to convert one-time donors into recurring monthly givers. That change alone has generated an additional $3 million in revenue for the organization.

7. Offer smart reminders (not guilt-driven follow-ups)

There’s little that’s more frustrating than a supporter leaving in the middle of the donation process—and that’s likely when you swoop in with a series of “last chance” emails to instill a sense of urgency and push them to seal the deal.

While there’s nothing wrong with a friendly nudge, heavy-handed and urgent emails can feel manipulative and damage long-term relationships with your donors.

Automated and intelligent email reminders are far gentler, acknowledge that life happens, and allow your donors to opt out at any time. They’re enough to provide a helpful tap on the shoulder, without making your supporters feel like you're holding their feet to the fire.

Real results: Using a reminder element, UNICEF USA captured more than 26,000 donations that would have otherwise been lost.

8. Make processing fees transparent (not tricky)

Nobody likes getting to checkout and seeing extra fees, which is why it’s so tempting to try to either sneak them by your donors or absorb those costs yourself. But both of those approaches backfire. Hidden fees create donor distrust and lead to more abandoned donations, while covering the fees on your end eats into what you get from each donation.

Instead, be upfront with your donors about the fees you incur from each donation—and then ask if they’re willing to cover those processing fees for you. It’s as simple as adding a checkbox to the checkout process. Worried it’ll send your donors running? AI can read the room and decide if asking the donor to cover the transaction cost will result in higher conversion.

Real results: An impressive 94.2% of Stand Up To Cancer’s donors covered their processing fees at checkout.

9. Tap into community-driven fundraising (not board member asks)

Your board members are passionate about your cause and committed to your organization, so there’s nothing wrong with asking them to draw on their personal networks when you’re fundraising. However, this arrangement can be awkward for both parties—particularly if they need to make repeated asks. Plus, your efforts are limited by your board size and their personal comfort level with fundraising.

Go beyond your board and empower your other supporters to fundraise. Provide easy-to-use tools and templates they can use to create their own fundraising pages. Offer shoutouts to successful peer fundraisers to applaud their efforts and encourage others to get involved.

Real results: Bringing Hope Home (BHH) made it easy for supporters to build their own campaigns. Doing so generated $84,960 in one quarter—a 138% increase in community-led fundraising revenue.

10. Use real-time data to understand what’s working now (instead of waiting for quarterly reports)

Quarterly reports might feel like they’re doing you a service, but they don’t give you the detailed or real-time data you need to understand what’s engaging your donors and what’s falling flat. You can keep those reports for your board meeting and your recordkeeping, but you also need a way to understand how every single element of your donor experience is (or isn’t) converting.

Use a dashboard that breaks down your performance, payment methods, popular days and times for donations, and even how all of your interactive elements are converting. This gives you the nitty-gritty insights you need to improve your donor experience and keep them engaged and invested.

Real results: Feed the Children tapped into its dashboard to understand performance and optimize its donor engagement strategies. As a result, the organization saw a 25% increase in Giving Tuesday donations and earned $40,000 in additional revenue in just three months.

Give your donors more (so they give right back)

It’s not that your traditional donor engagement strategies—dinners, phone calls, mailers, and more—are bad. It’s that donor expectations have evolved, and that means some other strategies might work better.

Fortunately, you aren’t in an “either/or” situation. You can blend your traditional, tried-and-true approaches with more tech-enabled tactics to connect with your donors on a deeper level and inspire them to take action. Much like with any other relationship, the more you give, the more you get.

Engage more donors and increase your revenue with Fundraise Up. Learn more now.