Organizations using Fundraise Up consistently see higher donation conversion, more recurring donors, and greater online fundraising revenue. Across the platform, the average donation conversion rate is 30%, compared with an industry benchmark of around 8%.
So what makes that possible?
The result does not come from one feature, one unusually successful campaign, or one clever conversion trick. It comes from improving dozens of small moments across the donor journey.
Most donation platforms lose supporters little by little. One donor leaves because Checkout takes too long. Another cannot find their preferred payment method. Someone else sees a recurring ask that feels irrelevant. Another abandons a donation and never returns.
Each individual leak may appear small, but together, they can have a significant impact on fundraising performance. Fundraise Up is designed to close those leaks one by one. When all those improvements work, their impact compounds into substantially better giving results.
The formula behind higher fundraising performance
More people donate when you improve every stage of the donor journey.
1. More donors start
When giving opportunities are easy to find, feel relevant, and open into a fast, trusted experience, more website visitors take the first step toward donating.
For example: Adding real-time Social Proof increased the number of visitors who opened Checkout by 2.29%.
2. Fewer donors abandon
A simple, mobile-friendly journey removes the delays, extra steps, and unnecessary typing that cause donors to leave before completing their gift.
For example: In a Fundraise Up experiment, requiring a mailing address reduced donation conversion by 3.4% overall and 4.3% on mobile. That is why Fundraise Up recommends keeping these fields optional unless they are essential.
3. Donors make better giving decisions
Each donor sees amounts, payment methods, and giving options that feel relevant to them, making it easier to decide how much to give and whether to give once or regularly.
The result: Fundraise Up customers consistently see 3x larger average gifts than industry benchmarks.
4. More value continues after the gift
Timely follow-ups, relevant invitations to give regularly or increase support, payment recovery, and easy gift management help more donor relationships continue and grow over time.
The result: Around 80% of recurring plans remain active after 12 months.
No single part of this formula produces the final result. Every improvement supports the next, and the impact comes from all of them working together.
The concept sounds simple. Building, testing, and continuously optimizing every part of it is not.
It all starts with the fundamentals
Before personalization or AI can improve a donation experience, the experience itself needs to work well.
Fundraise Up applies the same principles that make the best e-commerce checkouts successful: make giving fast, intuitive, and effortless.
Keep donors focused on giving
Traditional donation forms often send supporters to a separate page or third-party subdomain. That transition can introduce a delay, interrupt the emotional connection with the nonprofit’s website, and give donors another opportunity to leave.
Fundraise Up’s Checkout Modal opens directly over the nonprofit’s website, keeping the donor in the same experience from the moment they click Donate to the moment they complete their gift.
Make every step earn its place
Long forms create more opportunities for hesitation and abandonment.
Fundraise Up breaks giving into concise, manageable steps and minimizes the information donors need to enter. Features such as address autofill reduce typing, while unnecessary fields can be removed entirely.
This is not simplification for its own sake. Every field, screen, and interaction must justify the friction it introduces.
Adapt to how donors prefer to pay
The fastest way to donate is not the same for every person.
Fundraise Up prioritizes payment methods based on factors such as the donor’s device, location, and available options. An iPhone user, for example, may see Apple Pay prominently instead of having to enter card information manually.
The experience adjusts to the donor rather than asking the donor to adjust to the platform.
Design for mobile from the beginning
Mobile devices now account for 53.1% of donations processed through Fundraise Up, up 7.9% year over year.
A mobile giving experience cannot simply be a smaller version of a desktop form. It needs layouts, steps, payment methods, and interactions designed specifically for small screens and interrupted attention.
Learn more about how Fundraise Up optimizes the nonprofit donation form.
Engineer for speed and reliability
A well-designed form cannot convert if it loads slowly or becomes unavailable during a major campaign.
Fundraise Up’s Checkout loads in under 1.7 seconds on average and is continuously monitored for speed, completion rates, Web Vitals, and the performance of individual steps.
The platform is also tested across devices, including older models, to identify performance issues before they affect donors.
These fundamentals remove a surprising amount of friction and create the foundation for stronger performance.
But there is another challenge: no two donors behave in exactly the same way.
That's where AI becomes valuable
The experience that encourages one donor to give may discourage another.
Some supporters respond well to an invitation to give monthly, while others simply want to make a one-time donation. One donor may be likely to increase their gift, while another may abandon Checkout if shown the same suggestion.
Rather than giving every donor the same experience, Fundraise Up uses AI to adapt key moments throughout the giving journey.
AI built specifically for fundraising performance
Fundraise Up’s AI is not a general-purpose tool added to a donation form.
Its models have been developed specifically to improve fundraising outcomes and have been woven into the donor experience from the beginning. They have been refined for nearly a decade, learning from millions of donations across more than 3,500 nonprofits.
Using numerous non-personally identifiable signals, the system can adapt the giving experience based on context such as device, location, behavior, timing, and historical giving patterns.
Depending on the situation, AI can help determine:
- Which donation amounts to suggest
- Whether to emphasize a one-time or recurring gift
- Which recurring upgrade amounts to recommend
- When to present an upsell
- How to display cost coverage
- When additional prompts could create friction rather than value
The objective is not simply to get more people through Checkout. Fundraise Up evaluates performance across metrics such as conversion, recurring giving, donation revenue, average revenue per supporter, fee coverage, upgrades, downgrades, and retention.
That distinction matters. A change that increases conversion but substantially reduces donation value may not be a meaningful improvement. Neither is an upsell that attracts more recurring donors but causes them to cancel soon afterward.
The models are designed and tested with the broader donor relationship in mind.
Simple for donors. Complex behind the scenes.
A donor may see only a few suggested amounts or a timely invitation to increase their monthly gift. Behind that recommendation are years of model development, historical data, segmentation, experimentation, and performance analysis.
Fundraise Up’s AI is also never static. New and improved models are continuously developed and tested against existing versions to prove that they deliver better results.
For example, Fundraise Up tested a newer AI model for recommending upgrade amounts in recurring donor emails. The experiment included approximately 366,000 donor sessions over 64 days.
The newer model delivered:
- An 8.57% increase in email-to-upgrade conversion
- A 26.77% increase in revenue per visitor to the upgrade experience
- No increase in downgrades or negative impact on retention
The same testing approach applies across the donor journey, from Checkout and post-donation emails to the Donor Portal and recurring gift management.
Because building a donor experience is only half the job. The more important question is: does it actually help nonprofits raise more?
That is why every meaningful change must prove itself before it reaches organizations.
Every improvement has to prove itself
Good ideas do not always become good donor experiences.
That is why Fundraise Up does not rely solely on assumptions, trends, or intuition. Major product changes are evaluated using real donor behavior.
The team runs more than 70 experiments every year, with multiple tests active at any given time. Each experiment measures more than 20 primary fundraising metrics, alongside detailed analysis across devices, countries, browsers, operating systems, and donor segments.
For nonprofits, all of that work happens behind the scenes. They benefit from improvements that have already been tested and proven to perform.
Sometimes moving one screen changes everything
Employer matching can significantly increase the value of a donation, so it may seem logical to ask donors about it before payment.
But adding another screen before the gift is completed also creates another opportunity for someone to leave. Fundraise Up tested moving the employer-matching experience until after payment.
The result:
- Overall donation conversion increased by 3.77%
- Conversion among iOS donors increased by 7.54%
- Matching participation remained unchanged
The opportunity stayed the same. Only the timing changed.
Sometimes better timing recovers more donations
A donor who abandons Checkout may still intend to give, but the timing of the reminder can determine whether they return.
We tested different timing for abandoned-donation emails to understand when donors were most likely to resume and complete their gift. It turned out that sending an email reminder 1 hour after checkout abandonment increased conversion.
- +5.7% lift in overall donation conversion
- +11% increase in donors returning to complete their gift within the first 7 days after abandonment
The lesson was not simply that reminders work. It was that even a helpful message performs differently depending on when it reaches the donor.
Sometimes the best answer depends on the donor
Not every experiment produces one universal winner.
Fundraise Up tested offering eligible donors a four-weekly recurring gift instead of a monthly plan. Overall, the difference was small, but segment analysis revealed a more useful answer.
- Among donors giving $70–$120, recurring conversion increased by approximately 37%
- Among donors giving $15 or less, recurring conversion declined by nearly 20%
Instead of selecting one experience for everyone, Fundraise Up introduced the new option only where it demonstrably improved fundraising.
It was launched selectively for the donors and markets where the data showed a clear benefit, while the existing monthly experience remained in place for the segments where it performed better.
And sometimes the best idea simply doesn't work
A single-screen mobile Checkout sounded like an obvious improvement. Instead of moving through several concise steps, donors would see all required fields on one screen.
- The new experience loaded 29% faster and increased the number of people who opened Checkout by 3.76%.
- But fewer people completed their donation. Conversion to donor decreased by 5.38%, while average donation amount and revenue per visitor also declined.
Fundraise Up ended the test and kept the better-performing step-by-step experience.
The idea was logical. The data showed that it did not work.
That is exactly why testing matters. Without an experiment, a faster and cleaner-looking Checkout might have been shipped based on intuition. By testing it first, Fundraise Up protected nonprofits from a change that would have reduced fundraising performance.
Fundraising, without the guesswork
The Donor Experience Hub includes dozens of experiments with positive, neutral, mixed, and unsuccessful outcomes.
Each test includes its hypothesis, duration, audience, group split, primary metrics, sample size, segment analysis, statistical findings, and rollout decision.
Nonprofits can see not only what Fundraise Up changed, but why.
Small improvements become meaningful fundraising growth for real nonprofits
Individual experiments show how specific parts of the donor experience improve. Customer results show what happens when the complete system works together.
$3 million in additional annual revenue
At UNICEF USA, Fundraise Up’s recurring Upsell has generated more than $3 million in additional annual revenue.
The Reminder Element has also recovered more than 26,000 donations, while 82% of donors choose to cover processing fees.
Fundraise Up supports our strategic goals. Because we can count on the Fundraise Up platform and team, we’ve been able to dream bigger, try new things, and innovate with new and different fundraising efforts to ensure we deliver the greatest impact for children. And we have the results to show for it.
Helene Vallone, Vice President, Direct Response
64% more online donation revenue
Canadian Red Cross nearly doubled year-end campaign revenue after moving to Fundraise Up, increasing from $3.8 million to nearly $7 million in its first major campaign on the platform.
The organization also saw:
- 48% more donations
- A 10% increase in average gift size
- A 25% click-to-donate conversion rate on Fundraise Up Campaign Pages
The results came after a six-month implementation that included Campaign Pages, AI-suggested donation amounts, digital wallets, recurring upsells, the Donor Portal, and a monthly donor migration.
They listen. They are keen to understand and learn. The support has been amazing. I can’t speak more highly of Fundraise Up.
Jessica Bernat, Director of Digital Marketing
20% to 68% conversion
Pancreatic Cancer UK increased donation form conversion from 20% to approximately 68% after moving away from its previous donation experience.
In the first year, one-time online donations more than doubled from £300,000 to £618,000, while regular gift pledges increased from 805 to 2,226.
We now have a platform that's as future-forward as we are. It helps us reach so many more donors, which means we can fund even more life-saving research and support services for people affected by pancreatic cancer. The impact Fundraise Up has had on our fundraising capabilities cannot be overstated.
Ciara Cakebread, Individual, Giving & Legacy Lead at Pancreatic Cancer UK
These organizations serve different audiences, run different campaigns, and operate different fundraising models.
Their exact results vary, but the mechanism remains consistent: remove more friction, make more relevant recommendations, test every improvement, and optimize for the full value of the donor relationship.
Better fundraising is built one improvement at a time
Many nonprofits hope there is one feature that will dramatically increase online giving. In reality, sustainable fundraising growth rarely comes from one breakthrough. It comes from hundreds of small decisions:
- A faster Checkout
- One less required field
- The right payment method
- A more relevant recurring ask
- A recovered abandoned donation
- A better-timed upgrade six months later
Each change may contribute only part of the final result. But donation performance is cumulative.
When every part of the donor journey works a little better, more people begin giving, more of them finish, each visit produces more value, and more donor relationships continue over time.
No single trick. One system designed to perform.
Across Fundraise Up, that system contributes to:
- An average donation conversion rate of approximately 30%, compared with an industry benchmark of around 8%
- 3x larger average gift amounts than industry benchmarks
- Around 80% of recurring plans remaining active after one year
- More than 80% of donors covering transaction costs
Fundraise Up is not built around one optimization. It is built as a complete system that continuously improves every part of the donor experience, so nonprofits can spend less time guessing what works and more time advancing their mission.