How Our Rescue's First Tap to Donate Event Landed a $731 Average Gift

When the anti-trafficking nonprofit Our Rescue piloted Fundraise Up’s In-Person Giving at a community event in Minneapolis, Senior VP of Advancement Teresa Harland used it to capture bigger, more spontaneous gifts in the moment — an average of $731 per gift, more than seven times the event’s $100 median donation.

At-a-glance

The organization

Our Rescue fights human trafficking and child exploitation, working with law enforcement to build cases against predators and with survivor care homes to give victims somewhere to recover. One of the organization’s most visceral tools is a team of dogs trained to detect the chemical signature on electronic storage devices — flash drives, SIM cards, phones — helping investigators find hidden evidence that predators try to conceal.

Some of Our Rescue’s highest intent moments include in-person experiences: at a gala after a canine demonstration stops a room cold, in a hallway conversation after a conference talk, in major donor meetings, or at a community event where a room full of new faces is hearing the mission for the first time.

Every July, the organization enters "Rise Up Month," with staff and volunteers hosting events across the country leading up to July 30, World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.

The event that put Tap to Donate to its first test was one of those live moments: a community gathering in Minneapolis that brought together women and their male allies to learn about the organization’s work

The challenge

Before Tap to Donate, Our Rescue had no way to take an online gift in the moment. A donor who was excited enough to want to give on the spot had two options: write a check, or go to the website later. Teresa Harland, Senior Vice President of Advancement, had watched that gap cost the organization donations for years — not just at events, but in ordinary conversations, on planes, in Ubers, with people who said "I love what you do" and had nowhere to act on it right then.

The problem didn’t end when the event did. Post-event, staff worked from an Excel spreadsheet of attendees, then manually re-entered names, gifts, and emails into the organization’s CRM, Virtuous — a process with no automation and no receipt sent until someone got to it.

The approach

Rather than treating Tap to Donate as a tool for the advancement team alone, Our Rescue’s leadership made a deliberate call: put it on every fundraiser’s phone, including the executive leadership team’s. The reasoning was cultural as much as operational — fundraising doesn’t belong only to the development office, and an organization representing itself in rooms nationwide needed more than one team equipped to close a gift when the moment called for it.

Harland tested the tool herself before relying on it in front of donors — loading the app, running a test gift, and confirming it worked, all inside five minutes, despite describing herself as "not always the most technologically savvy individual." She piloted it at a mid-size community event first, using the two-step flow deliberately: take the tap-to-pay gift in the moment, then capture the donor’s email at the receipt stage, converting a one-time in-person gift into a CRM record rather than a name on a spreadsheet.

The rollout is now scaling with the calendar. During Rise Up Month, staff and volunteers are using Tap to Donate at events across the country, giving Our Rescue its first month of usage at real volume rather than a single pilot.

The administrative shift has mattered as much as any single gift. Every donation now syncs directly to Virtuous with no manual re-entry. "It seamlessly went into the CRM, so there’s no manual process anymore for entering those emails or those gifts," Harland said. Donors also get their thank-you receipt instantly, on the spot, rather than waiting for a batch process days later.

The results

At that first event, Tap to Donate processed $6,576 across nine gifts — six from donors who were completely new to Our Rescue’s CRM, three from donors who had given before.

The number that stands out isn’t the total or the donor count. It’s the average gift: $731. More than seven times the event’s $100 median. That gap between average and median means a handful of gifts came in well above a typical in-person ask — including one donor Harland identified giving $1,000 in the moment.

"A new donor generously gave $1,000 in the moment…and I have been in correspondence with this donor to thank them, share more about what we do, and talk about ways in which his business and our organization can work together." — Teresa Harland, Senior Vice President of Advancement, Our Rescue

Because Tap to Donate captured that donor’s contact information in real time, Harland was able to follow up personally rather than waiting for a spreadsheet to be reconciled days later. Under the old process — check or website redirect, then manual entry into Virtuous — that gift, and that contact information, would likely have moved much slower, if it arrived at all.

From Demonstration to Donation

One of Our Rescue’s most powerful moments happens live, when the organization’s electronic storage device (ESD) canines demonstrate exactly what they’re trained to do: sniff out hidden flash drives, SIM cards, and phones that predators use to conceal evidence of child exploitation.

The reaction is always the same  — a room going quiet, then loud, lining up with questions. In this moment is when donors are moved so deeply that they are ready, right there in the moment, to take action and sponsor a dog.

That’s where Tap to Donate comes in. When a donor asks how to support a dog like the one they just watched work, Harland now has an answer that matches the moment:

"Absolutely, you can make a gift to support an ESD canine. Let’s make that gift happen right now." — Teresa Harland, Senior Vice President of Advancement, Our Rescue

The gift isn’t a follow-up action anymore, it’s part of the demonstration itself. The donor isn’t asked to remember their enthusiasm later — they are invited to act on it while the dog is still standing in front of them. Harland plans to use this exact moment again at a conference in late August, pairing a canine demonstration with the ability to take gifts directly from an inspired audience.

What’s next?

Our Rescue is scaling Tap to Donate past its first pilot.

During Rise Up Month, staff and volunteers are running it at events nationwide, which should give the organization a fuller data set beyond this first event — including a chance to test whether prompting for a recurring gift in the moment, not just a one-time tap, lifts sustainer numbers the way the average gift size already suggests it can.

The team also sees a second use case ahead: closing major gifts face-to-face. Every member of the advancement and executive leadership teams now carries Tap to Donate, with the specific goal of taking a gift in the moment when a major-gift prospect is ready — including at an upcoming conference in late August, where the CEO will pair a canine demonstration with the ability to take gifts directly from an inspired audience.

See how In-Person Giving from Fundraise Up can turn in-person generosity at your next event into stewarded donors.