Upgrade Links
Create personalized links for each of your recurring supporters, allowing them to increase their regular donation with zero friction.
Upgrade Links can be created and distributed by your organization to encourage recurring supporters to donate more.
When supporters open these links, they are given the option to increase their donation amount or start covering their transaction costs, depending on which type of link you create and send. These links do not allow supporters to decrease or cancel their recurring donation.
You create the personalized links, which can then be added to communications with recurring supporters — in email campaigns, for example. You can create these links with a hash function or without.
Types of Upgrade Link
There are two types of Upgrade Link you can create.
- Main donation amount upgrade: e.g. encourage a supporter who donates 25 USD per month to go up to 40 USD. The optimal amounts that should be suggested to each supporter are chosen by Fundraise Up’s AI, which detects factors such as the supporter’s location and donation amount, to maximize successful upgrades.
- Cost coverage upgrade: encourage a supporter who doesn’t cover the costs for their donations to start doing so. E.g. if the supporter donates 20 USD per month, this link would upgrade them to cover fees, say, to 22 USD per month.
Type 1: Upgrading the main donation amount
This is the first type: where the supporter is upgraded on the main donation amount, for example from a 25 USD monthly donation to a 40 USD monthly donation. As mentioned above, our AI will decide which increase amounts each supporter is offered. They will also be presented with a checkbox option to cover their transaction costs, as in the original Checkout form.
When a supporter clicks the link to increase their main donation amount, they’ll see this screen:
If the supporter already covers costs for their regular donation, and you send them an Upgrade Link to increase their main donation amount, they will also be upgraded on the cost coverage. For example, if they were covering the 2 USD costs for their 20 USD donation and they decided to increase it to 50 USD, the upsell takes them to 50 USD plus the higher costs — say, 5 USD. So, they’d go from 22 USD to 55 USD in this imagined scenario, and not 22 USD to 52 USD. This is made clear to supporters, as in the following example:
Type 2: Upgrading for cost coverage
This is the second type of upgrade: recurring supporters are given the option to start covering the costs associated with their regular donation. If the supporter opens the cost-coverage Upgrade Link, they’ll see this screen:
If a supporter does choose to start covering their costs, they’ll also be given the option to increase their main donation amount, once the cost covering has been confirmed. Likewise, if a supporter who already covers their costs is accidentally sent this type of link, they see the following screen:
Hash functions
You can create links with a secure hash function or without.
A hash function is a mathematical function that turns a set of data (in this case a secret key, the supporter ID and the recurring ID) into a secure bit string that’s contained within the Upgrade Link.
In practical terms, this means:
- For links created without a hash function — supporters will then have to confirm their donation increase in an email.
- For links created with a hash function — supporters do not need to confirm their donation in an email. Once they confirm their increase on the Upgrade screens, the increase is confirmed in the system.
Because supporters aren’t required to do the final confirmation from their email, conversion will likely be noticeably better when using Upgrade Links with a hash function. Learn more about hash functions →
Upgrade Links in installment emails
Starting from the second installment onwards, supporters who give monthly will be offered the option to increase their regular donation amount right from their installment email. The suggested amounts will be chosen by our AI.
Supporters who have set a limit (max plan installments, max donation amount or cut-off date) on their recurring plan will not see this increase option in the last installment email.
If a supporter decides to increase recurring donation amount (even using another platform's feature), they won’t see this option in the next two installment emails.