Maximize Your Donation “Thank You” Page

Everyone wants to be thanked, no matter how big or how small their contribution is.

Our own Bridget Willard summarized that well in her video “#GuruMinute”. When it comes to online donations there are LOTS of ways to say “Thank you” to your donors. But the very first way to say “Thank you” is with your Donation Confirmation page. This page is not a receipt, or just a “Yep, it worked!” This is the first place to show your appreciation that someone decided to donate their hard earned cash to your cause.

With that in mind, there’s several ways you can maximize the effectiveness of your Thank You pages, especially with Give.

How Does Give Handle Thank You Pages?

Before we jump into HOW to optimize this page, let’s go over exactly what this page is in Give. Simply put, it’s a page with this shortcode on it:

[[give_receipt]]

When you first install Give, a page called “Donation Confirmation” is created for you automatically and this shortcode is added to its content. You can read up on the technical sides of this at our Give 101 page, or on the Shortcodes Documentation page.

But what that all means is that your “Thank You” page is just that — a page. Plain a simple. That means you can add anything you like to that page. Does that mean you should go hog-wild? No! Here’s three main things to keep in mind as you’re building out your Thank You page.

Say Thank You Prominently

Children's Hospital Thank You Video impressed Mr. Allen with it's effectiveness.
Children’s Hospital Thank You Video impressed Mr. Allen with it’s effectiveness.

The first thing to think about is what will your donors see when they land on that page? Will they just see your logo and a giant header and menu items? Or can you clean that up a bit just for that page and show them a big giant THANK YOU as an image or text? A warm welcoming image of the people your donors are helping really goes a long ways.

Or take it up a notch and put together a quick Thank You video. But as with all things, videos can be more harm than help. But when they are done well they make for a great impact.

Recently, fundraising expert Adrian Allen reviewed over 40 “Thank You” videos of non-profits. He said that many of them failed in three main aspects:

  • Too long
  • Didn’t explain the benefits of donating
  • Just confusing

Allen also found many that were excellent examples and they are listed at the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s article on Allen’s findings. Of course, the opposite is true of the videos he really liked. They were short, explained the benefits of donating, and were direct and clear. Aim for that and you’re good to go.

Regardless of whether you use a prominent header, images, or a video, it’s important that the first things donors see after they donate is something that is encouraging and welcoming.

Display the Confirmation Usefully

Next, the “Thank You” page should be useful as well. The donor should see the relevant information about their transaction. As mentioned previously, Give adds the receipt to this page for you automatically, but there’s several other useful things you can do either before or after the actual receipt.

  • Inform the donor that they will receive an automated email of their donation as well.
  • If you ask for donors to login to your site to donate, you could also provide a link to their full “Donation History” page.
  • You could put a “Print” button right below the Receipt with a service like PrintFriendly.com or use our PDF Receipts Addon which has many more benefits as well.

Bottom line is to give the donor what they need here to file their taxes appropriately and as easily as possible.

Suggest Some Next Steps

On our donation confirmation page, we ask users how effective our Donation form is.
On our donation confirmation page, we ask users how effective our Donation form is.

Your relationship with your donors is very important. You don’t want it to end with just one donation. Your last section of your Thank You page could invite them to their next action or type of engagement with you and your organization. Here’s a few ideas:

  • List upcoming events they can RSVP for
  • List some other online resources or articles on your site that you think might be relevant to them.
  • Give them the ability to share that they donated to your cause with a Click to Tweet plugin.
  • Do a simple and very short Survey asking them how your organization can help them more.

Of course, just like all things, keep this section as short and to-the-point as possible. There’s no reason to spend a lot of time on a feature that might just end up being ignored because it’s asking too much or is confusing to your donors.

Other Reources for Thank You Pages

There’s a lot of great resources online for optimizing your campaigns and even your Thank You pages. Here’s a few that we find useful as well.

Share Your Thank You Page!

If you’ve got a great Thank You page that you built with Give, we’d love to see it. Add it in the comments below.

 

 

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