Research shows nonprofits lose roughly 50% of first-time donors. Download this free field guide to learn 10 simple, science-backed principles that build donor trust and make giving effortless.
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Built on real donor science and tested on live fundraising pages
Grounded in research from leading academic journals, including the Journal of Marketing and Urban Institute.
Two hidden forces determine whether a donor gives or walks away: Confidence and Friction. Here is a look at what you’ll learn inside:
The Problem: Most donation pages accidentally make donors hesitate, doubt security, or feel confused before they even fill out the form.
Inside the Guide: Discover 6 simple psychological triggers that build instant trust and prove to donors that their money is safe.
The Problem: Extra form questions, slow mobile load times, and too many choices ruin giving rates for donors who wanted to give.
Inside the Guide: Master 4 fast design fixes that remove mental fatigue, speed up mobile checkout to under 3 seconds, and turn one-time givers into repeat supporters.
The Problem: Research is useless if you need a software engineer or a big budget to use it.
Inside the Guide: Get our simple, step-by-step campaign rollout plan and a 10-point checklist to grade your donation pages before launch.
Half of all new donors never give a second time because of confusing checkout forms and poor thank-you steps.
Donors who get a quick thank-you give 21% more on their next donation – yet only 39% of donors ever get thanked.
Page delays over 3 seconds cause more than half of mobile visitors to leave without giving.
Watch now for a first look at the science behind every donor decision. Download the full field guide for the full framework and a practical checklist to put it to work.
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It's Donorbox's set of ten principles for getting donors to give and keep giving. We built it from published research on donor behavior, and it covers two jobs: making donors feel confident in you, and taking the friction out of giving.
Six are about confidence: transparency, credibility, congruence, security, impactful messaging and reciprocation. Four are about friction: attention, reduced cognitive load, easily repeated and accessibility. In plain terms, donors give when they trust you and when giving is easy, and these ten cover both.
Most of the time they just don't come back. About half of new donors never give a second time (Kim et al., 2021). The research links coming back to trust, credibility, satisfaction and how well an organization communicates (Roberson, 2015).
Aim for under three seconds on a phone. Google's 2016 research found that 53% of mobile visits were abandoned when a page took longer than that (Google, "The Need for Mobile Speed"). The study looked at mobile sites in general, not donation pages, but donors are unlikely to be more patient.
As soon as you can. Only 39% of donors are thanked or recognized, and donors who were thanked said they would give 21% more next time (Merchant et al., 2010). The research doesn't name a deadline. Our advice is a personal thank you within 48 hours. The guide covers this under Reciprocation.
Not the framework itself. The ten principles are Donorbox's own work and haven't been through a journal's peer review. They're built on published academic studies, mostly from peer reviewed journals, and each claim links to its source so you can check it.
No. Every principle ends with a Do This Now list of small steps. Most are about wording, layout and follow up, so you don't need to code. A few, like page speed, may need a developer or your donation platform's support team.
It includes a 6 step campaign plan and a 10 point checklist for testing your donation page before you launch.
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Stop losing donations at checkout. Download the free guide to check your fundraising setup and turn single gifts into long-term support.