Your donation form offers a seamless donation checkout and helps you collect information about your donors to store safely in your database. This information can help you personalize communications, strengthen your donor relationships, and analyze your donations. In this article, we’ll look at some questions you can ask on your donation form and collect insights to apply in the future.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!Your Donorbox donation form not only offers a seamless donation checkout but can also help you collect information about your donors (as well as donations) and store it safely into your database. This information helps you personalize communications, strengthen your donor relationships, analyze your donations, and more.
Every online donation form comes with some basic questions like donor name, address, phone number, employment information, donation designation, tribute information, comments, etc. These are your default options but nonprofits need to learn more.
Donorbox lets you add additional questions to collect useful information about your donor, the source the of donation, and why the donor is gifting. You can also use it to find potential volunteers and identify potential long-term donors and members.
In this article we will look at some of questions that you can ask on your Donorbox donation form and collect useful insights to apply in the future.
This information helps nonprofits learn about their most effective marketing strategies and channels. The donor may have come to your donation page from the email you sent a week ago. Or maybe they attended one of your fundraising events. Or maybe it is from one of the peer-to-peer fundraiser campaigns that your supporters are running. They could also be from a Facebook ad or an Instagram story.
Whatever the source, you must know the information in order to strengthen your marketing strategy for that channel. And to let go of those that aren’t bringing any results.
Check out this example by the Jefferson County Historical Society. They have added this question to their donation form with drop-downs reflecting the options.
This additional question is a great opportunity for you to easily take consent from donors to send email updates. Sometimes nonprofits send updates without getting approval. You can even give them the option to choose how they’d like to receive the updates: phone, email, by mail, or none.
Here’s an example from Peter McVerry Trust’s donation page that includes the donation form below. They ask their donors two consecutive questions on how they’d like to be contacted for updates.
If your nonprofit is selling t-shirts to raise money for a need or you’re hosting a golf tournament, competition, event, or game, you’d want to have some details from the donors. These details include questions like –
…and of course, more! The list is endless and these questions help your nonprofit better host the event or the campaign while ensuring you deliver a good experience to your donors. Here are some examples for inspiration –
T-shirt campaign donation form –
Raffle event donation form –
Nonprofits need volunteers, more often than not. Be it for a community project like cleaning parks or planting trees or helping organize a fundraising event, volunteers are essential. Many of your donors may be willing to help. All you need to do is ask.
Here’s an example from Help Finder, a UK-based organization.
The best way to personalize donor communication is to ask them a personal question that elicits positive emotions. This information can be used to better understand the donor’s psychology, their campaign or event preferences, the driving force behind their donations, etc.
You can then personalize a solicitation script to have a staff member call the donor, thank them personally, and let them know of a beneficiary story (or other impact details) that will move them. This will strengthen the relationship as well as inspire more donations from the donor.
The Kingston Land Trust has added this additional question to their donation form as a text field to give donors the freedom to write whatever comes to their minds upon reading the question.
Navigate to your Donorbox dashboard. Click on “Campaigns” and find the campaign you want to add the questions to. Then, click on the “Edit Campaign” button, as highlighted below.
Click on the “Additional Questions” tab. Here, you can select the tab corresponding to the section you want to add additional questions to: choose between the Amounts page or the Donor Information page.
To add additional questions to the first page of your donation form, click on the “Amount Page.”
Select your question type (open-ended question, single checkbox, dropdown, or radio), edit the text, and include the answer options. Add as many questions as you need, but remember to stick to the information that makes the most sense to streamline the experience for donors.
Click on the “Donor Information Page” tab to add additional questions to that screen.
Here, you have the same choice of question type (open-ended question, single checkbox, dropdown, or radio). Edit the text of your questions and add answer options, if necessary. Again, you can add as many additional questions as you need.
You can also make your questions mandatory.
That’s all! Once you’re happy with your additional questions, click “Save.“
Once you’re finished, click “Preview Form” to see how your questions look on your donation form.
Adding additional questions to your Donorbox donation form is a great way to connect with donors and collect valuable information that propels your mission.
Along with helping you create and customize online campaigns, we’re passionate about creating the most innovative fundraising features that help scale your impact.
Explore the rest of our Nonprofit Blogfor more insightful fundraising ideas and tips. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive a curated list of insights and resources sent straight to your inbox.
Chirasree Bose is the Content Editor at Donorbox. Apart from editing and writing, what holds her interest the most is reading books. Chirasree loves to explore the world of fiction and has authored some books herself. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!
