Fundraising for Fiscal Sponsees: Donation Page Tips & Examples

Ready to start fundraising through Fiscal Sponsorship Allies? Check out our tips to make the most of your donation page so you can maximize the amount and size of donations. First, make sure you’ve applied to the fiscal sponsorship program! Donation pages through Fiscal Sponsorship Allies are only available to our fiscal sponsees who have been approved and activated. 

Please note, some features are only available on our premium donation pages, while others are available for all types of donation pages. If you’re unsure of what’s included with your donation page, check out our Guide to Fiscal Sponsorship.

 

1. Tell donors what kind of impact their gift could make.

Not everyone visiting your donation page will know all the great things your program does (or will do!). On your donation page, be sure to include what your mission is in simple terms. This allows people who are unfamiliar with your work or your cause to understand how donations can help.

It’s also useful to use the donation page feature that allows you to tell donors what different sizes of donations can do. Backyard Kids’ Theater is a great example of this. You’ll see on their donation page they’ve shown $50 can cover one costume for a child or $100 can cover the space rental for rehearsals. Putting it in tangible terms often motivates donors to give that little extra. 

One thing to note: Be mindful of how you word these statements. Statements like “your gift will provide food to 5 puppies,” suggests their donation will absolutely be used for that purpose. By using language like “your gift could provide food to 5 puppies,” or “this is the cost of food for 5 puppies,” you avoid having donors feel like their donation has been restricted to that purpose alone. The gift still goes to the mission, but it’s not a promise to the donor about how their specific gift will be used. Think of these statements as ways to put donation amounts into perspective, not as promises to donors.

 

2. Pictures say a thousand words.

Seeing your impact is even better than reading about it. If you have photos of your volunteers or team making a difference, use them on your donation page! Donation pages can have one featured image, as well as smaller images with each suggested donation amount for premium pages. If you have a cause that doesn’t allow you to use your own photos (like working with at-risk populations), there are plenty of websites to find great stock photography for free. We suggest Unsplash, Pexels, or even Canva. Search for your cause, or keywords related to your cause, to find some high quality images to use on your page. 

Autism Moms of Kona does a great job using pictures to help people visualize the great work they’re doing to support autistic children and their families. You can even include a video on your donation page! The video can be in the featured image space or directly below it.

 

3. Have a goal donors can rally behind.

What are you hoping to accomplish by raising funds? It seems like a simple question, but it’s so important to donors. Create a fundraising goal and tie it to something tangible. For example, if you have a free tutoring program for kids, you could mention on your donation page that you have a goal of raising $10,000. But don’t stop there, tell people what that goal truly means for your organization. In this example, we could say “our goal is to raise $10,000 to support 20 kids going through after-school tutoring for one school year.” 

If you’ve selected the premium page, highlighting a monetary goal with the visual donation thermometer is a great option. Remember to let donors know why that’s your goal. For example, Hamilton Hoosiers Refugee Support Team has a goal of $30,000 so they can sponsor a Ukrainian family’s relocation costs and expenses for 6 months. They explain this in the paragraph below their featured photo of the family. Tying your donation goal to accomplishing a certain result makes it more real for donors and helps them understand why the number is important.

 

4. Put your donation page right on your website.

For sponsees with premium access, putting your donation page right on your website can be a great option to allow people to give without leaving your site. This also allows for greater control over the look of the page where people donate. Our team can create an embeddable donation widget for you to include on your website. This is a few lines of code that go onto your website to allow it to live on whichever page(s) you’d like. There are a few kinds of donation widgets we can create for you.

The simplest donation widget simply allows people to enter their gift amount and select “one time” or “monthly.”

You can also include suggested donation amounts on this simple donation widget.

You can also opt for a more built-out donation widget that resembles a mini version of the regular donation pages. We’ve created an example for a sample charity below. We’ve customized the donation amounts, the donation text, and the colors. All of those aspects are customizable to fit your charitable mission.

 

5. Emphasize your monthly giving option.

No matter what kind of donation page you have, each donation page allows donors to make a monthly gift. We highly recommend highlighting this option, as it’s a super easy way for donors to support your cause on an ongoing basis without having to make another gift. And it gives you peace of mind that you’ll have more consistent sources of donations. 

Ask your Fiscal Sponsorship Allies representative about the option to make “monthly” the default for your donors. This option allows all donations to default to monthly, and then the donor can choose to give one-time instead. 

Got a fundraising event coming up?

Ask our team about our event donation pages! We can create sponsorship levels, ticket prices, and a map showing the location of the event. You can also include a featured image and text about your event as well. We suggest keeping information on the event page short, sweet and to-the-point like EFAM Foundation did for their gala page, as seen in the screenshots below.

If you’re looking for event sponsors and would like to offer your sponsors benefits, there’s also an optional section where you can list the benefits of each level of sponsorship. You’ll see the platinum table at this event comes with tons of great features for the sponsor!

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways to customize your fiscal sponsorship donation page through Fiscal Sponsorship Allies. Included in the set up fee for fiscal sponsorship is one full donation page refresh, so if you’d like to revamp your donation page, please reach out to your representative. 

Premium donation pages have even more features than our basic pages, including crowdfunding, embeddable donation widgets, and more. If you already have a donation page, remember that you can upgrade to premium at any time. Though it can take a moment of your time to think through the text, images, and video to place on your donation page, it’s worth the time investment to ensure you’re making the most of it. A professional-looking donation page can go a long way to boost donors’ confidence in making a gift.