Someone reads your appeal email on their phone, taps through to your website and means to give. Then the donate button isn't on the first screen. Or the form wants them to create an account before it will take their money. Or it asks for twelve things when it needs five. They close the tab, and you never find out. A gift that never arrives doesn't show up in any report.
It happens more often than most charities realise. In the US, M+R's 2026 Benchmarks found that 11% of desktop visitors and 8% of mobile visitors who landed on a nonprofit's main donation page went on to give. Put the other way, roughly nine in ten people who reach the donation page leave without giving. There's no comparable published figure for New Zealand, Australia or Canada, which is one more reason to watch your own numbers.
Most donors never get past the header
Alex Carter, who builds and looks after nonprofit websites at XP, sees the same thing again and again. “The disheartening thing can be seeing people arrive on a page and never even get past the header,” he says.
On one charity website we monitor, about six weeks:
- Fewer than 1 visitor in 100 went on to open a giving page
- About 1 in 5 of those who did gave
That second figure is well above the US average for donation pages. Most of the loss happened before the form, in getting people to it.
So the first screen on a phone has three jobs: say who you are, say why it matters now, and show a way to give. Speed matters too. M+R found the average nonprofit donation page took almost 12 seconds to show its content on mobile, compared with about 3 seconds on desktop. Most people won't wait that long.
Trust comes before the ask
People want to know who they're giving to before they hand over their card details. Make it easy to check:
- Show that you're a registered charity, with your number, and link to your entry on the register: the Charities Register in New Zealand, the ACNC register in Australia, or the Canada Revenue Agency's list of charities in Canada
- Say plainly whether gifts are tax-deductible and when the receipt will arrive
- Show what a gift does, in one sentence, close to the donate button
- Include a real address, a phone number and the people behind the charity
Three places donors give up
“In my experience, all three are true,” Alex says: “long forms, account walls, hard to find donate buttons.”
A donate button you have to hunt for
Put it in the header of every page, make it look like a button, and make sure it shows on a phone without scrolling.
Try it now: open your homepage on your phone. Can you see Donate straight away?
Account walls
Asking someone to create an account before they can give puts a password between them and the gift. Let people give as a guest, and offer an account afterwards if it helps them. Keep them on your own website as well: every hand-off to another site is another chance to leave.
Try it now: can you give without signing up?
Long forms
Ask only for what you need to take the gift, send the receipt and say thank you. Everything else can wait for later.
Try it now: count the fields between Donate and Pay.
What donors expect when they do give
Once people reach the form, giving should feel like any other quick online purchase:
- Paying the way they already pay online, without hunting for a card
- A clear amount, and what that amount does
- A thank-you and a receipt straight away
- Being recognised next time they give
That last point matters more than it sounds. If your website and your CRM don't talk to each other, every online gift becomes a job for someone in the office, and the next email a donor gets may not know they've already given. Getting to one source of truth for supporter data is what lets you thank people properly and ask at the right time.
When Children Believe, an international children's charity based in Canada, rebuilt its website and CRM together, the lack of connection between the two had been costing staff time on repetitive admin. The new website was built to work with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Read the Children Believe story.
Don't set and forget
Most charity websites are built, launched and then left alone until the next redesign. Alex's advice: “Engaging people is challenging, so don't set and forget. Monitor your pages, and adapt during a campaign if you're not seeing the results you're looking for.”
During an appeal, keep an eye on:
- How many people reach your giving page
- Where they leave
- How many complete a gift, on mobile and on desktop
If the first week of an appeal isn't working, change the page, not just the email. Move the button up, cut a field, or put the impact statement closer to the ask. Small changes mid-campaign can be worth more than a new website next year.
A five-minute test you can run today
- Open your last appeal email on your phone and tap through to give
- Time how long it takes to give a small gift
- Count the fields you have to fill in
- Try to give without creating an account
- Check that the thank-you and receipt arrive
- Write down every point where you hesitated, because your donors will too
Make the last step the easy one
Your website is often the last step between someone wanting to help and the gift arriving. It's worth checking it works as well as your appeal does. XP builds and looks after websites for nonprofits in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, and can help you keep an eye on how your giving pages perform once they're live.
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