Trust & Revenue: Optimizing Nonprofit Donation Pages

Online donation forms are often the most overlooked friction point in nonprofit fundraising, yet they serve as the ultimate moment of donor conversion. In this episode, Danielle Rice, Senior Director of Solutions at Fundraise Up, breaks down how nonprofits can bridge the trust gap by treating their donation experience as a core product rather than a simple processing step. The discussion covers practical ways to leverage modern payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay to reduce friction, the difference between "creepy" and helpful personalization, and the critical need for AI governance and clear privacy policies to protect donor data. By focusing on a "Jobs-to-Be-Done" framework and aligning technical improvements with organizational goals, fundraising teams can move beyond tactical traps and build a sustainable, high-trust digital giving experience.

Transcript

Donor Behavior Shift And Free Report

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In 2025, donor behavior broke the assumptions most teams still used plan. FundraiseUp's Pulse of the Donor 2026 gives you benchmark data on what changed and what to do next. Download the free report today at fundraiseup.com.

Welcome And Danielle Rice Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer. Joined today by my friend Daniel Rice. Very excited. When I tell you, like literally every time I open LinkedIn and Daniel has a post, I'm like, yes, that. Let's talk about that. And so I'm very excited to have her actually on the podcast today so we can dig into some of those things. Danielle, welcome in. Hi, good to be here. Yeah. So, Danielle, uh, I should have said this in my introduction. You are the senior director of solutions at Fundraise Up. So obviously, we're talking fundraising today. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your kind of your journey in the nonprofit tech and fundraising space that brought us to the conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah. So I have a large agency background, which essentially means for customer by customer, client by client, we've been working to be able to maximize fundraising, maximize marketing for them. Um, about a year ago, I switched gears and moved over to fundraise up because I noticed that the tools were always holding people back, no matter how great the strategy would be. Uh, you would spend all this money and time being able to get the right data and be able to get the right creative, and then it'd fall over on form. And so I noticed that fundraise up was doing something about that, and I wanted to be a part of it. Fundraise Up offers an online donation platform that maximizes your conversion rate, almost double that of the industry, and doing it in a way that empowers nonprofits. And I really I'm really excited to get to be a part of that because my team is responsible for doing what we say we will do. So we work with you to hear the issues, to hear what's going on with your team, and then we solve those things with you, and I love doing

Why PayPal Links Undercut Credibility

SPEAKER_01 2:05

them.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

That's so fun. Okay, so to that end, I'm gonna say something, and it's gonna probably make you cringe, but it's gonna highlight why this is an important conversation. So over the weekend, I got an email appeal from an organization here in Pittsburgh that I have volunteered with in the past or whatever, and they were sending out this hey, we have this event coming up. We would love you to be a part of it. Here's the link. And it was it went to PayPal. And everything in my little fundraiser body was like, it is 2026. Can we be done with the PayPal links right now? So I think unfortunately, there are some organizations out there that are still maybe not quite understanding the power of a donation page, or even maybe the the impression that a PayPal page versus a legitimate donor page on your website has. So jump in, let's start there. Because I'm sure if I know anything about you, it's that you've got the data to back up why this matters.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Absolutely.

Conversion Rate Is Real Revenue

SPEAKER_01 3:10

And and that's you know, that's what I was saying before around fundraise up having double the conversion rate is because that's exactly what we do. It's interesting, and I think you're right. It's like, shouldn't we have like solved this by now as like an industry? Like you look at Amazon, you look at Apple, you look at these other organizations that from a conversion perspective kind of have it figured out. And then uh you look at, you know, some nonprofits of varying complexity and and technical maturity, uh, and there's still a long way to go. And and to be fair, there's a lot of things to do. Uh, you have to drive traffic, you have to have a consistent brand presence, uh, you have to send the right email at the right time to the right segments. Like there's a lot of stuff to do, and I don't think we've ever, you know, seen a nonprofit say, Hey, I've got more than enough resources, I've got plenty of people to do everything. And so your donation form ends up being the last thing because it's seen as just a place to process. And I think that's actually the mistake or the moment where you actually lose the value of everything you've done before, no matter how great uh your strategies are and your campaign creative, your execution is, if they come to that form and your processing conversion rate is at 15% and compared to 28 or 30%, that's real revenue that you're missing. Uh and you've essentially done all that work for nothing.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

I like the call out about some of the more e-commerce y sites, right? Because I will admit, so even recently I got swept in by an Instagram ad of like, yeah, that actually are is a really cute bracelet, and I would like to have it. And I was checking out their page, and when I went to go check out, it was also like a PayPal style, like, and I thought I it made me assume that was actually a scam and I would never get this cute bracelet. So I did not complete because I didn't want my information or my card compromised. It just gave this impression of this may or may not actually get me what I want. Yeah. Is is that kind of part of the nonprofit hub side or the nonprofit hub? No, we are not. Uh the actual nonprofit side, is that the same kind of reaction that people have when they go to a site that maybe looks like a PayPal or something similar? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I think at the end of the day, user behavior is user behavior, and it looks different, right, by industry. It looks different based on the type of organization that the relationship or the expectation they have. But at the end of the day, as a group, we have to be able to keep up with what they're experiencing on the e-commerce side. We want to move away from it just being a transactional relationship, but their core areas like trust and credibility. That's not an e-commerce thing. That is just users want to be able to trust that when they put in their financial information, it's going to do what they say it's going to do. Uh, they're not going to be spammed or receive information that they don't want, and that no one is going to get access to their payment or financial information that isn't already there. And one of the things that we look at is payment trust, right? Um, and so Apple Pay, Google Wallet, all of those different things, uh, those are seen as innovations in a lot of ways. And while they are, they're also opportunities to build trust, uh, which is one of the reasons why, even for monthly donors, uh, we allow those options to be configured so that people can give the way they want to give and keeping it focused on the donor, not just on the organization, understanding that, you know, sometimes organizations have limited technical resources. That's why a platform like FundraiseUp in general just comes in and kind of solves that problem.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah.

Payment Options Without Overwhelm

SPEAKER_00 7:23

I'm curious from an end user standpoint, is there such a thing as too many options? Right? Because I've gone sometimes to like a checkout page and I've got Google Pay and Apple Pay, and here's my credit card number, or here's my routing number, and here's like it almost feels overwhelming. Is what's the point of diminishing returns on like we want this to be accessible versus this is too many options I can't, and I'm bailing.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

And I love that question because it's different for each person, it's different for each organization. Obviously, it has to be represented in a clear and meaningful way. Uh, and that just varies. Uh, it's one of the reasons why instead of saying this is the way, uh, we've leveraged AI. And I would recommend organizations to start to test into that even more in other places. Uh, we do that on the donation form. I like to call it a self-optimizing form uh because it knows when Megan is coming to the form, uh not just when, you know, these new donors are coming to the form. Uh, and it's doing it all without PII to ensure that the data is secure and you know, respecting kind of local governance laws around those things. But we want to be able to show the person and ask that is most relevant to them, which means sometimes options are gonna show and sometimes they're not. If it makes more sense to convert to monthly by showing you that first, the AI will determine that and it will versus one time. So absolutely, but at the end of the day, it's testing, testing, testing. Uh, and there's a there's a lot of opportunity to do that.

AI Personalization Without Being Creepy

SPEAKER_00 9:06

I think that part is so interesting because I've always wondered about the like and I think that this is the pushback that a lot of that I hear a lot of nonprofits giving. Is like, at what point does that become creepy? Right? Like you know what? At what point does it become so knowledgeable and predictive that it makes me nervous how much you know about me?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

It's well, I have seen, and this is this is beyond kind of fundraise up, fundraising, and even into like my background in like marketing automation or advertising. It's only creepy if you make it creepy, right? So, like instead of an ad or instead of a communication saying, Hi, Megan, I saw that you did this and you did this. Yes, I hate that. That is creepy, yeah. So it's not creepy when someone appreciates it, when you make someone's life easier, when you make the next step more clear or reduce friction. People actually appreciate that. It also is an opportunity to communicate what you're doing with that information. I am a big proponent of clearly outlined expectations for data and what are you collecting? When are you gonna use that? Who is it gonna be shared with? And so that also goes back to those trust indicators, having a really clear privacy policy uh and data collection approaches so that the donor can actually know that their money is going to a good place and that they're not gonna be exploited in the process. And that's why both of those have to matter. Yes, you have to push forward on technology, um, especially AI in these days, but also you have to maintain your donor's trust.

Privacy Policy And AI Governance Basics

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Okay, so unpack that a little bit for me because I think that in general, a lot of nonprofits don't realize just how much data they're actually sitting on. Oh, yeah, because they've never really thought about all of the ways in which they're collecting it and then what can be done with it. So I like the call-out of there needs to be a policy in place of what are we collecting and why are and why and what are we gonna do with it. But I think in general, we can't even make a policy until we realize how much of it we have and why it's important. So talk us through a little bit of that why and then and what would what would you suggest putting in that policy to help folks understand the the power of the data that they have to harness?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, there's a few different ones. One is your privacy policy, so the donor can understand what data you're collecting and what are you going to do with that information. And if they want to have that information redacted, can they do that? Especially depending on like what country and state you're in. There are specific laws that need to be followed to be able to comply with those things. However, the one I see most frequently needing to be addressed just because technology is moving so fast is an AI governance policy. Do not connect your database to just any old AI tool or have individuals copying and pasting donor data into a platform that is training the model and doesn't have those securities in place. Um, and so even though we are advancing, we still have to have those kind of basics covered that if they say, no, remove me and remove my data from your, you know, from your database, from your processes, can you actually do that? Do you know what data you have? I would start there and then be able to continue to advance that in terms of, well, how is that data being used and who has access to it? How is AI being leveraged? Are we okay with that? Or do we need uh more of a specific governance policy for our organization because we believe this around how we want to interact with our donors?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

So everything that you just said makes me think, right?

How To Lead Change From Below

SPEAKER_00 13:12

And this is I'd like to very specifically talk to one segment of our audience because I think that there's a lot of pushback from maybe the the folks who have been around for a while for this is how we've always done it. We don't need an AI policy, we're not gonna use AI. We don't need a new donation page, we've been using this one forever. We don't need to add all of these user options or segmentation or any of those things because we've never done that before. But I know that there's a lot of folks in our listening audience who are, you know, in development offices, in marketing offices, who are trying to drive change from the bottom up, right? So let's talk specifically to them for a minute. If you were not the person in charge and you were kind of trying to drive this forward, get people to understand the importance of it. Help me equip those folks right now. Where would you tell them to start? Like, what's the most impactful move they can make? What are some resources you would recommend? How do we help those folks there to lead up?

SPEAKER_01 14:21

That's a good question. I would actually start with goals. I'm a big proponent of working backwards when you're trying to solve a problem. And sometimes the goals are not as clear and um objective as you might think. Uh, we all know more revenue, more money, you know, more gifts, more everything. But if we can figure out how to get really specific, what whether it's for the organization's goal or the individual leaders' goals, um, they may have things that they're trying to do and to move the organization forward with. If you can understand those, you can actually work backwards to say, how do we tie ABC activity to XYZ organizational goal or this specific leader's goal? From there, it's being able to support that with data, insights from others who've done it before, estimates, but not in a kind of long drawn-out way. Uh, I used to work with someone where they were the leader and they wanted information, but I knew how they wanted the information. So even though I had like two and three pages worth of data to support my request or why, I would give them two sentences. And then when they asked for more, I already had more, right there available. And then they would ask for more again, right there available. And so understanding how your leader processes information, understanding what's needed internally to make decisions, all of that is really important before you go out and do it. The other thing I would consider when we're talking about data is the risk of inaction. Um, so essentially, it's not just like a this would be nice, right? Sometimes you have to look at the downside of if we don't have this information in place, what are the risks either from a brand perspective, if someone's saying this is how the information is being misused or misapplied, or from a compliance perspective, if you should be being able to be under a certain compliance governance and you're not doing any of those things, you're not doing annual compliance reviews. Uh, you have shadow systems where some individuals on the team are doing things because there is no policy in place, you're still accountable for that. Um, and so picking an owner, even if it doesn't have the full process laid out, picking an owner to say so-and-so is responsible and we're gonna do this by this date, at least allows it to move forward and see some of that progress.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

In 2025, donor behavior shifted across channels, devices, and giving frequency. Fundraise Up just released their 2026 Pulse of the Donor report that unpacks what happened. Your donation form is now your most valuable asset. Donors who trusted their experience gave more, gave again, and told others. Stop guessing what will work in 2026 and start using real data. Download FundraiseUp's free Pulse of the Donor report today at fundraiseup.com.

Stop Chasing Tactics Use A Framework

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Let's step back to specific donation pages. I'm curious as you now again for about a year have been working with folks on that specifically, obviously with an agency brain and an agency background and marketing background. Are there specific mistakes that you see almost everyone make? And because at least in my estimation, right, and in the circle in which I run, it is, I feel like weekly where someone is putting out a case study or a white paper about we changed our button from blue to yellow and it increased conversions, right? And so there's there is a myriad of information available to folks about all of these things. But is there a consistent mistake that you see folks making or like recommendations that you would tell them to look for?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, it's a good question, specifically because you do see a lot of those things. And and even at Fundraise Up, we do a lot of experiments. Yeah. Um, and so the specific mistake I see people getting into is getting stuck on the tactic on the tactics. Instead of zooming out, yeah, um, one of the things that we've really codified here is taking more of a like product manager's view. Um, and so when a product manager thinks about developing a new part of the product, they think about the jobs to be done. So, what's the functional job? What's the emotional job, and what's the social job? The functional job is what do we want it to do? Well, in theory, that seems obvious. We want them to complete a donation quickly and efficiently without friction. So that's like the actual platform. But like, what is the emotional job we want it to do? We want that donor to feel like they're doing their part. Uh, we want them to feel a sense of achievement, a sense of emotional fulfillment. And then there's the social job that we want to be done. Um, so they gain a sense of belonging, of status, being recognized for their contribution. And so when you think about it from a framework approach, you start to fill it in with a lot of those different activities and those differ different tactics, which is great. But if you never have that framework, you're kind of just spitballing, and maybe you only sit on functional and you're missing two-thirds of what actually is going to impact conversion rate and impact revenue. You have to look at it holistically for what those things need to be done.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

That's so good. Because yeah, I feel like we do get sometimes get so caught up in the minutiae of it that we lose the forest for the trees, so to say. There we go. Are you? I'm curious, and you don't this you don't have to make an official fundraise up position, but maybe just a Danielle position.

Warm Versus Cold Donation Page Strategy

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Are you a fan of donation pages that give you like lots of copy, lots more why you're giving a lot of that kind of element to it? Or are you more of a straight to the point? I've already just they've if they've landed on the page, they've already decided to give, let's just get to it. Where do you land in that debate?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

So I'm gonna land, and this is you know, me personally, with it depends, which is which is very much uh consultant anger. If someone is coming from an email and is a warm audience, yeah, when they click to give, they're most likely going to want to move forward and convert. Uh, we see a lot of that with existing donors, warm segments going to our campaign pages, making a donation. That's very clear. Yeah. I would contrast that with a super cold audience coming from advertising. That's someone who still may not fully understand your organization, but maybe is moved to learn more or moved by a specific call to action that you have from the ad. They need To know more than just what the brief copy on that ad said. I think about it a little bit more similarly to an e-commerce sales page where you have multiple call-to-action buttons and you have visuals and you have interaction points, and then there's a follow-up after if you didn't convert. I think that's more relevant for a cold audience strategy. And so I think we have to move from a monolithic, it's always this way and it's always that way. There's a lot of it depends the same way if I was having that conversation with someone I knew really well. There's things that I can say to them because we have history together that are gonna make more sense. Versus if I just met you, maybe I need to start off with, hello, my name is Danielle. And we want to mirror that kind of relationship online and move it away from this is just like a money machine, and I can treat everyone the same.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

So you would echo the call for multiple donation pages.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yes. And I think you can do that strategically when you are able to leverage like UTM parameters, when you're able to leverage different formats or styles of donations. Um, so for example, in the warmer audience, that would be more of a campaign page. With a colder audience, that would be more of an embedded form. And so while those are different donation asks, if you will, they show up differently, but they're achieving a similar outcome by allowing someone to donate. And so I think the do we want different donation pages? Not all donation pages in their format should be created equally, they should have different jobs to be done. Okay.

Too Many Pages And Unused Data

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I so I would tend to agree with you. Yes. I do think though that the back end of that needs to also have a purpose. Right? I I am not a fan of I'm gonna make 17, like I'm gonna make a different landing page for each email that I'm sending. Oh, no. And this one, like there is a point of diminishing returns. We're like, you just you know, I don't need to know what this one tiny link did. I wanna know how the campaign as a whole did, not each individual email necessarily. I can track that by the date and ultimately kind of figure it out. But when we get into like this is the Instagram one and this is the Facebook one, and this is there comes a point where there is almost too much data if we keep tracking each individual, right? If we're having I worked with an organization not too long ago as a consultant, and I was working with them in the back end of their not fundraise up, but a similar idea. And there were 137 different pages. For an organization that's doing less than a million dollars a year in donation revenue. This is too many pages.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Yeah, because it's only as good as the person using it. Um and so, like for example, let's take UT, I wouldn't even go as far as saying like UTM tracking, where you can take the same page and look at different data around it just by changing the URL. Even that can become too much, and you're not duplicating a form, you're just adjusting the URL. At the end of the day, it comes back to what are you going to do with that information? And if you don't have an actionable strategy around here's what we're gonna do, here's a timeline we're gonna do it in, here's the owner of that decision, then I totally agree with you. You're probably wasting your time and resources. However, if you are able to have a clear plan, then leverage those insights to be able to optimize the next time.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, so good.

Where Fundraise Up Fits Your Stack

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Okay, so I think that this is in general has given people a pretty good idea of fundraise up and kind of the work that you do. But specifically, tell us about the product itself. And if somebody wanted to learn more about fundraise up and kind of where it fits into the tech stack, how would we find that information?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah, so I think of fundraise up as a bit of a conversion layer, uh, meaning it is helping you optimize the gifts that are coming to those pages to give them the best experience. So, yes, it's the donation form, but think beyond that into your donor portal uh and into other touch points that you may immediately have to convert someone. It's an opportunity to go deeper on the user experience side. It's not just like your traditional form that maybe is hosted and has a uh white-labeled URL kind of custom domain. So it looks like it's yours, but it's not. Uh, it's an opportunity to go further than that. Like, yes, there are hosted forms, you can do all the traditional things, uh, but it's an opportunity to press in deeper on your user experience without needing a lot of technical expertise to be able to set it up and get it moving. You can contact me directly, uh, but you can also go to fundraiseup.com to be able to hear how your particular scenario can be kind of unfolded, kind of looking at the art of the possible. And the reason why I say your particular scenario is because your tech stack and your internal operational procedures are going to look slightly different from organization to organization. Uh, and then that's specifically where my team gets involved, um, especially with larger organizations where you've got a lot of technical debt, you've got a lot of history that needs to be wrangled. Um, this is a very uncommon method, I would say, but we don't have contracts. So we earn every opportunity with you. We only make money if you make money. And so we deploy resources to make sure that you're set up well. We don't lock you into contracts or say you have to do this even though it's not serving you, even though it's not working for you. Um, and so that's specifically what my team is for is to make sure you are set up well from the beginning and that you're optimized for the future.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

I do that. Is one thing I really appreciate about fundraise up is that it's not you truly are an actual partner to a nonprofit and not just like I'm here with this is the contract, I'm here to as a vendor, but you are invested in their success. So I do, I uh really appreciate that model.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

No, absolutely.

Book Picks For Learning And Influence

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Okay, so as we move to wrap up, the question that I've been asking everyone in this season, we've kind of dubbed 2026 as the year of learning. So I'm curious for you, what's something that you would put on your top recommendation everybody should read this book? Something that maybe either impacted you or really made you think about something in a new way. What would be on your list of a book that everyone should check out?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

So I'm gonna give you two specifically because of your question before. Um, so the first one I would say by default, uh, really for all nonprofits and the way that technology is continuing to advance, I would read Anti-Fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Uh, the reason why I would read that one is because it's talking about how to build things or optimize things that actually gain from disorder. Disorder meaning we have AI. What does that mean for me now? Yeah. We have all of these market trends. What does that mean for my organization? What does that mean for fundraising? And I also would say, even personally, um, to be able to understand how you don't have anxiety and fear when things are disorderly, when things go awry. Um, I really, really recommend that book, especially for nonprofits and people who are leading. On the other hand, you asked a great question around like how do you lead up? And one of my absolute favorite books is called Never Split Difference by Chris Voss. 100% 10 out of 10 read. Uh, it helps people to understand how to be able to see different outcomes based on what will benefit kind of both sides. He actually was someone who was a he would like negotiate with terrorists or be able to like help free people in different ways. Um, and so we're looking at like, I don't know, military or like high security level like negotiations. And hopefully, internally at your nonprofit, you don't have like that level of life and death in the line if this this decision doesn't get made. But to be honest, many nonprofits do have life and death on the line. Uh, and so I would definitely read never split the difference because it helps you approach things from a perspective of seeing the outcome. And so if this guy can use those like really practical takeaways and tactics to negotiate a child back from a kidnapper or a terrorist, then I'm sure these things would work with for you as well, uh, kind of working with your leader.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Wow. Yeah. I my goodness, I would hope it's not that dramatic in like a normal office setting, but but you never know. So, yeah, both of those sound great. Thank you very much. All right, Danielle, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom today. Obviously, we're big fans of Fundraise Up around here, so glad to be able to get your voice into the podcast and your wisdom with our audience. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. Again, my guest has been Danielle Rice, who's the Senior Director of Solutions at Fundraise Up. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, and we'll see you next time.