By Jessica Woloszyn, Senior Content Strategist at Classy – a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate social impact around the world.

Every visitor of your nonprofit website is a potential donor. According to Classy, nonprofits that use an embedded checkout form during the year-end giving season experience a 28% increase in revenue per website visitor. Also, as mobile traffic increases, embedded giving is an incredible tool to help simplify the mobile donation experience and urge supporters to complete their donations.

What Is Embedded Giving?

Embedded giving experiences provide website visitors with a complete donation form without having to leave your website for a separate donation page. Instead of needing to click to visit a separate donation page on your website to start their donation, they can begin the donation process right away on your home page.

There are two different ways of approaching embedded giving:

• Modal embeds or pop-up donation forms that display when people select your donate button
• Direct (or in-line) embeds where you place your form on a page in-line with other elements, such as the top of your website

6 Ways to Make Giving Easier With Embedded Giving

A good donor experience provides a great first impression. Delight new donors with embedded giving, and offer a reliable process that long-term supporters are happy to come back to. When you take away the confusion of where to navigate on your website for donations, you’ve already increased the chances for a completed transaction. Here are a few other tips to help you make the most of modals.

1. Hook Visitors With an Attractive Look and Feel

Modal donation forms feel modern and showcase the simplicity of the minimal-step process right away. Branding your donation modal to match your website helps donors feel like they’re never leaving that experience. The consistency also shows them that you’re professional and trustworthy.

It’s also helpful to include your donation modal alongside a strong narrative. Highlight the impact of your work and provide them an avenue right then and there to join your cause. As people become more passionate about what their donations are accomplishing, they may also be more likely to share it. Word-of-mouth is how 67% of donors were most likely to find out about new causes in 2021.

Quick Tip: When you’re building your donation modal, bring your brand to life. Mirror the look and feel of your website by selecting from your brand’s color palate and language.

2. Empower Donors to Use the Device of Their Choice

Donors are less likely to opt-out of a donation opportunity when they feel familiar with the purchasing process. Think about the experiences surrounding donors daily with modern services and brands using intuitive apps. Now imagine you can offer donors a similar experience when they come across your site on their phones.

In 2021, most campaign types on Classy saw over half of the donor traffic come from a mobile device. Open your donation process to support mobile donors so you can capture all of the people who land on your page. It’s important to consider how easy it is to donate while people are balancing work schedules, travel, or other moments of their on-the-go lifestyles where a desktop is not accessible.

Quick Tip: Take a look at how much traffic your campaigns typically receive from mobile devices or tablets. Consider directing donor traffic from social media platforms or physical QR code advertisements to the page on which you embed your donation modal to continue the seamless mobile experience.

3. Make Payments a Breeze

Like consumers, donors light up when they see a way to save time with a trusted payment option. Modal donation forms sync up to apps that have likely already stored their information, such as PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Donors also told Classy that a top reason they would reconsider a donation is if their preferred payment option isn’t available.

People like easy. Boost conversion for mobile traffic by making it clear that you offer the mobile payment they want to use. Nonprofits saw mobile conversion improve by more than 2 points after activating Venmo on Classy Pay in 2022.

Different payment options also broaden your reach to audiences across younger generations. Classy saw that 72% of millennials selected PayPal and Venmo as their most preferred payment options. Those numbers demonstrate the value of simply having these logos greet them on your checkout modal.

Quick Tip: Include the payment options that your donors resonate with most. Elevate different gift amounts and frequencies to be accessible for varied financial situations.

4. Nudge Donors to Complete and Uplevel Their Donation

We’ve all become distracted during the online payment process, abandoning our cart to respond to a text message or another notification. Globally, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 71.49% with eCommerce brands losing an estimated $18 billion in revenue. 

Consider how many donors land on your donation page and begin the checkout process to then get distracted because they don’t have their credit card on them or they’re late for an appointment. Setting up cues or nudges that remind the donor of their intended donation is so important to recapture the donor’s attention and guide them back toward their cart. 

Nudges can also be used to persuade donors who select a one-time donation to become recurring donors instead. We’ve seen how valuable recurring donors are in creating predictable revenue for organizations. In fact, the average one-time gift is about $168 on Classy, and the average monthly recurring gift is $30. While the recurring gift size is smaller, recurring donors typically give for one to three years. One year of a $30 monthly donation would bring in $360—roughly 2X the average one-time gift.

Quick Tip: Activate Classy’s Abandoned Cart Nudge and Recurring Nudge for your embedded checkout so that donors are more likely to complete their donation and become recurring donors. 

5. Simplify Employer Matching

A donor is looking to make the most significant impact they can on your cause or a challenge you’re looking to solve. When you can offer to double their donation, that impact is even more enticing.

Employee donation matching encourages workplace giving. It also broadens awareness of your cause among larger organizations that can become corporate sponsors, volunteers, or major donors down the road.

Offering an employer donation match option on your donation modal gives donors a quick way to see if their organization can match their contribution. It can also be a great tool to prompt timely giving. Most visitors see the donation match as a window of opportunity to make the biggest difference toward your cause.

Quick Tip: Integrate a matching gift tool into your embedded checkout experience to prompt your donors to search for their employer to match their donations.

6. Bring Recurring Giving Opportunities Into the Spotlight

We already know donors love choices, but especially when their financial circumstances may shift, an option to automate a smaller gift over time can be appealing. Did you know 56% of donors feel a recurring gift enables them to continuously support the organization, and 47% like the option because it makes more of an impact?

A recurring donation option on your modal donation form puts the option right in front of donors who might not have known it was a possibility. Donation pages already bring in the most average recurring revenue; the opportunity to include regular giving on your donation modal can yield excellent results.

Quick Tip: Present your recurring gift option with various giving frequencies to appeal to any donor’s financial situation. Classy lets you offer monthly, weekly, daily, bi-weekly, quarterly, and annual options all on the same form. This way you can put the power in your donors’ hands, and the predictable income in yours.