On-Line Giving
 On-line
giving forms are some of the most difficult to design. They must be
comprehensive enough to record as many characteristics of a gift/pledge as
possible while still being simple enough to use as an on-line form.
At the onset, it's always good to have the appropriate staff participate
in the design of the form and the associated business processes so that
essential information is captured and transmitted in a way that
maximizes efficiency.
Directing Users to On-line Giving
Links to an on-line giving form should be on a prominent area of the
institution's web site, and as a standard menu item within the
Alumni/Development and related pages. Count the number of clicks it takes to get from
the main page to the on-line giving form.
There should also be a link to/from a compelling case statement, or some
indication on the page where users can be educated about the value of
giving to the institution.
The use of the form should be marketed continually in all publications,
pre-mailings and by the telemarketing staff during calling.
The User Experience
Instructions for filling out the form should be clear and required
fields should all be noted.
In addition to clear instructions, the form should be designed in a way
that steps the user through the giving process in a logical fashion,
particularly if a multi-page form is used.
As with other on-line forms, ask the essential questions rather than all
the questions you may wish to ask of someone using the form.
The form should have a contact phone number and email for help or to
request additional giving information, or direct links to other
development areas such as planned giving.
If you do have links out of the form, remember that if a user has
partially filled out a form, that the fields do not automatically clear
when the user goes back and forth otherwise they will have to fill it in
again.
Designations are also tricky. You have to allow enough choices, but you
can't offer the whole chart of accounts. For school with multiple
colleges or divisions, you should have custom forms with a targeted
case, logos, campaigns and designations. They can be built using
templates so your maintenance effort is minimal.
The form should be designed to to collect information for all gifts and pledges
and should allow for all payment methods used by the institution. Make
sure you accept all credit cards as you will find that some will have
larger average gifts than others.
Ideally, credit card verification and billing to the donor's account should
be automated, but some sites may wish to start with a form that emails all
of the information to a donations management area where credit card billing
is done manually. This also allows you to make an additional follow-up or
phone call to the users and add a personal touch that might not
otherwise take place, although depending on your volume of on-line gifts
you may wish to do this regardless of automatic verification.
Since matching gifts are an important component, some forms will have an
additional search component that will list matching gift companies and
allow the user to select their own firm and automatically populate this
information on the form.
Some of the search engine toolbars and browsers now come with the
ability to automatically populate certain form fields with name and
other information providing you have the field names that match, so also
consider this in the design and creation of the form.
If you're using cookies as part of the technology of your alumni and
friends online community, you can also use some of this information to
pre-populate the form to make it easier for users to complete and make
their gift or repeated gifts.
The tendency in form design is to not have the user scroll, but to use
multiple parts for a form so the user can click through the forms in a
logical and organized fashion.
Security and Privacy
Some users may still not be comfortable with an on-line form so make
sure that a link to printable form is also included. You may wish to
include both a PDF and a Word version. The printable form should also
have the same dropdown boxes and selection criteria that the online one
does.
You should have a link to your organization's privacy policy which is
actually required in some jurisdictions.
There should be a link find out about security, but the security link
should not brand the form to the security company by displaying logos
too prominently. This information is best presented by some short
explanation with a link to drill down and find out more.
If you don't
have a secure form it goes without saying that you shouldn't take any
credit card information through the web.
Don't take chances with security. Forms should automatically interface
with your credit card vendors and banks, but you shouldn't store credit
card and other sensitive information on a database on your web server,
which may be subject to attack.
Instead, get this information sent directly back to you from the vendor
for the secure services and then upload or enter on your advancement
system if you need to.
Forms With Login Requirements
If you want to populate the form with information you have on a
database, then the user will have to log in at some point with a
password. If you're going to do this, have the login as an option on the
form, so a user could still fill out and submit a gift without having to
log in or even have a second form that doesn't require login.
A form that is populated from your database will give a richer
experience to the user and will allow them to change and modify their
information much easier. For example, you can provide them with a
history of their giving, custom drop down lists of accounts, allow them
to make a specific payment on their pledge schedule, display custom
messages after they login and direct them to other areas of your site
after their gift is confirmed, such as a reunion page if they are in
their reunion year.
You'll have to weigh the balance between the user experience and the
administrative trade offs of maintaining a password system for your
online giving form and also maintaining all of the data presented on the
form in a way that the users will understand. It will also force you to
do additional data cleansing.
However, if you already have an alumni community, this will be less of
an issue since alumni communities already have the facility for managing
passwords.
Monitoring is Important
Regular monthly statistics should be kept of the number and amounts of
online gifts received though the use of the form, and also the click
through behavior of users to and from other areas of the site that the
form is placed on.
Try repositioning the links to the form and have the link on more than
one page on your site. Again, a link to giving will be on the header of
every page of your site, and will be prominently displayed on the
institutions main page.
Work with your divisions and department and request that links to the
form be placed on their pages since you are trying to raise money for
them. This will also help to increase traffic to the form and
ultimately, your online giving.
Summary
Remember that the easier the form is to fill in and submit, the more
likely the user will submit their gift online.
It's also important that on-line giving is not an end in itself, but a
supplementary service offered to your donors and prospects for
convenience that should not be used as a replacement for personal
contact.
The following sample of a form is not a comprehensive example but
suggestive of some of the information you may wish to collect. It could
also be presented in a tabbed format or be separated into logical steps
with the method for the user to navigate between the screens.
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