How Web Designers Can Prepare Sites for Giving Tuesday and Beyond
On the first Tuesday following Thanksgiving, millions worldwide come together to financially benefit and transform communities worldwide for Giving Tuesday. Nonprofits, communities, religious institutions, schools, and more can make the most of the annual event by marketing themselves to potential donors eager to partake in the spirit of giving.
Prospective contributors may be hesitant to donate if an organization’s website is difficult to navigate, visually unappealing, or impossible to find. As a web designer, you can prepare websites for the giving season in a way that maximizes charitable donations and helps clients meet their goals.
The power of online donations for Giving Tuesday
In a crowded philanthropic environment, charitable choices for donors abound, especially during fundraising events like Giving Tuesday. This makes discoverability and donation ease paramount. Today’s donors can find a cause through many channels, such as social media, then make a donation faster than if they had to physically drop off or mail their contribution. In turn, nonprofits can receive and manage online donations almost instantly.
Why accept donations on Squarespace?
The Squarespace platform makes Giving Tuesday donations intuitive and seamless, helping you build more donation-friendly nonprofit sites and mitigate abandoned donation forms with:
An all-in-one donation acceptance and management platform
Total responsiveness on any platform, including mobile
Full integration with payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, and Squarespace Payments
On your client’s site, start by adding a Squarespace donation block. You’ll want to note that donation blocks are currently a premium feature only available for Business and Commerce plans. Donation blocks automatically match your client site’s global style and brand, but you can customize the block to best support your client’s goals. You can change button text and fund settings, like suggested donation amounts and recurring donations options so donors can set and forget their contributions. When a page containing a donation block goes live, your client can view and manage the profiles and contributions of their donors all in one place from the Donations dashboard.
With donations, you can now accept weekly and monthly recurring donations from contributors. These can be a great way to add value to—and potentially charge more for—client sites by empowering clients to accept contributions for one-time donations on Giving Tuesday or recurring donations for an indefinite time to come.
Best practices for fundraising on Squarespace
Armed with the right tools, you can craft approachable donation pages for Giving Tuesday and beyond. Follow these tips to help clients maximize their donation revenue:
Populate the donation page with high-impact imagery relevant to your client’s cause. Select images that help visitors visualize the impact of their contribution.
Write copy that cements the urgency of the client’s cause and that includes a clear call to action throughout the page, using anchor links to direct the audience to the page’s donation block.
Pro tip: Generate high-quality copy with Squarespace AI to show the audience why your client’s cause is worth donating to. Learn more about asking for donations online.
Align the donation block’s design, including buttons, fonts, and colors, with your client’s site and overall branding. Donation blocks will automatically adhere to the site’s style settings, or you can adjust design options like the style and layout of the donation block field. Determine your client’s donation setting preferences, so you can set up suggested amounts, payment methods, and recurrent payment toggle and cadence.
Style the client’s checkout page, including header alignment, text, background, and button colors, to match their site’s overall aesthetic. Integrate Email Campaigns so donors can sign up for their mailing list during checkout.
Trigger a pop-up featuring a personal message from your client to appear when someone visits the site, helping them quickly and closely connect with potential donors.
Maximize your client’s prominence in search results by refining their site’s final copy and design using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.
Set a special Giving Tuesday-themed “thank you” email that automatically sends out when someone donates to remind donors their contribution makes a difference.
Prepare websites for Giving Tuesday early
Giving Tuesday only comes once a year, and it’s important nonprofit organizations begin promoting their activities early. Here are some ways you can proactively aid clients’ Giving Tuesday promotional efforts:
Set up Email Campaigns tailored to bespoke audience behaviors. For example, if a donor has a history of contributing large amounts to a client on Giving Tuesday, they may receive an email thanking them for their patronage the previous year, showing them how it benefited its target community, and reminding them the next Giving Tuesday is soon.
Add clear, concise pop-ups and announcement bars to existing site pages that tell audiences when Giving Tuesday is and where they can donate.
Craft SEO-friendly site content to drive traffic to the donation page. Integrate social sharing images across your client’s site so others can spread the word about the cause.
Encourage your client to share their Giving Tuesday page and related content across owned social media platforms. They should include “#GivingTuesday” in every post so audiences searching for the hashtag can discover the client and the cause they benefit.
Tell your client to add links to their Giving Tuesday page in their social media bio(s). Set them up with Bio Sites so the link will appear in an organized and branded hub.
Maximize charitable donations on Squarespace
With a keen visual eye, creativity, and marketing basics, you can drive donor engagement and revenue for your nonprofit clients this Giving Tuesday. Learn more about building impactful nonprofit websites on Squarespace.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
