The Donor Experience Gap
As the internet is becoming more social, nonprofit donation forms can't keep up. In this post we look at some of the consequences of the "on-platform" trend.
Hey folks! Hope you are enjoying these posts. We’re up to 157 subscribers after just a few weeks, which I’m thrilled about. Please share with the 1 person you think would find this post the most useful - the bigger the audience, the more incentive I have to write (just being honest!). I’d also love to know any questions or suggestions you have for future posts. Just reach out to me at nick at givepanel dot com.
2008 baby…
Most nonprofits have a digital fundraising strategy now that would work back in 2000 to 2008 before the real rise of billion user social platforms and smart phones in every pocket. It goes something like this:
Build a website
Drive traffic to the website
Get website donations
Build an email list
Send out lots of emails to drive traffic back to the website
I should know, I did this for a ton of orgs back in the day very successfully. It was the right strategy in 2008.
In this old model social platforms are seen as an opportunity to drive traffic to the nonprofit brand website and not as an opportunity to meet donors where they already are.
To be fair driving traffic from social platforms to your website (especially Facebook and Instagram ads) back in 2015/16 produced a really good ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
It worked, so we’ve done it for years and it’s kept working (albeit at slightly less ROAS year on year).
Nonprofits leadership are rightly worried about the over-reliance on Facebook advertising. It became such a large % of income that there would be a big issue if it disappeared over night.
But we’re also lazy. When something is working and it’s relatively easy - why change?
But now it’s nearly 2022
In 2022 everyone has a ridiculously powerful computer in their pocket, we’re about to get 5G, the metaverse is already here and we now have companies like Facebook/Meta that have connected 3.6 Billion people.
We also have TikTok and SnapChat, Linked-In and Pinterest and whatever comes next.
Simply seeing social platforms as a way to drive traffic to your website, drastically underplays the opportunity that social platforms for nonprofits and fundraising.
Shift from “traffic→website” to “on-platform”
One of the bi-products of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (commonly called “the iOS 14 issue”), other than Apple’s increase in advertising revenue, is that it has accelerated advertisers to use more on-platform features (and Ad platforms to push out these features more quickly).
Facebook Ad costs have gone up significantly since the iOS 14 ATT roll out, especially for journeys that driving traffic off Facebook to the web.
This is why you now see so many more Facebook Advertisers use Facebook Lead forms for driving Lead generation. They keep everything on Facebook and so now (because of Apple’s changes) they perform better (they get a lower Cost Per Lead - CPL)
(Incidentally one of the successes of the Facebook Challenge fundraising model in the past 2 years has been Facebook lead ads and keeping everything on the Facebook platform)
This trend of “On Platform” was happening anyway, but the Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has definitely accelerated it.
The Donor Experience Gap
One of the biggest impact I think this change will have is what I am calling “the Donor Experience Gap”. See the chart below.
The user experience of nonprofit website donation forms really hasn’t changed that much in 20 years.
But the rise of fundraising on social platforms brings in an improving user experience. These platforms already have my data (I’m already signed up), so it’s so much easier. Facebook et al have the best User Experience designers and processes in the world to develop these features.
Make a donation to a nonprofit on Facebook. Then make a donation to the same nonprofit on their website. Compare the convenience. It’s a radical difference.
The same applies to fundraisers here as well as donors. Creating a fundraiser in 1-Click using our Custom Facebook fundraiser tool beats setting up a fundraiser on pretty much any other stand-alone fundraising platform, when it comes to how long it takes.
We are all being trained all the time by more convenient solutions. I use Amazon to buy most things online because it’s so easy and sigh inside if I have to try and buy it off a website that is not so easy.
Not only is there a gap between the stand-alone experience nonprofits can deliver themselves but that gap is growing. Web 3.0 is going to make platform experiences next-level. Huge investment is already pouring into VR and AR (this is basically the metaverse). Your internet shopping experience is going to change from passive clicking to being there and picking up objects etc.
Imagine how tedious it will be in 10 years time to fill out a form on a charity website!
Performance will drive on-platform strategies
So what does this mean for nonprofits practically, today?
If you offer a better User Experience, this is typically accompanied by higher conversion rates and lower Cost Per Acquisitions (CPAs).
If we see better performance from on-platform advertising strategies (we already are with Facebook Lead forms remember) then this may force more nonprofits to adopt more on-platform strategies. This will further enhance the Donor Experience Gap as more people are trained to the more convenient user experience.
It’s another flywheel.
The longer nonprofits resist the slower they will be to adapt, the further behind their donors they will be.
Next week I will post about how this shift to on-platform does not have to mean that you keep the relationship with your supporters “on platform” and how nonprofits need a “Beyond Platform” strategy.