The Importance of Convenience in Fundraisers and How to Improve It for Your Benefactors

The importance of convenience in any field cannot be overstated, but it becomes an even more potent determinant when it comes to fundraisers and other charitable events. In this post, the importance of making it convenient for present and potential investors/donors/benefactors will be highlighted, along with the steps necessary to maximize that knowledge and improve any fundraiser’s success rate.

Convenience is One of the Perpetual Forces of Forward Movement in Industry

Every industry shares a few perpetual forces of forward movement that include but are not limited to need, cost-effectiveness, and convenience. Long before covid was ever a word, the world had already been moving steadily towards a digitized market. The fact that the world’s richest man both founded and leads the world’s largest e-commerce company is not a coincidence.

To understand the implications here, all we need to do is look at the primary cause that drove Amazon to be as big as it is today. Readers may have already guessed that the answer is convenience. Need, demand, capacity, and various other factors were and still are among the chief factors that allowed Amazon to become and maintain its number one status as the global leader in e-commerce. However, almost none of that would have even been relevant, had the convenience of receiving your products at home not been as important for its customers, which at this point is almost everyone.

Big as the company is, Amazon is just one example. To get a better understanding of how big the influence of convenience is across all facets of customer decision-making, let’s take another example. In the past, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs were thought to be irreplaceable because of how slim and portable they were. They contained everything from Operating Systems and software applications to video games, music, and movies.

Despite their short-lived popularity though, discs got replaced by streaming services, cloud storage, and direct downloads. There isn’t even an optical drive on your laptop right now, a component that used to be a staple feature for all computers until around the 2015 mark. This was possible because:

·         It was more convenient and cost-effective for customers to stream media via a service provider like Netflix, Hulu, Apple Music, Spotify, etc. than to buy physical discs and store them.

·         It was more convenient and cost-effective for customers to download and play video games via clients like Steam, GOG, Origin, etc. than to buy physical discs and store them.

·         It was inconvenient to store physical discs after a point, while modern alternatives (cloud storage, streaming) did not take up any additional space in a customer’s home.

·         It was more convenient and cost-effective for manufacturers to gradually exclude the optical drive from as many of their products as they could.

There are countless other examples that you should be able to find everywhere you look. After all, technology exists to improve the way we do things by making each task easier, more effective, and of course, more convenient. Next, let’s discuss how we can incorporate the same philosophy to improve a fundraiser’s success rate by making things more convenient for the present and future donors/benefactors.

Provide Benefactors with More Mediums to Donate

Someone who is moderately interested in the cause is far more likely to donate if your fundraiser accepts the form of payment that they are familiar and comfortable with. They are also a lot less likely to open a new account somewhere, just to donate. This is what creates an obstacle borne out of inconvenience, which in turn, lowers the overall funds that can possibly be raised by that fundraiser event.

Fortunately, this problem can be easily avoided if you launch your fundraiser with Givebutter. Givebutter is the pioneering global leader among free end-to-end fundraising platforms for nonprofits. By creating, launching, and promoting your own fundraiser with them, you should be able to accept Venmo donations without a hitch; the linked blog post explains how to access Venmo donations.

Now, with respect to the convenience factor, this is a big advantage. The social cash app by PayPal has 40 million+ users who mostly utilize Venmo for making digital donations to support social causes.

Your fundraiser cause will be promoted to people who already have a history of donating to similar causes. Once the most probable benefactors have been made aware, it would be convenient for them to donate via the same app that they already use to make contributions to similar causes. It simplifies and unifies the whole process for both parties.

Reduce the Steps in between Awareness and Conversion

The success of lean in business is based on the core principle of convenience and cost-effectiveness. Try to reduce the number of steps in between awareness and conversion by as many as possible. The longer it takes for a potential donor to reach the final payment page, from the time they first came upon the fundraiser site, the lower your chances of conversion will become. In the case of online fundraisers, it’s always a good idea to provide as much information about the cause/venture as possible, but each page should have one or more call-to-action buttons. This will allow visitors to make donations as soon as they want to, irrespective of where they might be on the site at that point.

Improve Accessibility by Lowering the Minimum Donation Amount

Keep the minimum donation amount as low as possible, with several tiers from thereon. This improves accessibility, making it financially convenient for a lot more people to make small donations along the lower tiers. Understand that by lowering your minimum donation amount, you are not actually lowering the potential amount you can raise from the fundraiser but increasing it.