Speaker 1: Hey y'all, in this video I'm gonna share three steps to accepting donations for your non-profit. Let's get into it. Hey everybody, this is Tiffany with Boss on the Budget. I help new and small non-profits get up and running, and I also help them raise money for their new non-profits. And I drop videos every week, so make sure you are subscribed to this channel. And today I wanted to do a step-by-step in how to collect donations for your non-profit. Now, I'm oversimplifying this because there are a lot of different ways you can do this, but some people may honestly just not know how to do it. Like, how do you get started with collecting money? What do you do? What's the first step? What should you do? And what shouldn't you do? So I'm just gonna break that down in three steps today, and then at the end of this video, I'm just gonna share some tips on how to ask for donations so you can make sure you are focused and you are asking the right way. Step one is to pick a platform. So there's a lot that goes into this step, so I'm gonna spend just a little bit of time explaining this, but you wanna pick a platform that can accept donations for you. And here's the thing that you may not realize. You can have more than one platform. You can use more than one service to be able to collect donations on your non-profit's behalf, but you need to pick which ones you're using and what you're using them for, right? There are platforms that charge a monthly fee. There are platforms that will only charge you once a donation is made. There are certain platforms that do well with certain type of giving than others. Like, some platforms really thrive in the peer-to-peer fundraising space. They have really good tools for that. Some platforms are really good for churches, right? They do really well in targeting churches. Some do really good with just auctions, right? Running auctions. And sometimes you may be using a service for a different reason, and it can collect donations on your behalf as well. An example of that is a customer relationship management or a donor management platform, which is basically a service that keeps a database of all your contacts so you can remain in contact with them and build relationships with your supporters. Sometimes those systems also have ways to collect donations using their systems as well. So you have a bunch of different options. So if you already have a CRM, you may not want to get another service to process donations for you because you have that already. You may have missed it, but CRM is customer relationship management or a donor management service. I want you to keep in mind that when it comes to donation platforms, and when I say donation platforms, I'm just meaning a service that allows your nonprofit to accept donations. That's what I mean by donation platform. There are some that are specifically made for nonprofits. So my best advice to you is use the ones that are made for nonprofits because usually the people who have designed them or created them have either worked in a nonprofit or have their own nonprofits. So they understand what your needs are. What you don't want to do is go to a service that's built for another reason and try to retrofit it, right? It may work for you depending on the industry you're in, but at least start with the services that have you as a nonprofit in mind. So I'm gonna stop dancing around it and I'm just gonna call one out as an example, GoFundMe. GoFundMe was not created for nonprofits. GoFundMe was created for individuals. So because of that, they've set up their service in a particular way for individuals, right? And there are tax implications for individuals that are different than nonprofits. There are fee structures that are different for individuals than what they are for nonprofits. So when you as a nonprofit go the GoFundMe route, that means that you're operating like you're an individual, not a nonprofit. Now, I will say that GoFundMe has had other services in the past that cater just to nonprofits. So if you want to use them as a company, just make sure the tool you're using was a tool created for nonprofits, but just be careful when you want to use a service that wasn't created for nonprofits, but more for individuals or different audiences. I hope that example made sense. There are plenty of other services that are made with nonprofits in mind. There are services like GiveLively, GiveBox, Donately. I can put a couple of them in the chat below, and I'm not necessarily recommending one over the other because everyone has a preference about the type of service that they like to use. I just want you to keep in mind that you should go for those that are created just for you. The other piece about picking a platform, so say you go with GiveLively, GiveLively will accept the donations for you, but you still need what's called a payment processor to process the money and send it to your account. Sometimes this is called a merchant, right? So you need a service to actually process that money. They're gonna take their fee out for doing that and then send it to your bank account. That's kind of like the middleman in all of this is behind the scenes. So Stripe, you may have heard of Stripe. They're a processor, they do that. So when you sign up for GiveLively, you're signing up for GiveLively, but you also have to have a Stripe account so that they can use Stripe to send you your money. PayPal is an interesting example. PayPal is a processor and a donation platform, kind of all in one, kind of, sorta. So PayPal can be that kind of middleman and send you funds to your bank account. But in most other services, you're gonna need to sign up for an additional service, which is a payment processor to process that money. Giftbox is an example of a donation platform and a payment processor all in one. They have their own merchant service and so they'll do it all for you. So you don't necessarily need Stripe or another processor like WePay or something like that. So just keep all of that in mind because as you start diving into this, you're like, dang, how many services do I need to sign up for? It may be a couple in order for you to get your money to you. Every donation platform is different. Sometimes people use Facebook as their donation platform, right? And there are all a bunch of caveats with that. If you need help figuring out how to get your money from Facebook fundraisers, I did a quick video on it, so make sure you check it out, that I linked it above. But depending on what you decide you're gonna do, the process may be different and what you have to do to process your money may look different. And this is my last point before I go to number two, cause I spent a lot of time on this, like I knew I would. You can have different ways to collect donations. You can have Facebook as an option, you can have PayPal as an option, you can have a GiveLively or GiveBox as an option and all of those could be working all at the same time. So just keep that in mind that you're not necessarily bound to one, but when you use more than one, you just need to think about the implications of that. Your accounting, right? Cause you have to track where all the money is coming from and just making sure you're tracking the data and tracking information from donors from each one of those systems. So just keep that in mind when you're thinking about that. Number two, I want you to think about the format that you're gonna use to collect. What is it gonna look like? What's the platform for you to do that? Is that through a button on your website? Is it a widget on your website? Like a pop-up that comes up? Is it a QR code? Is it a text code? Is it all of the above? So you wanna think about like how are you presenting this to the public, right? You absolutely should have a donate button on your website. Any place you have an online presence, there should be a way that people can click to get to the page to donate. But keep in mind that if you have people going through the motions too much, if they have to go through too many clicks, that may turn them off. So you wanna think about this as well. Do you want just a pop-up? So when people come to your page, it's just a pop-up. Do you want a donate button that's on every page of your website? And when they hit that donate button, it pops up. Do you want that donate button to go to a page on your website instead of a pop-up? All of these have different implications for how you set up your donation acceptance and also has implications for step number one, kind of platform you use because different platforms have different features. If you're only using PayPal, which I actually do not recommend you only use PayPal, then you don't really have the option for a lot of fancy features to put pictures on your donation page and video on your donation page. It doesn't give you a lot of flexibility. So just keep that in mind. How are you presenting this donation ask to the public? Is it, what's the link? What's the way, what's the pathway to people clicking that link to be able to enter information? And you also wanna think about what kind of information you're going to collect when people do click. You want bare minimum, at least one way to contact them, whether it's the email, the phone number, the address. The best thing at this point in time is email, right? But if you could get all of that, if you could get email and phone and address, it's good because you wanna be able to have other ways to connect with your donors so you can tell them how they made an impact with their donation. So for step number two, just keep in mind like how are you presenting this donation request? How is it gonna look on your website? Where is it going to be? All that kind of stuff. You need to make decisions around that. And then number three, you need to design the page. When you decide that it's going to be a static page on your website, or it's gonna be a link somewhere else, you need to design the language and design what that page, if it is a page, will look like. You need to think about your images. You need to have really profound imagery on this page. You need to think maybe about using video, right? And even if video is not on the page to donate, can video be used as a way to get people to the donate link? So what does that video wanna be? How are you gonna tell the story in that video? What are you presenting to people to convince them to click to donate? Because don't be fooled. Just because somebody gets to your donation page does not mean they're gonna donate. Just because they click on that page and look around, there is no guarantee that they're gonna give you money. So the question is, what are you going to say to convince them to do that? And that's what you need to think about for step three. Think about what the impact will be of their donation. Once they give, what will that mean for the people that you're serving, right? Think about how you're going to engage them, what language you're going to use to make them feel like it's a good thing. What sense of urgency are you going to stress that it's time to give now? If we don't give now, then this may happen. What kind of hope are you building for that person? You're giving them a vision of something that could be different, that's something that could be greater, right? So you need to think about what your text will be. You need to think about how you're gonna present that ask and how it will look. You absolutely need to leverage photos and video in order to do that. And before I go to the last piece of this video, I'll just say that once you're ready to start presenting this link or whatever you provide to collect donations, do it over and over again. If you're sending emails, you can put the donate button in the footer. Always make it easy for people to find you so they can donate. Make it easy for people to find that place to donate. If it's too buried or it takes too much time for them to find it, child, they're gonna drop off, they're gonna do something else. They're gonna get distracted and do something else. So just keep that in mind. So the biggest piece of advice I would give you when you're asking for donations is to take the focus off of your organization. The risk of you asking for money is for you to say things like, we need this money in order to keep doing our great work. We need your donation. We can't keep doing the great work that we do until you provide the funding for it, right? And the risk of you doing that is that doesn't necessarily persuade the donor to see themselves in the work, right? And if the person can't see themselves in the work, if they can't see themselves as a person who can help and who can help move the needle, then they're less inclined to believe that a donation will do anything, right? So when you present it as if we need this, we need this, it removes the donor from the action. What you wanna do is bring them in the center of it all. You want them to know that their donation can help move this. And it was because of their donation, this thing or this action was able to happen. It was because of their support, they were able to help the organization do what it needs to do. So it's us, right? It's not just about the organization, but it's us together as donors, as people who are served by the nonprofit, as people who do the serving, right? Everyone's together. We're all working collectively to make this happen. But part of the reason why we got there is because you were kind enough to give us your money, right? And so you're always including them as part of the work. They're a part of your organization. They're part of your mission. Once they give, that's it. They stuck with you, right? And you wanna make them feel like that. You wanna make them feel like they're a part of your organization and their donation, no matter how small or how big, really did make a difference, all right? Just so keep that in mind. If you need more help, right? If you need more help with raising money as a new nonprofit, I do have a small community where I do training every week and I do one-on-one sessions with nonprofit founders, which includes their boards and anyone who works for the organization. The private community is called Money on a Mission. So Money on a Mission only opens four times a year, but if you're interested in joining, you can join the waiting list and you may be in luck. When you do join the waiting list, it may be open. So I'm putting the link down to the waiting list below so you can sign up in case you wanna be notified when the doors actually open. Guys, thank you so much for supporting this channel. Thank you so much for watching. If you need more help, don't forget to go to www.bossinthebudget.com and I'll see you in the next video.