You can write the most compelling appeal in the sector, tell a perfect story, pay an agency to craft every word, and still lose the gift at the final step. The donation page is where all of that work either pays off or quietly falls apart. It is the moment a supporter who has already decided to give either completes the gift or gives up, and far more give up than most fundraisers realize. This guide is about closing that gap. It explains why the page matters so much, how to remove the friction that turns willing donors away, and how to test your way to a form that converts. The sections move from the psychology of the giving journey, through the practical work of friction, design, amounts, mobile and trust, to measuring and improving conversion.

The case for caring about this is simple. The benchmark from M&R Benchmarks is that, from the point at which someone lands on your donation page, good conversion is around 21 percent. As Kat, Hubbub's commercial director, put it: "two in 10 of the people who are on your website will end up making their gift." That is the sector norm. On Hubbub's own giving day platforms, by contrast, "we see conversion rates from the donation page of about 70 per cent." The difference between two in ten and seven in ten is not a rounding error. It is the difference between a campaign that limps and one that flies, and almost all of that difference comes down to the page itself.

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Why the donation page is where campaigns are won or lost

Before you change a single field, it helps to understand where the donation page sits in the donor's journey. A useful way to picture that journey is as an emotional climb rather than a transaction. The NextAfter report "The State of Nonprofit Donor Pages" maps a donor being interrupted in their ordinary day by an email, a letter or a phone call, then led up an emotional path of small decisions until they reach a high point and decide, yes, I want to give. Only then do they cross what the report calls the conversion horizon and meet your form. The striking part is the proportion. As Kat described it, "95 per cent of getting somebody to say yes is that decision making process and getting them to the emotional high point." The form is the last 5 per cent, but it is the 5 per cent where the gift is taken or lost.

This matters because the emotional high point is also a budget. A donor who is deeply moved, giving in response to a crisis they care about passionately, will tolerate a clumsy form and push through anyway. A donor who is mildly engaged, busy and short of time will abandon at the first irritation. As Kat framed it, the lower the emotional connection, "that friction is much less tolerated", and then you reach "the point of abandonment". You cannot guarantee every donor arrives at full emotional intensity, so the safe strategy is to keep the form so smooth that even a lightly engaged supporter sails through it.

This connects directly to how you drive traffic. The work of building emotion happens in the email, the direct mail and the phone call, not on the form. Those channels should give the donor what they need to say yes, and the form is the final step. If you are running a Giving Day, this is doubly true: you are sending large volumes of warm traffic to your pages in a compressed window, and every percentage point of conversion is multiplied across thousands of visits. Get the emotional build-up right in your comms, then make sure the page does not waste the goodwill donors arrive with.

Removing friction from the giving journey

If the page is where gifts are lost, friction is how they are lost. Jonathan, one of Hubbub's founders, made the central point bluntly: "It's about psychology. It's not about functionality." The question in a donor's mind is not whether the form technically works. It is whether they can look at the thing in front of them, understand it, and figure out what to do quickly and without anxiety. The job is to stand in the donor's shoes, and when you cannot do that easily, to test it.

A framework from the NextAfter and Hubbub collaboration names four common types of friction. Having the labels makes them far easier to hunt down on your own pages.

Decision friction is asking people to decide between too many options. An empty box that says "what would you like to give to?" is hard work, because the donor has no idea what the options even are. A long, ungrouped list of designations is barely better. The fix is to make the choice for them where you can: direct them to a single recommended cause, or to "where the need is greatest", which both reflects your priorities and relieves the donor of the decision. As Jonathan noted, donor choice is a wonderful thing, but "the best place to do that is in stewardship comms". When you are actually asking for a gift, point them at one thing.

Confusion friction is forcing people to make a decision they are not equipped to make. This is where internal language leaks onto the form: words like "designation", "restricted" and "unrestricted" that "mean a lot to us, mean nothing to the donor for the most part". Consider a consent block where the first two channels are opt-in and the second two are opt-out, all four looking visually identical. It is not designed to trick anyone, but "some people filling this out will think that this is a trick because it's sufficiently confusing". Even decoding it forces a pause, and every pause is a chance to abandon.

Field number friction is overloading people with fields you would love to have but do not actually need right now. Jonathan was candid that this is "probably where the biggest trade off happens in the sector". The honest test is to ask what you genuinely need to retain this donor and keep the conversation going, rather than what would be nice to know. Most of a donor's value is not in the first gift but in "the lifetime value of a donor", the chance to keep talking to them. So capture enough to contact and thank them, and leave the rest for later.

Steps friction is too many clicks, page reloads and stages. It creeps in because forms tend to combine collecting information about the donor with processing payment, and people keep adding sections in between: address validation, a volunteering question, an account login. Worst of all is asking for the same information twice, which Jonathan singled out as a personal bugbear: you capture a name and address, hand off to a payment gateway, and the gateway asks for it all again. That repetition does not just frustrate, it can make a donor "lose respect a little bit for the organisation that we're trying to support".

There is one more form of friction the framework does not name but which afflicts the sector badly: forms that are simply broken. Because nobody is alerted when a form breaks, and because supporters tend to give up rather than email you, a broken form can sit dead for days or weeks unnoticed. Build in a regular check, at least once a month and ideally every week, so that a person actually completes a test gift on your live infrastructure on a schedule.

Page design and copy that convert

The cheapest, most powerful test you can run costs nothing. As Jonathan put it, "the cheapest possible way of assessing your online giving experience is to get a family or a friend to do it." Sit someone outside your organization in front of the form, watch them try to give, and say nothing. "You will learn enormous amounts about which words make sense, which words don't make sense, which buttons are in the right place." If only you test it, you will skip every problem, because everything makes perfect sense to the person who built it. This is the antidote to fundraiser bias: the things that make sense to us are the things we assume make sense to our donors.

In practice, that means writing copy in the donor's language, not yours. Strip out acronyms and internal jargon. If you must ask for a piece of information, explain why. Take a form asking which subject an alumnus studied: it means nothing until you add a line such as, the subject with the most donors unlocks an extra $5,000 of challenge funding. Now the ask makes sense and the donor gives it willingly. Order long lists alphabetically so people can find their answer, and be wary of decorative images that look attractive but make the real choice harder to scan. Keep the page visually calm, lead with the cause and the impact, and let the form itself be the simplest thing on the screen.

Above all, make the page match the message that brought the donor there. The journey up the "donor mountain", as Kat described it, is a series of micro-decisions: do I open the email, do I click the link, does the page match what I just read, do I feel safe. If the page looks and sounds like the appeal, each of those small decisions is a yes.

Asking for the right amounts and capturing tax-deductible gifts

Suggested amounts are one of the most reliable conversion tools you have, and the reason is psychological rather than mechanical. Leave the amount box empty and you force the donor to worry: "what have other people given? Would I be the only one giving at this level? Is this too little? Is this too much?" Fill it with a suggested figure and, as Jonathan explained, "all of that's gone." A pre-filled $25 quietly signals what is expected and gives permission to give at that level, while leaving the donor free to change it up or down. Anchoring matters too: the options you present shape what feels normal, so choose your suggested levels deliberately.

Regular giving deserves its own clean decision rather than being tangled into the amount question. A common mistake is a form that lists a jumble of one-off and monthly options together, leaving the donor unsure what they are even selecting. The better pattern is a simple binary up front: would you consider a recurring gift, yes or no? A yes leads to "what would you like to give every month?"; a no leads to a one-time ask. One confusing question becomes two clear ones, and you avoid odd, organization-driven figures like $83.50 a month that exist only because someone divided an annual target by twelve. As Jonathan put it, "think about what makes sense for the donor", not what is tidy for your reporting.

For US 501(c)(3) charities, tax-deductible giving is the obvious place to add value without adding much friction, because it lets eligible donors deduct their gift when they itemize, at no cost to you. Treat the tax-deduction receipt as a clear, well-worded promise: tell the donor plainly that they will receive an acknowledgment they can use for their taxes, and make the wording simple and honest. Do not bury it among unrelated questions, and do not let it become another moment of confusion friction. A clear statement that the gift is tax-deductible and that a receipt will follow is reassurance that costs nothing and lifts confidence right at the point of giving.

Mobile and speed

Donors increasingly arrive on a phone, often straight from an email opened on the move, and the bar they judge you against is set elsewhere. Giving online does not happen in a vacuum: people compare your form with their banking app, their store checkout and their government services, and "it's all the same to the donor." Banking interfaces that were frustrating a few years ago are now slick; even government forms, as Jonathan noted of the pandemic-era testing systems, were "really simple to use" and "very well designed for the actual user". If your donation page feels clunky next to those, supporters notice.

In concrete terms, the page must load fast, render cleanly on a small screen, present large and easily tapped buttons, and minimize typing. Every extra field is heavier on a phone than on a desktop, so field number friction and steps friction both bite harder on mobile. Make sure the experience carries across devices too, so a donor who opens your email on their phone and finishes on their laptop meets the same page and the same feeling either way. And remember the channels that funnel people to mobile in the first place: a QR code on a poster, a table card or a screen can take an in-person moment straight to a frictionless page, which only works if that page is genuinely built for the phone in their hand.

Building trust and reassurance

Confidence and friction are two sides of one coin. As Kat put it, "as soon as that confidence dips, that's where the friction point is", and that dip can turn a willing donor away "not because they don't want to give to the charity, not because they don't care, but because the friction on the form is just too much for them to endure." A donation page asks people to hand over money and personal data, so it has to feel safe at the exact moment they are deciding to trust you.

Much of this is reassurance by design. Keep security visible and current, because expectations around handling data and payment information safely have risen sharply. Make the page look like it belongs to your organization, so it plainly matches the email or letter that sent the donor there and nothing feels like a detour to an unfamiliar site. Be honest and brief about why you are asking for anything beyond the essentials. And avoid the quiet trust-killers: a form that asks the same thing twice, a confusing consent block, or worse, a broken form, all chip away at the sense that this is a competent organization worth supporting. Trust is not a badge you add at the end; it is the cumulative effect of a page that behaves exactly as the donor expects.

Testing and measuring conversion

You cannot improve what you do not measure, so decisions should rest on data rather than opinion. The starting point is instrumentation. Hook your platform up to Google Analytics with goals so you can see conversion from the donation page, and look at web traffic alongside it. If a provider runs your platform, they "should be looking at your platform on Google Analytics for their own good as well as yours", so ask them for the numbers. Even without analytics you can improvise a signal, as Kat did at the University of Southampton by counting the gap between people who started the form and those who completed payment, enough to prove the form was losing gifts and to make the case for change.

Once you can see your baseline, run real tests rather than guesses. NextAfter's friction calculator will walk you through your form question by question and score it, which can give you "the firepower" to push for improvement internally. Better still, A/B test changes inside a live campaign rather than swapping a form and waiting to see what arrives. As Kat advised, do not "just put up a new donation form and see what comes your way"; make it part of an active appeal so the test means something. Bring the skeptics into the process too, the IT, finance and procurement colleagues who can otherwise block change, because "nobody likes being told what to do", and let the data, not anyone's opinion, settle the argument.

Finally, treat this as an investment rather than a cost. The argument worth repeating to any budget holder is this: moving from two in ten donors converting to seven in ten does not just raise more money on the day, it brings more people into relationship, lifts lifetime giving and builds the pipeline. Spending a little to remove friction returns far more than leaving the leak unfixed.

Frequently asked questions

What conversion rate should I expect from my donation page? As a sector benchmark, around 21 percent, or two in ten visitors, is considered good according to M&R Benchmarks. Well-optimized platforms can do far better; Hubbub reported conversion of about 70 per cent on their giving day pages. Treat the benchmark as a floor to beat, not a ceiling to settle for, and measure your own baseline first.

What is the single biggest cause of lost donations? Friction, and specifically the psychological kind: "it's about psychology, it's not about functionality." Most lost gifts come from forms that are confusing, ask for too much, or take too many steps, rather than from forms that are technically broken, though broken forms cause real and often unnoticed losses too.

Should I use suggested donation amounts? Yes. A suggested amount removes the anxiety of a blank box, signals what is expected and gives permission to give at that level, while still letting the donor change it. Choose your suggested figures deliberately, since they anchor what feels normal.

How do I handle one-time versus recurring giving on the same form? Separate the decision out. Ask a simple yes or no question up front about whether the donor would consider a recurring gift, then route them to a monthly or a one-time ask accordingly. Do not mix one-time and monthly amounts in a single confusing list.

How often should I check my donation form? Have someone complete a real test gift on your live form regularly, at least once a month and ideally weekly. Broken forms rarely announce themselves, because supporters tend to give up rather than report a problem, so the only reliable way to catch faults is to test them yourself.

Where should I send traffic from an email or Giving Day? Send people straight to the most relevant page, not to a generic landing page or platform front page. Segment your audience and make the choice for them where you can, so each donor lands on a page tuned to them with the fewest possible clicks between the appeal and the completed gift.

Members' resource pack

Tools

Hubbub's Giving Day Simulator: model likely results before you commit to a target
Fundraising Copy Checker: sharpen your appeal and email copy
QR Code Generator: link in-person moments straight to a donation page

How to optimize donation pages and online conversion