1 · Your Donation Form Score
2 · Where Friction Is Causing Donors to Abandon
Check the items that apply. Unchecked items will be hidden when printed.
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No form abandonment recovery
Donors who start but don't finish are leaving silently. Without an automated follow-up triggered by partial form completion, that intent is lost. Recovery workflows recapture 10–15% of abandons on average — a straightforward win most platforms don't offer natively.
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Manual address entry increasing drop-off
Requiring donors to type street, city, state, and zip separately adds unnecessary steps and is particularly painful on mobile. One-line address entry with autocomplete reduces this friction immediately and improves data quality at the same time.
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Donate button buried or missing from navigation
If a motivated donor has to search for how to give, you've already lost momentum. A prominently placed, high-contrast Donate button in the main nav — visible on every page — is the single easiest visibility improvement available.
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CAPTCHA puzzle interrupting the giving moment
Image-based CAPTCHAs create friction at the worst moment — right before a donor clicks Give. Invisible CAPTCHA runs silently in the background, provides stronger fraud protection, and removes this barrier entirely without any trade-off in security.
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Limited payment options reducing completion
Donors increasingly expect digital wallet options. If your form only accepts credit cards, you're turning away donors who don't have their card handy — especially on mobile. Offering Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and ACH meets donors where they are.
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Form navigation distracting donors mid-process
Keeping your full site navigation visible on the donation form gives donors an easy exit. High-performing forms strip navigation down to a logo only — a simple change that meaningfully reduces abandonment.
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Thank-you page not doing its job
The moment right after a gift is your highest-engagement moment. Immediately confirming the gift, surfacing a monthly upgrade offer, and including social sharing buttons all convert better here than anywhere else in the donor journey.
3 · How Your Gift Asks & Monthly Giving Compare to Top Performers
Gift Amount Anchoring
Your formTop performers
Top-performing forms pair every preset amount with an impact label. This anchors donor expectations to outcomes rather than numbers and increases average gift size by 20–40%.
Monthly Giving Visibility
Your formTop performers
Organizations that default to monthly giving or feature it prominently see 2–3x the recurring donor conversion rate. A recurring interrupter alone has driven a 119% lift in monthly sign-ups.
Payment Recovery Rate
Your formBest-in-class
30% of credit cards decline on recurring charges. Without automatic card updating and smart resubmission, nonprofits silently lose 15–30% of recurring revenue every year.
Abandonment Recovery
Your formWith workflow
Automated follow-ups triggered by partial form completion recapture a meaningful share of donors who showed intent but didn't finish. Every nonprofit leaving this unaddressed is giving money back.
4 · Quick Wins You Can Implement Immediately
Uncheck items the prospect already has in place — they'll be hidden when printed.
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Add impact labels to your preset gift amounts
Replace generic numbers with outcome-based labels — "$50 — Feed a family / $100 — Keep the lights on / $250 — Stock a pantry." This is a 15-minute copy change that consistently lifts average gift size by anchoring donors to what their money does, not what it costs them.
Low effort
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Make monthly giving the default or lead option
Switching the default tab from one-time to monthly — or giving the monthly option more visual prominence — can double recurring donor conversion with no additional design investment. If your platform supports a recurring interrupter mid-form, activate it.
Low effort
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Move trust badges near the payment section
Charity Navigator, BBB, and Candid seals reduce hesitation — but placement matters. Displaying them near your payment fields and submit button addresses donor doubt at the exact moment of decision. Footer placement significantly underperforms inline placement.
Low effort
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Switch to invisible fraud protection
If your form uses an image-puzzle CAPTCHA, replace it with invisible background verification. It provides stronger protection against bots and card testing fraud while removing the last hurdle a donor faces before completing their gift. Typically a one-hour developer change.
Medium effort
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Set up an abandonment recovery series
Build a two-step automated workflow: an email within one hour of abandonment and a text 24 hours later, each linking directly back to the form. Organizations with this in place recover 10–15% of abandoned gifts — revenue that currently disappears without a trace.
Medium effort
