by Barbara Barron | Posted March 19th, 2025 | Subscribe to this newsletter
When I am retained to conduct an advancement appraisal, I look at all aspects of a school’s giving program.
I look at things like:
- How their Board members are trained in their role in advancement
- Messages about giving, roles and responsibilities of team members and volunteers
- How much time and energy is going into stewardship that reports and celebrates impact
When done well, all are vital to expanding a school’s capacity to raise more money and create a joyful culture of giving.
However, a school can do all of that well and still have a problem when it comes to their website, and particularly the giving pages.
Back in the day, when schools moved away from printed view books and embraced an interactive website, the main driver of that migration was admission. It makes sense since for most schools — tuition brings in 90% of all revenue. Development pages and in particular online giving was seen as a small piece of the puzzle. Scant resources were invested in those pages and online giving forms were – simply awful. Slow, cranky, cumbersome, repetitive.
Lately they’ve gotten much better. Online giving increased both in volume and in the size of gifts so that even the most skeptical IT and business managers were convinced that it made sense to make them more functional and attractive. It was a hard sell. But it paid off.
Today, desktop giving still brings larger gifts than mobile (average gifts of $137 vs. $83). But we all know that optimized mobile browsing and giving is still essential. We are all used to easy, fast, seamless commerce on our phones so that schools whose sites are not are missing opportunities. Plus, they are unintentionally sending a dispiriting message that they are not sophisticated or even relevant and perhaps not worthy of the confidence and trust of supporters.
Ouch. Let’s fix that!
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Time to review and refresh
Even nice-looking and functional giving sites benefit from a regular review and refresh.
Consider accessibility, which is important when your visitors might be older alums or grandparents looking to make a gift or those in our communities working with some limitation in vision, for instance. There’s a free tool called Accessibility Checker (https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/) that will run a diagnostic to show you any spots on the site that need attention.
Another one called, ominously, Dead Link Checker (https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/) that will do just that: find those broken links that frustrate visitors. And donors.
But for most visitors, it’s other issues that may be creating a barrier to giving or turning donors off altogether.
A few questions to ask:
How fast do our pages load? The average attention span has shrunk to 8.25 seconds. Goldfish. But if you can keep someone for 7-10 seconds, they are likely to stick around for up to 17 minutes. So, quick loads.
How engaging are our pages? We all love videos and the stat I just saw was that a decent video grabs 97% more attention than a static photo. But your photos should be great, too. Keep them fresh. Keep them joyful.
Side note: images of children and, wait for it, dogs are the most appealing. That’s great news for us in schools since kids are everywhere. But dogs? Sure.
I recently looked at a school’s faculty & staff directory. The Head’s dog was listed along with her photo. Cute but it also said a lot about the joy in their culture. Plus click bait, evidentially!
But keep those photos real. A heart-grabbing image of a defeated team consoling one another has far more emotional punch than a simple smiling group shot. And it’s more honest, right? Teams do not win every game and it’s the learning and connection we make in disappointment that lasts.
Is our donate link a button? Here’s a wild one: a donate link in the shape of a button, surrounded by white space (I know, crazy), increases clicks by almost 50%! Yes, just that simple. Make a button. And put that button on the giving page but also on the “ways to give” page.
And here’s a good idea: put a button or a link to the giving page on any financial pages or where you post your annual report. Why? Because we increasingly see donors wishing to see strong financials before deciding on making significant gifts. Make it easy.
Do we have enough testimonials? Make your pages testimonial-rich. Testimonials have multiple benefits and potentially big impact. They communicate trust as they show the commitment of real people at your school. Not how much but why. In fact, they needn’t (actually shouldn’t) be the biggest donors always. Someone who gives $50 every year to your annual fund tells a valuable story of the importance of loyalty. And what a nice way to honor that supporter.
Seth Godin talks about how our culture can help others quickly understand and feel a sense of affiliation. They see and feel who we are, and what people who share our values act like. Testimonials are a short cut to that. But again, keep them fresh. Think about posting new stories each month. More during busy giving seasons.
Do we have a regular meeting to review these pages? Finally, like everything worth doing, calendar this so you meet as a team and with mar-com on a regular basis to look critically at what you have up there and find ways you can make it fresh, relevant, joyful, and real.
To make it easier for you to send along to your team, here are all five questions in a copy-paste-able format:
- How fast do your pages load?
- How engaging are our pages?
- Is our donate link a button?
- Do we have enough testimonials?
- Do we have a regular meeting to review these pages?
As always, thanks for everything you’re doing.
Barbara Barron
[email protected]
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BARBARA BARRON is one of the most respected and highly sought-after independent advancement professionals in the country, having worked with dozens of schools in every corner of the United States.
She has raised over $20 million for schools where she served as the Director of Development. Barbara is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and presenter who currently advises dozens of schools in various capacities. She is considered a thought leader in the world of advancement, with her writing widely shared by professionals in development offices worldwide.
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