Frictionless Fundraising: How to Reroute Donors From the Exit Ramp to the HOV Lane

Imagine that you’ve just decided to take a road trip, so you plug your destination into Waze. It gives you two route options:

Route A 🛣️ :

Green lights and clear roads.

Arrival Time: 2-3 Minutes

Route B 🚧 :

Riddled with potholes, traffic jams, detours, and construction zones.

Arrival Time: 2-3(ish) Business Days

Which route would you choose? Obviously, Route A—right?

This is the exact scenario we present to donors when we ask them to give or renew their support. 

The destination is the mission you believe in. But if your path to get there is like Route B, your donor will either get off at the nearest exit (e.g., abandon their gift altogether) or find an organization that offers a smooth experience like Route A. 

(BTW, if you chose Route B, then we really need to talk.)

Bumpy Road Ahead

Anything that stops or slows your donor along their journey is fundraising friction. Our job is to ensure our donor’s experience is free of roadblocks or hazards. 

There are a myriad of reasons a donor may choose not to give. And many are factors out of our control. But there may be more within our scope of influence than you realize. 

To resolve the issue, we must take a critical look at our communications and ask ourselves why someone may choose not to give. Which party is responsible? The responsibility is either theirs, ours, both, or neither. 

Here are a few scenarios that may arise:

Obviously, we can’t do anything about friction points that are outside our control. We simply react by acknowledging, adapting, and staying connected until conditions change.

But we are most certainly capable of influencing the perceptions or beliefs that someone holds about our organization and the mission we serve.

Internal Friction 

Internal friction lives in our donor’s head in the form of doubt, questions, or hesitations. Our job is to remove or reduce that mental clutter so that giving is simple and obvious. 

Clarity is critical. Donors should not have to spend any time trying to understand what you mean. 

Furthermore, anticipating common concerns allows you to address objections before they arise. 

The decision to give is the donor’s, but we are responsible for conveying our message in a way that resonates with that particular donor. This is why we segment communications.

Because we can’t read donors’ minds, friction points internal to the donor are less obvious. In 13+ years of fundraising, no donor has ever scribbled on their reply card, “Your letter was too jargon-heavy and uninspiring”––even though they might be thinking it.

I would argue that many donors may not even be able to articulate precisely why they do not feel compelled to give. All they may be aware of is that their brain sent them a signal saying, “I am not willing to spin my cognitive wheels for this glob of black and white text.”

In fact, it would be safer for you to assume that this is every reader’s initial mindset. It is your job to convince them otherwise. Confronting potential psychological blocks requires us to be proactive and to carefully calibrate our message. 

We can’t expect to convince someone who hates cats to donate to Kibble for Kittens. Their feline aversion is out of our control. We accept them as a “Mission Misfit” who we’ll never convert. 

However, there are plenty of internal friction points within our scope of influence. Consider those who share our organization’s vision and values. Our job is to build trust and show tangible impact. These are likely candidates that just need to be moved from interested to invested.

One of the top two reasons donors choose not to give again is because they wonder, “Did they even use my gift?” Confront that head-on with a quick note:

“Thanks to your purr-sistent monthly gift, we were able to feed Lady Whiskers and her new litter!”

The good news is that internal friction points are the quickest and easiest to fix in terms of resources. However, because they are more conceptual than concrete, they are harder to spot. 

Unfortunately, this means there’s a good chance money is being left on the table simply because of the language we are (or are not) using in our donor communications. 

Here are some frequent internal donor friction points we see:

• No communication on where the money will go.

• No reporting of where past gifts went. 

• Untimely receipts, leaving the donor to wonder, “Did they receive my gift?”

• Year-end giving summaries that exclude certain gift types.

• No acknowledgment letter, potentially implying that we only care about high-dollar donors.

• Boring and vague communications.

• A thask (thank you + ask). (“What’s a thask,” you say? Read here.)

• Confusing instructions for non-cash giving vehicles like stocks and donor-advised funds.

  
  

Internal friction may be invisible, but its consequences aren’t. Every lost gift is a kitten left unkibbled.

External Friction

External friction lives in our donor’s environment in the form of broken links, clunky forms, and distracting pop-ups. Our job is to remove or reduce that external noise so that giving is quick and easy. 

Unlike internal friction, external friction points jump off the page. However, it can be much harder to fix, as it often entails budget reallocation, tech solutions, partnerships, and competing priorities.

The best way to uncover external friction is to walk the path yourself—not as a fundraiser, but as a donor. 

If you mailed a letter with a call to action, did you provide a return envelope? Is there a QR code to the giving page? 

Does your website display a prominent “Give Now” or “Donate” button in the top right corner where donors instinctively look?

Have you tested your web experience on multiple browsers (such as Safari, Chrome, and Edge) and on both mobile and desktop? Both iPhone and Android?

Here are some frequent external points of friction we see:

• Giving pages that ask donors for unnecessary information

• Broken or incorrect links from emails and social posts

• Non-mobile-friendly design

• Slow-loading website

• An ask without providing the next steps to make it happen

• Only accepting donations via mailed checks

• Forced account creation to view impact reports

Now take this experiment a step further. Make a gift with an aspirational peer. How do the two experiences compare? Where does your process feel slower or clunkier? Remember: every extra click is a roadblock. 🚧

Recalculating Route

Once you’ve cleared internal and external roadblocks, don’t stop there. A friction-free road is good, but the best donor experiences add something extra—either a delight along the way (like a scenic drive) or a faster, more streamlined journey (the HOV lane). This is about moving from repairing to enhancing the donor experience. 

Here are some ideas we have to help make the journey more enjoyable for your donor.

• A confirmation page that says, “You just changed a life today,” accompanied by a photo or short video of a beneficiary.

• A progress bar showing progress towards a campaign goal (like classrooms built, meals served, etc.).

• Handwritten thank-you notes or a quick personal email from a program staff member.

• Celebrating anniversaries of a donor’s first gift: “One year ago, you stepped in—here’s what’s happened since.”

• Impact storytelling in receipts: “Your gift helped provide three nights of shelter this week for Lady Whiskers and her kittens.”

If you want to make the donor experience faster, easier, and more efficient:

• Shorter communications with imagery and headers to facilitate skimming.

• One-click giving pages with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, ACH bank transfer, etc.

• Text or tap to give options at events. 

• Confetti celebration page after completing the gift.

  
  

One organization I worked with wanted to expand its partnerships with financial advisors. The original call-to-action simply read, “Schedule a meeting.” To increase conversion, we added a Calendly link, a direct phone number, and a real person’s email address. 

Not only that, but when they clicked on the email address, it opened their mail client with a prepopulated subject and message body thereby eliminating the dreaded blank-page-syndrome (it’s real, y’all—and it is definitely a source of friction).

A scenic route makes donors smile. An HOV lane makes them act faster. Build both, and you’ll have donors who not only give once, but come back for the ride again and again.

You Have Arrived At Your Destination

Every donor is on a journey. Some barriers live inside their heads, others in the environment we build for them. Some we can influence, others we can’t. Our job is to clear every friction point we can—the beliefs we can shape, the systems we can fix—and gracefully accept the ones we can’t.

To keep our donors from hopping off at the nearest exit ramp, consider what you can do today to make their experience as frictionless as possible. Because if we don’t, another organization will.

Whichever one has the most clear and direct path will win.

Written by Madelyn Jones