UPDATE (June 3, 2014): Because it’s important not to lose people in a trail of clicks, I made our “Join our team!” tab at the top of our site as a link straight to give.cru.org (Use Appearance / Menus in WordPress) . I still have the two pages I describe below so I can send a potential donor to these for information. Anyone on our site can get to these through a “table of contents” in the right sidebar.

I’ve got an idea for you today that will take less than an hour, but would be a huge positive step to take at the beginning of the year.

Creating a giving page on your blog or website

First of all, do you even have pages on your blog? You should at least have an about page and a giving page. Think of your blog as your personal or ministry web site. You could make your donation page a sub-page of your about page if for some reason you don’t want this page front-and-center. Otherwise, make it visible and accessible on the home page. (If you don’t have a blog or website, see “notes” for another option.)

Internet readers are used to seeing an about page and even a page for contributions, so they’re probably looking for these pages on your site.  (I recommend you use an active verb for your giving page instead of “how to donate” or something similar. I call ours “Join Us“).

Why is a donation page important?

I decided to do a little research and found that since we sent out our end-of-year ask in late November, people have been visiting our “Join Us” page on the average of about 7 days out of every 10 (more frequently toward the end of the year.) That is, most days one to three visitors were on the “Join Us” page for 28 days out of 38 total. (And “YES!” we’ve received donations from this page… see next section).

What to put on your donation page

You can certainly do something simpler than I’ve done or take pieces from my two pages and combine them into one. Our Join Us page has a photo, description of our ministry, endorsements, and “how to give.”

We have a second page which presents all the options donors and potential donors have for giving.  (After I updated these pages, I sent a reminder email to people who received the end-of-year ask with a link to “Join Us.” That day, we received a credit card donation from a new donor!)

Feel free to copy the layout, options, and links from our Join Us and/or How to join our team of financial ministry partners pages. Everything’s accurate. (Of course, change any links for our donors to give to our account to yours: “https://give.cru.org/your staff account number.”)

Your about page is important, too

This is also a good time to update your about page. Learn why this is important on Optimize Your “About Page.”

How about you?  Can you find an hour this week to make sure your blog’s giving page and/or about page are current? You can be accountable here, if you like.  Tell us what you’ll do and link to your site in the comments.

NOTES:

• If you don’t have a blog or website, you have a donation page on give.cru.org.  Check it annually to keep it current.  Read How Does Your Free Webpage Look?
• Have a special amount to raise for extra expenses or a summer project? Find out about the free fundraising page available on support.ccci.org.
• Keith Seabourn gave me the ideas of having a photo on this page and for the layout for all the giving options.
• The image of money in a wishing well is available on Wikimedia Commons.