Getting donations is important – but it's not something that should be left up to luck! Paying attention to how your donation page is set up is a great first step. Using data from those donations and your analytics can help you make decisions to improve your donor experience and increase conversions.

What you'll learn:

→ how to make donating easy.
→ why your donation page needs to be mobile friendly.
→ testing donation pages for better conversions.
→ match the info on the donation page to the purpose of the page.
→ why a CRM gives you more insight to your donors.
→ keys to making a viral video.
→ free options within Donor Dock.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[7:07] Keep your donation page easy, clear and user friendly. Don't ask more than you need on your donation forms. Think about the user experience and tailor it to your ideal donors. Is your messaging and impact clear? You don't need to share EVERYTHING you do, just the things that are going to matter most for your donors.
[10:22] Ensure your donation page is mobile friendly. Forms can be tricky on a mobile device. If people can't make a donation easily from their phone you are leaving significant money on the table.
[12:36] Testing your donation pages. There are several things you can test to see what is going to convert best. This includes pre-selected donation amounts, impact statements, different donation pages, etc. Don't make too many different changes at once so you can clearly see what is making the impact. Tracking data is critical to understand the trends and make decisions that will support your fundraising goals.
[24:29] Match the purpose of your donation page to the information that's on it. You don't need to include all the information about giving on every single donation page. Remember the goal of the page and put relevant information on there. For example, if it's event registration then have event info, you don't need to include stock options, crypto, etc.
[28:34] Sync with your CRM with. The biggest benefit of syncing with your CRM is all the data and tracking you can have. This helps you with future conversations and better segmentation. Plus, you'll have other benefits that you can add into your form for better user experience.

Resources

Digital Marketing Therapy Sessions

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] When you open up your donation page, what do you find? Is it something you're proud of branded has all the right messaging on it gives people options? Or is it a link that goes to a third party without a lot of information that you can't really customize and make the user experience the way that you want. Regardless of where you land, a donation page is really critical in ensuring that people come to your website and can take that action. And we see a lot of common mistakes on donation pages that could be hurting people's ability to either give you money, or want to give you money. So I have my friend Matt Bitzegaio, a guy joining me today. He's the co founder of donor dock and he's going to be chatting with you about what with us all about our donation pages and some things to think about and ways to track so that we can have a high performing donation page,

Matt holds a deep seated passion for working with nonprofit organizations and believe strongly that technology should enable nonprofits to further their mission and drive more impact. Instead, many nonprofits see technology as a burden. With donor doc he aims to change that and truly help them profits unlock the potential that technology can play within their organization. Prior to founding donor doc, he gained broad experience in the technology industry serving a bear serving in various positions, including leading a Microsoft Dynamics consulting, business, and ISV. It leadership positions and software architecture and development roles. Matt holds an MBA from the University of Mary and earned a bachelor's degree in Information Technology from North Dakota State University. He and his family reside in West Fargo, North Dakota.

This conversation talks about all sorts of things from how you can think about what's on your donation page, how you could test your donation page, and maybe some features about third party donation tools that you can embed on your website that you might not know about. I think that if you're on the fence about wanting to update your donation page, this is definitely the episode for you. So I hope you take a listen and check it out. Before we get into it.

This episode is brought to you by our digital marketing therapy sessions. These are 30 minute one on one sessions that we can connect on together to go through whatever it is, maybe we want to go through your donation page. And we can do an audit for you and help walk through some ways that you might be able to make an impact. Or maybe you're looking at some of your tech that you have and want to know what tools might be the right fit to connect your website to those donations, you can book time at https://thefirstclick.net/officehours. I look forward to connecting with you and having a conversation about maximizing that donation page. Let's get into the episode.

[Intro] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern]  Hey, hey, my guest today on the podcast is Matt bits. The guy from donor dock. Matt, thank you so much for being here today.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Yeah, so

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] we're talking all things donation pages, and why they're so critical in, you know, getting people to convert on our websites. But before we kind of jump into that, why don't you kind of share how you got into the nonprofit space and, and why helping nonprofits raise a ton of money is a passion of yours.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, absolutely. I spent a lot of years and like enterprise CRM space, working in the Microsoft channel. And through that had the opportunity to build a nonprofit add on for Microsoft's enterprise CRM product and just kept seeing over and over again, how it just kind of fell flat when we would try to implement it into you know, smaller nonprofits. It was it was really complicated. I mean, just inherently, you know, it's it's difficult to use, and needs a lot of implementation time and all those things. And so, in 2017, I decided, you know, after having those experiences, really kind of igniting that passion of trying to democratize technology to make it work for smaller nonprofits. I left that Microsoft partner and started my co founder, Andrew and I started writing code nights and weekends to build a CRM product that was really designed for that smaller and grassroots type nonprofit, something that we felt would be easy for him to use, but still provide the right capabilities. And so we we spent about a year writing code nights and weekends and launched our product in 2018. And here we are 2023 We're coming up on five years of having the product in the market. And obviously in those times, you know, things in that five years things have changed a lot we've added to the product including a full giving page, you know, setup functionality, email marketing, Some other really cool things. And so yeah, it just was one of those kind of both a mission project of saying, we think we can do something that's going to work well for these organizations, and then kind of coupling that with our expertise and passion around software development, and you know, CRM and those different things. And so yeah, 47 I think we have customers in 47 states now. And that, that's we've seen really good growth, really good customer retention. And, you know, the customers that are on the product really seem to like it, which is very compelling to us and to our team. So that's so fantastic.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] And this is why I wanted to have you on the podcast, because I love that that's your mission and your kind of values for how you wanted this, you know, to support those smaller nonprofits or medium nonprofits. Because we I think we connected a long time ago on, you know, our frustration with organizations that have a link to a PayPal page, not that there's anything wrong with PayPal, but that just linked to the PayPal page for that donation that completely gets rid of that whole connection and vision for what your organization does. So, you know, donation pages are a huge part of conversion. And you guys have created this easy Wait, like Gone are the days where you have to have expensive code or custom code to have a widget on your website to keep everything that that experience, concise.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, absolutely. And we, you know, we added a free tier to our product here late last year that is really focused around that giving side of things and provides that, you know, an easy to use giving platform that isn't going to cost extra. And, you know, it's something that can be put on a website, as you said, really, really quickly and easily without a lot of like, background in it, or tech or web development. So

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] yeah, and we're not gonna get into the technical side of all of that, but we'll we do want to talk about today is kind of what are some of the things like, as you're working with all of these organizations, what are some things that you've seen, some organizations do really well, or things that you've enjoyed as a user when it comes to donation pages?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, I think, you know, probably the biggest thing I would say is, is trying to make sure you're not overcomplicating it, you know, keep it Keep it keep your giving pages simple and user friendly, I think there's, there's like the fine line of making sure you're trying to like capture as much information as you can, without overloading it and making it to where it's a burden for the donor to give. So I think, you know, trying to really think through that from a, from an experience perspective, if I'm a donor, and I'm busy, and I want to support your organization, but I've got a lot of other things going on, how can I set up my giving page to really, you know, facilitate that quick, you know, be able to give quickly be able to put in the information I need to but not be asked for a ton of extra stuff. And it is it's a fine line to try and figure that out. But I think where I've seen ones really work well, are the ones who put a lot of thought into that and really try and think through that experience that that donor is going to have when they when they hit that. So I think that's one big thing. Obviously, branding is important, you know, making sure that when they get there, like you said, I mean, we don't want that from the website to go kick over directly to a Pay Pal thing, you've lost your brand in that you don't, you know, it feels very disjointed I think for for a donor and honestly, really gives the donor, very little choice and how they're going to give. And so, but but I think having that branding, when you want to embed that in your website, that the Giving page, the giving form, trying to make sure that it matches the branding you have going on in your website, I think is really important. And, again, breeds confidence for a donor that they're not just getting sent to some phishing site where they're, you know, where it's not legitimate. And so that's a big one. And then clearly stating like, what's your mission? What's your clearly stating your like impact message and your fundraising goals within that, whether that's in the page around the giving form in the giving form, but but clearly stating, like, what does their donation help do? And so there's lots of ways that you can do that. But I think the ones that I've seen be successful are really good at being able to have that kind of that mission statement impact statement that they have on there. And then yeah, highlighting that impact, I think is really important. You know, those are those are just some like key things, I think you can get into more detail around specific types of data points that we might want to be asking for. But like from a high level, 30,000 foot view, I think that those are those are some pretty important things that we kind of look at when we're trying to help people build their giving pages

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] when I want to backup to to the form and kind of challenge people on two things. Number one, the reason also to really Make sure that form is asks for as little information as possible is because a lot of people are giving on their phones, and the more fields you have there, they're just going to get frustrated and be like, forget it, you've lost that opportunity. Right? Like, do you know, like, based off? Can you tell within your software? Like what percentage of people are giving on mobile devices versus on their? Desktop?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, it's it's a high percentage on mobile devices over half, from what we're seeing. And I think that's a great point that, you know, the mobile side can sometimes be more challenging for a donor to give you want to make sure your, your giving pages are, you know, mobile friendly, mobile responsive. Data Input is just harder on mobile devices. So the less that they have to enter data in I think, the better. You know, we have customers who we get asked a lot about things like, well, I want you to be able to put a bunch of custom fields on my giving page, it's not something we support, and we don't support it for multiple reasons. But one of those reasons is that by doing that, I think you're you're risking conversion of that donor, if you're requiring and asking for all sorts of information to just be able to give a donation, there are some things that you have to know. I mean, let's you know, we know that, like we got to know how much they want to give. I mean, that's, that's pretty, pretty basic. We need to know, their contact information, you know, for the for their credit card and their billing side of things. And then we need to know how they want to pay. There's a lot of other things you can ask for. But I think you got to be really careful that you don't overload it. And yeah, whether that's me doing it on my desktop, my computer, my laptop, my tablet, or my phone, I think ultimately, too much is is going to be a barrier for for that conversion.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and I think the other thing that I would say is, you know, your donation form is not a way for you to be lazy about follow up. So if you need more information, then you know, that's on you to have a good follow up strategy. And you should be doing that. Anyway. So I'm just throwing that out there.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, that's a good, very good point. Absolutely.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay, so I think just like with anything else in marketing, and your website, your donation page is also about testing and seeing what works. So just because you slap a donation page up on your website, doesn't mean it has to stay that way all the time. Right. So what might we want to be looking at? You know, before we kind of make adjustments to what we have on the, on the donation form, what we're offering or impact, like, all of that stuff?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, I think, you know, it's a very good point, I think what you know, one of the things that we've tried to do is you can have as many giving pages and forms in donor Doc as you need to, and then you can easily change which one is your default at any time, which means that that embedded form will automatically load the default one if somebody didn't go to a specific one. And so, you know, we kind of encourage people to try different messaging try, you know, we have, there's lots of little things you can turn on or off, I guess in a, you know, in a giving page setup, and try different preset amounts, try different messaging, try different default, you know, you can usually set like, what's the default ask amount that goes on there? Try different ones. I think I read a study that said, you know, $60, is kind of been proven to be a really good, I think it was a charity water study that, but I think, you know, first of all part of that, though, is measuring Right? Like it doesn't do you any good to just go randomly change your given page if you're not measuring the results. So, you know, start by having a plan around it, where you say, this is what we're going to roll out now. And then you're you're measuring that, like, what, how many donations? Are we getting in through that? What's that average donation look like through that giving page? You know, different metrics that can help you determine the effectiveness and then and then as you're moving through your strategy, you know, you can try making some adjustments to that and see, how do those metrics change do that? Does the average gift go up? Does it go down? And I but I think what I would really caution people against is just the the willy nilly, I'm going to change things, and I'm not really going to keep track of what it was before or what it is after. It's kind of like, I think I hope I feel strategy. And, you know, I think having data is really important about what is working and what isn't working so you can make you know, the appropriate adjustments. Because a lot of times, I think small small adjustments to things like your impact message or your preset giving amounts or the default amount, those types of things can really make a big difference in conversion.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, well, and to that point, also not changing too many things at one time because I don't know what made the change.

[Matt Bitzegaio] 100% Yeah, you have to be really careful with you know, and my marketing My team would tell me the same thing and all the things that we're doing like, you know, when we're doing marketing, we need to make small changes so that we kind of understand which ones drive the impact. And I think that's exactly the same thing here. You're right on.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, I think patience is the hardest part when it comes to things like this, especially when it's driving financial revenue for your business, and whatever industry you're in, but yeah, patience is key. So what are some of your favorite, like, you know, data insights that you like to track when it comes to a donation page?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, I mean, so some of it, you're gonna track? You know, it depends on how you have your website set up, obviously, you know, you may be doing some tracking, like, right through your website, where that embedded pages is embedded. So things like, you know, the number of page visits and things, then then how do those convert? And, you know, how many donations? Are you getting out of that? What's that percentage look like? I mean, those are important metrics. Of course, time on the page is an interesting one that, you know, kind of helps you understand? Are you losing people as soon as they get there? And they say, oh, no, this is too much. I'm gonna, you know, I'm, I'm getting out of here. So those are ones that we kind of look at, obviously, you know, when we're talking about directly in your donor management database, there's a lot of things that we're interested in, and I touched on a couple of them, you know, what's the average size gift that comes in from a giving page, if you have multiple giving pages, which ones are seem to convert better, which ones seem to convert at a higher value? We've had some really interesting things, too, that, you know, we see with customers like, we allow you to change the giving frequency, so or meaning, we allow you to choose which given frequencies you want to make available on a page. So like, do I want to allow one time gifts or just monthly gifts, or just annual or all three, or any combination of those? And, you know, one of the things I've always been really interested in looking at is we do have customers who say, Well, we're doing a drive for recurring giving, so I'm going to turn off everything except a monthly or annual. And, you know, I'm always really interested in how many one time gifts are they losing, because the donor comes in and says, you know, I don't want to do a man I'd give to you right now, I don't want to do a monthly, but I would give you $100. Now, but I don't have that option. So we try and look at some of those types of things with customers to to say, you know, by shutting off that one time thing in comparison to some of these other pages, you've kind of lowered your conversion. And you know, I'm a firm believer in, provide your donors as many options as you can, without it being overwhelming and let them choose, you know, what makes sense for them, instead of, you know, trying to drive them always down a single path. I mean, that kind of goes back to like, multi channel engagement, and, you know, various things like that. But those are always things I'm really interested in looking at with customers on, you know, what can you do with in the settings that we have in the giving pages to try and maximize that conversion?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So I agree with you on multiple options, but then I'm curious about your take on, you know, giving people too many options, because some people have forms that have, yes, you know, the three that you mentioned, but then they'll also have this huge drop down list of like, donor, like, which fund Do you want nations? And all of that. So, you know, again, is it about going back to the goal and the purpose of that page and the campaign that you're doing? Like, do we want to give people the ability to really designate where funds are going all the time? Like, you know, I don't think practice there.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, I think it absolutely, you, you, you hit it right on the head, which is, what is the purpose of that specific giving page, because with, you know, with our giving pages, and I think with a lot of them that are out there, we do provide you the option to allow them to designate and you can then select which funds that you want to allow them to choose from on that specific giving page, or you can say, everything from this giving page needs to go to, you know, this specific fund. And but, you know, I think it's anything that you're doing that creates confusion for a donor is not something it's something you want to really think hard about. And so designations can be one of those things. I think, you know, there's certain fields that I think you pretty much have to have on there, you know, like allowing someone to donate anonymously I think is kind of an important thing you know, I think but I'm I'm a I always lean towards simplicity it's actually one of our core values at donor doc like I think the even even the giving presets can sometimes be overwhelming if you have too many of them so you know, you might have you know $50 provides a meal for you know, somebody or whatever those those presets are if you have too many of them. I think that can be overwhelming to it's finding that that sweet spot and that balance with that. But yeah, we only support you know, one time monthly or annually because I've seen In other platforms where there are so many different options for recurring giving, that it's again, it's just kind of overwhelming, when you're sitting there looking at it, like I can give bi weekly or semi monthly or, you know, half, a lot of people don't even can't even know, remember the difference between by monthly, like, I get confused all the time, you know. So I think simplicity is is is typically going to be the best thing. And I even think that goes with payment methods, you know, that's another area where, like, you give people too many options of how they can pay, and it can be kind of that can be kind of overwhelming, too. So, you know, we, we tend to do. So we do a lot with stripe, that's one of the providers we use, of course, then we can provide, obviously credit card, we can provide Ach, Google Apple, pay those things, and then PayPal. And I think if you can provide that kind of group of payment methods, you're really covering on a lot of things. But you know, we just had an interesting conversation at an event last week with with a company called giving block and they do you may have heard of them, they do crypto, you know, gift giving. And so it was interesting conversation and something that we're looking at. And then part of me is like how many people are donating to charities with crypto? I don't I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. But like, does that become does that become more confusing, or, you know, like, I guess if you're a donor who wants to give with that, it's nice that you have it. But I think there's a lot of shiny objects out there that you, you hear about and you say, Oh, we have to have that. And then it complicates your giving page and maybe confused as your donors and the the how it helps your conversion may not be as high as you think it's going to be. So I think it's always trying to look at those things and think through those things. And make sure that you're putting something on there for a purpose. Like, you know, yeah, if and so if you need to allow them to designate funds, absolutely, you should do that. And you should set that up that way. But if you really don't, then maybe you don't need that. And maybe instead you're you're deciding where those you know where that goes. And I guess like you said, it's a lot about the purpose of the Giving page that really should drive those decisions. But, again, I always lean towards keep it simple. So far.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] No, I agree with that. And I think especially for smaller organizations, because it's less were you to manage and keep track of as well. But I liked that you brought up like, you know, the payment options and things like crypto because you know, it's changing all the time, I can't even wrap my head around it, nor do I want to try to. But when we think about our donation page, like that's the like your we've always recommend having your form and like you said, your impact statement, like right there above the fold, no matter what they do not have to scroll to see that. But we also know that people are going to be giving to us in you know, if somebody has, you know, Legacy gifts, or they want to create whatever it is the bigger gifts, they're not going to do that through your form. And so there is more opportunity as they scroll to get some of that additional information for ways that they can interact and engage in contact information. Right? So absolutely. It's not like it's just the form. And then it's like, okay, we'll see you good luck. Like you could have all those other things like crypto and other options that are farther below, just not right in front of their face when they lay in there.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Absolutely. And I think you know, stock gifts was another one of those things that they're not going to do that through your donation page. Typically, I think giving block does support that, which is kind of interesting to like, but I think yeah, having the information is great. Not creating a situation where a donor gets confused, if they just want to give a simple, you know, $100 donation, like you should make that really easy for them. And like you said, Have as much above the fold as you possibly can to help them get there. So

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] yeah, and the other thing that you brought up just was simplicity, like we have talked about this with our clients as well like with the menu navigation, like as much as you can you want to make the choices for them, you want to guide the journey for them, right. So, you know, you want them to find what they need. But also if people are landing on your donation page, they probably aren't. That's not their first interaction with you. So how do you kind of think about, like how much information is too much on a donation page? How much is too little? And I know that's not there's no right or wrong answer. But you know, how might we want to make sure that we're giving everybody what they need in that moment?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I think it goes back to something we were chatting about a bit ago, which is a lot of it to me depends on what the purpose of of that specific giving pages, you know, there's probably times where, if it's just your general donation page, you know, I think that can usually be a bit simpler than if you say you're doing you have a specific giving page for a certain capital campaign or some type of thing that you're raising money specifically for and then to me having more in information about the impact and what that that specific fundraising drive is about can be, can be really good. But again, you know, there's kind of that base set of data or information that you just always have to have. And then to me, it's kind of like, building up from there, based on the purpose of what that specific giving page is, the more you can, again, the more you can, you know, keep it simple and make it easy for the donor to see what they're trying to see understand what they're trying to understand. I think that's going to lead to better results. And that goes back to, you know, like you said, navigation and everything, like, so much of it, you know, we think a lot I know, you, you're you're working with people on the full, their full website, right, so you're thinking holistically about the website, when we are working on stuff, usually it's thinking about the donation form itself, just that page and where it fits in. And, you know, we have a lot of customers who they will put their content in their website with their content management system, and then embed that form, you know, within that, we have other customers who will try and put that information in the form itself, you know, in the in the messaging statements there, we have some people who don't have a website, and they literally use the Giving page form as a standalone form. They're linking to it from their Facebook, you know, page or whatever else they're doing. And so they're just so many my point in saying all that is there's so many variables that I don't, it's like hard to say, there's always a good or a best way to do something. But I think that, you know, just being purposeful in, in thinking through what you're presenting, and why you're presenting it, as always a good rule of thumb and, you know, don't put on more than you need to and I know that's easy to say it's not I don't have like a specific you should always do this and never do this.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Six graphics Yeah, no,

[Matt Bitzegaio] I don't think it's that cut and dry. But I think, you know, going back to what I started with, keep it user friendly. Make sure your branding makes sense. And that you're clearly stating your your messages and your goals. And those three rules in my mind will always probably serve you pretty well. However you're doing it, whether it's you know, embedding it in your CMS or, you know, having it as a standalone giving page, those three rules to me are kinda like, probably should always, always Yeah,

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. Well, okay, so this kind of puts a nice, pretty bow on kind of the last thing that I wanted to touch on and kind of go full circle. Because what you're saying is like, basically just get started with whatever you can to start getting donations and make that work. And there's so many I mean, like donor Doc is one of many platforms that allows you to have these embedded things. So basically, what we're telling you is, you must have a nice donation form, it's easy to do, if you aren't using donor Doc, you talk to the platform you're using, they probably have an option. But if people are still just using their kind of Pay Pal page, and they're like, this is too much work, this is too much effort, I'd love for you to just touch on and share some of the amazing other features that you can have within using another platform like, you know, credit card recovery fees, and I know you guys have some unique things that donor Doctor, what are some of those outside of the fact that you can't personalize gifts as well? Like, what are some other features that people might not know about that? They might be like, Oh, wow, that is like really going to be helpful?

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, well, I think a lot of it is around having, you know, easy access to that history of each donor, right, like, so if you have a PayPal button on your website, and they go there. So you may have that information in Paypal, that's going to be really hard to like report on and pull data from and I think any of the platforms out there, and there's a lot in there, there's a lot of really good ones are all going to have some level of being able to have that don't that donors history of their giving to your organization through those giving pages. So I think right, there is a huge benefit to using an actual platform of some of some sort.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] And for you and for them, like easy access for them to log in and get their own history, which is also a time saver.

[Matt Bitzegaio] That's exactly right. And so and being able to easily change their giving frequency, maybe I set up a monthly gift and I want to increase the amount or you know, most of the platforms out there are going to have the capability where they're able to, you know, sign in and do some of those types of things. So I think you get that I think you get you touched on it a little bit. But if you know there's a lot of platforms out there donor doc included, who are trying to really remove the burden of processing fees for our customers. So like in our in our platform, we have a cool thing that we came up with called tip back. So with our free platform, if a donor chooses to give donor dock to tip to help cover the costs of running that platform and providing it free, we then turn around and do what we call a tip back, which is to give the charity back their credit card processing fees up to that, you know, the nonprofit rates of the 2.2% plus 30 cents. And so they are getting all of their donation in so they're, they're not paying stripe or PayPal, that that, you know, that processing fee. And so, like we launched that back in late November, we've already given back over $11,000 to our customers through tip back, which, you know, it's just another way to be able to help make the charity whole in their donation. There are other platforms who are doing similar things, maybe a little different, you know, kind of bent on it. But so I think there's an advantage there. And then I think just the ease of it, like, you know, our stuff. And if you look at things like give butter, and you know, some of these other platforms that are similar, it's all point and click right you don't, you can build up this whole giving form just by by selecting a few options. And it gives you this, this thing that you can either use, the simplest way is you've got a URL directly to that page, if you don't have a website like you, you can use that as a landing giving page for people to go to. Alternatively, you've got really simple ways to embed it in your website. So you're and then you get support for it. I guess that's probably the other benefit that I would say is, like, if you're having trouble with it, you can reach out to that platform support team and they're going to be able to say, oh, yeah, you know, we've we've seen this, here's how you might want to deal with that you're having trouble with you know, embedding it in a Wix page, let, here's an article that tells you how to do that. So you get that level of support that you probably aren't going to get by just having that you know, something like a Pay Pal button on your website. So

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, I think support and also to that and inspiration because now you're not having to just start with, you know, we talk we've been talking a lot about the blinking cursor and feeling like paralyzed by a blank page and not knowing what to do. When you work with, you know, a company, they have best practices, they have examples of donation forms, you don't have to start from scratch, like, yes, you add your own branding, you're not copy pasting. But you also now almost have, you know, a consultant in your back pocket to kind of help you make sure that it's right. So for small shops like you love to work with, it's a great resource just in that alone.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah. And to that end, you know, even on our free tier, we provide weekly cohort based live training with a real person to how to set up a giving page and actually get to the point where you have it on your website. And we you know, we offer that multiple times each week, you know, even at our free tier, so you have access to real people who can help you. And I think, you know, we're not, we're not the only ones doing that. So I think if you look around at the different platforms, you're you're going to be able to get some advantages and benefits over. And I think that probably just is a great way to gear you don't have to go it alone, there are out there who are willing to help, they've built platforms that are designed to help you something that can be overwhelming and can be scary for people, like there's help out there. And it's even help with even you know, something that is free to you as a charity, you can still get that level of help. And I think that's a huge benefit and a huge advantage.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, and we've been talking a lot about donor doc today, obviously. But I always encourage when you're getting started with new tech to start with what you're already using. And I know Matt would agree, start with what you're already using and see what the limitations are and the abilities are there. I think somebody on your team posted on LinkedIn recently, I'll try to find it and put it in the show notes just about how to research tech and to always go purpose forward. First problem, what do you need the problem to solve? So, you know, definitely recommend checking out donor Doc, I think it's a fantastic platform. But please start with where you're at, and what the integrations are there so that you can the biggest, biggest thing is just to get your donation page working in a way that is helping your organization thrive. So to that end, Matt, I would love if you would maybe share where people can find out more about donor doc connect with you grab some of your resources and information.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah, absolutely. So probably the best place is our website, you know, https://donordock.com. So it's, that's that's a really good place where if you want to learn more about the product, we have a lot of resources and information. Of course, we can set up a time to show you things. We're also on all your major social networks. If you search for donor doc, we do a lot on LinkedIn. Like you said our team is pretty active on LinkedIn. And so we we like to engage with customers and prospects through that but we are we'd love to show you more about what we're doing. We just you know, we touched on the Giving page side but really owner Doc is also a full CRM and like I said, email marketing all kind of built in one simple use platform. So it's, it's something that we're very excited about to be able to bring to the smaller nonprofits. And we'd love to, we'd love to be able to tell your listeners more about it, if they're interested in that. So well, and I

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] want to make sure we reiterate to you your focus and the purpose. And the features that you add are geared towards a small to medium sized nonprofits. But it's a fully scalable, it is

[Matt Bitzegaio] yeah, I just want to make sure we, we have a lot of larger organizations that are running it, and I think, but when we think about who we're designing it for the simplicity and so forth, and that, you know, we continually win the like awards, from GE to about the easiest to use fastest ROI, all the things that really speak to that core value of simplicity that's so important to us. But yes, I mean, those a lot of times those same things really resonate, you know, with other organizations, large organizations as well. So, but that's, yeah, we really find our sweet spot. We love working with those those small to mid sized nonprofits for sure.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Amazing. Well, Matt, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your insights. I really appreciate it.

[Matt Bitzegaio] Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was fun to chat with you.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] A big thank you again to Matt, for joining me today. It was such a fun conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as well, all the resources will be available to you at https://thefirstclick.net/209. So if you want to check out any of the tools that he mentioned, or learn more about donor dock, you can do that there. I just really am passionate about making sure that people have a way to take action on your website and the donation page can really help build and engage with your donors and get new ones as well. I can also help you with your events and with any other things that you need to have registration for. So I hope that you are going to evaluate your donation software or your CRM, take a look, see what other features and ways that you might be able to maximize it are and take action on your donation page. Let's clean them up. And let's get them looking sparkly fresh. For now. I hope you'll subscribe. Wherever you listen, these episodes drop on Tuesdays and we're talking donation pages all month and so who wouldn't want to hear any information about that? You can subscribe wherever you listen, we stream on all podcast platforms. Or watch the videos of these episodes at https://thefirstclick.net/youtube for now. See you the next one.