5 Big Ideas for Online Giving
Tip Sheet
With the right strategy and the smartest new tools, digital giving is a win-win: easy for donors and effective for you. The good news is that going all in with online giving is getting easier, with intuitive technology and significant cost-savings. Test out these five tips and tech upgrades to start seeing big results for your online giving program.
1. Roll out a brilliant new donation form.
You can make giving feel great for your donors with a compelling, easy-to-use, mobile-first donation form. The most effective forms spark generosity by design:
- Pack a visual punch with your branding and powerful images
- Present a clear call to action with intelligent gift amounts
- Provide a portal where donors can manage their giving
- Offer a range of payment options: PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and digital wallets
“With Blackbaud’s Donation Forms the interface is much more user-friendly and we’re able to capture the information we need without the donor having to go through a bunch of fields just to make a donation. The easier it is to make the donation, the more likely it is to happen.”
2. Invite donors to cover transaction fees.
You want online giving to be as cost-effective as possible—and so do your supporters. Offer donors the option of covering your transaction fees so more of their gift goes to the mission. Blackbaud offers two configurations:
- Donor cover presents supporters with a suggested percentage to add to their individual gift. If they opt in, your organization receives the full intended donation. If they don’t, standard fees apply. The choice is up to each donor.
- Complete Cover® is a Blackbaud-exclusive solution designed to eliminate all processing fees. With Complete Cover enabled, fees are covered on all eligible donations up to $3,000*—whether or not an individual donor opts in—because Blackbaud covers the gap. Donors are offered the option to add a voluntary tip to support this program for all Blackbaud customers. Your organization receives the full gift either way.
Blackbaud customers saved a combined total of nearly $17.4 million in 2025 through fee cover options. For the top 100 Complete Cover® customers, average annual savings were $12,938—enough in some cases to cover the full cost of their annual software subscription. For instance, Manchester University saved $2,500 in fees in just five months after enabling Complete Cover.
Those savings can go right back into your programs, staffing, and mission.
*Note: Donations made via PayPal or Venmo, or those exceeding $3,000, are not eligible for Complete Cover.
3. Raise more money by leveraging all your data.
Smart donation forms should be integrated with your nonprofit CRM and your payments platform, so you can access more data from more sources, including campaign metrics, financial tracking, and donor history. This cross-system feedback can transform your strategy.
Blackbaud’s Intelligent Ask™ capability analyzes signals like device type and donor behavior to recommend gift amounts a specific donor is most likely to give. And AI-powered tools like Chat for Blackbaud AI can surface constituent insights—giving history, event attendance, response patterns—to inform outreach and personalize the ask before a donor even reaches your form.
4. Automate the ask for recurring gifts.
Intelligent donation forms highlight a recurring gift option to encourage one-time donors to give monthly. This means batches are automatically created and you can expect both better retention and higher revenue from sustaining donors. Your language matters, too. Try changing “give this month,” to something like “make ongoing impact possible.” In fact, one Blackbaud customer reported a 60% increase in average gift amounts after adopting Optimized Donation Forms with a focused recurring strategy.
5. Use technology to simplify your team’s work.
Adopt smarter tools to streamline your online giving program from the ground up, starting with time-saving form creation that allows you to edit, add, remove, arrange, and style fields and content. With drag-and-drop tools and chat-based AI form creation, there’s no need to hire a website developer to build a custom form.
Smarter online donation forms should provide your team with additional efficiencies at no extra cost:
- Advanced receipting
- Multiple automated retries for failed payments
- QR codes for easy access to your donation form at events or on physical materials
- Integrated payment flow
- Automated donor acknowledgments
“We changed our main giving form over to an Optimized Donation Form. Being able to see what’s coming in, edit the record, add campaigns or funds or appeals, being able to adjust what I want to do acknowledgement-wise—it is so much more streamlined. The Optimized Donation Form literally cuts my entry time by more than half. And it looks good!”
Discover Blackbaud Online Giving
Take a closer look at how Blackbaud Online Giving helps you create optimized donation forms, streamline donor experiences, and save time for your team.