Donations – Easy to Setup, Easier to Donate

Posted on March 8, 2017 in Associations, Membership, Nonprofit

Did you know that you could set up a place for you members to donate to your special project, charity, event etc? Members can even donate at the “checkout” page when they are signing up for a membership or renewing a membership! Read more on this week’s Latest Buzz blog post.

Rather than diverting precious membership revenues to fund specific projects, initiatives, and causes, many organizations are gathering donations instead. Did you know that you can use Membee Events to make it easy for your members and non-members to donate to a favorite cause? Collect donations for all types of funds such as:

Scholarships or Bursaries
Building Funds
Political Action Committees
Charities your organization wishes to support
Direct donations to fund your operation

Minimize administrative workload by utilizing any of Membee’s supported payment gateways to process the financial side of the donations.

Set Up Your Donation Event in Membee

In our example, we’re using a “donation” event in Membee to gather funds for three distinct and separate projects. In our example, a “Build the Future” fund, the “Keep the Bees” initiative, and a “Support NewBees” project. We want to make it as easy as possible for the donor (remember this can be a member or non-member) to contribute to 1, 2, or all 3 projects at one time.

Each of the projects is setup as an event item in the “donation” event in Membee.

Since each project is a separate event item, this allows us to:

Have a detailed description for each project outlining why it is deserves support
Use a descriptive and compelling image for each project
Set a suggested donation amount for each project

One of the most common obstacles to donations is not financial but an uncertainty as to what donation amount is “appropriate”. Use Membee’s Suggested Price feature within the event item to suggest an amount to the donor. Note, the donor can override this suggestion if they like.

Set Up Your Website to Accept Donations

Making it as easy as possible for donors to participate is important so many Membee client organizations dedicate a top level menu choice on their website to donations. This is easy to do since Membee automatically generates a unique URL for each event you create.

So, a prominent “Donate” menu choice contains the URL for your donation event.

It is also common to place a “donate now” button in your website’s sidebar so the option to donate is visible on all pages. Once again, the URL behind your “donate now” button is the URL for your Membee donation event.

Whether you add a menu choice, a donate button or both, the donor is redirected to your Membee donation event.

Donors can now donate easily to several (hopefully to all!) of your projects from one page and check out just once using their credit card.

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Easily Report All Donations or For a Specific Project

Quickly report contributions to your donation-driven projects using Membee’s built-in Events and Financial reports. You can even apply a specific GL Account to the Event or Item automatically as the contributions are made.

In the example below, we’re gathering and reporting on donations made in January just for the “Keep the Bees” project.

Previous Donors Are The Most Likely Future Donors!

Donors who have previously donated to a particular cause are the most likely to want to donate again. Use Membee’s Integrated Email feature to quickly send off an email request to previous donors for new donations.

Get Them When They Renew!

Membee has made it easy for your members to donate! Users can now donate right at the checkout when renewing their memberships!

This feature will increase donations just by simply increasing visibility! Members may not always be aware you are accepting donations for specific causes, projects etc., so setting up this feature will reach those who are seeking to donate, AND those who happily stumble upon it when renewing!

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Easy to setup for the Users! Just go into the eBilling Widget >> Additional Items, and you will see where to set up your donation! Once set up every member who renews will see where to donate! The visibility is invaluable.

You can also set up this feature in New Member sign up, so your new members can donate as they become members, pretty cool huh?

Charitable Receipts

Charitable Receipts are setup so those who donate are able to get a receipt and claim the donation when doing their taxes. Having the option of a Charitable Receipt is just furthering the reasons why your members will want to donate!

There is an informative page in Membee’s Help from the Hive documents all about Charitable Receipts that can guide you from how it works and why, to getting it all setup! Login is required for access.