The Secret to Nonprofit Landing Pages That Convert (& How to Create Them!)

Nonprofits that succeed in today’s technological era recognize that the Internet has become an essential platform for communication and outreach.

Nowhere else can organizations connect with a global audience and capture newfound support at the click of a button.

But the path to convert someone from a stranger to a donor or volunteer is not necessarily simple. Generic and broad messages aren’t effective, something else is needed.

Instead, nonprofits need to forge direct relationships with supporters online. And the key to building personalized connections (at scale) starts with a landing page.

Landing pages serve as a digital doorway, inviting visitors to step into the world of your cause, connect with your purpose, and ultimately take action.

Whether it’s encouraging individuals to donate, volunteer, or sign up for a newsletter, the effectiveness of a landing page lies in its ability to elicit an immediate response from your audience.

In this article, we explore the critical components of a compelling nonprofit landing page, and delve into the strategies that can help organizations make a lasting impact.

Join us as we uncover landing page best practices, share inspiring landing page examples, and unravel the secrets behind landing pages that connect with the hearts and minds of potential supporters.

> Want help creating a landing page for a specific goal? Reach out and let us know what you want! <

What Are Nonprofit Landing Pages?

Nonprofit landing pages are dedicated web pages specifically designed to engage and convert visitors into active supporters or donors for a nonprofit organization.

These pages serve as the entry point for individuals who come across a nonprofit’s online marketing campaigns, social media posts, or search engine results.

Unlike a general website, nonprofit landing pages are created with a singular focus, aiming to inspire action and drive conversions.

The primary purpose of a nonprofit landing page is to motivate visitors to take specific actions aligned with the organization’s mission such as:

Making a monetary donation
Signing up for a newsletter
Becoming a volunteer
Attending an event
Participating in a giving campaign

A well-crafted landing page delivers a concise and persuasive message that captures the attention and interest of visitors, and guides them toward an activity that furthers an organization’s mission.

6 Common Examples of Nonprofit Landing Pages

In practice, landing pages can take many forms depending on a nonprofit’s audience or objectives.

It’s quite common for organizations to deploy multiple types of landing pages across their digital presence – from their website to their digital advertising campaigns.

Let’s look at 6 of the most common types of landing pages that nonprofits use, and explore some real-world examples for each one:

Charity Homepages
Lead Generation Pages
Donation Pages
Event Pages
Volunteer Pages
Thank You Pages

1. Charity Homepages

A website homepage is normally the most common type of landing page that nonprofits are accustomed to using.

Although websites do serve a broader purpose by providing an overview of your organization’s mission, programs, and impact, a homepage is often the first and most important chance to connect with a visitor.

In fact, almost 50% of traffic that makes it to your website will leave without ever clicking beyond your homepage.

To make the most of this precious attention, it’s best to think of a charity homepage as a key advertisement for your organization and structure it in a way that potential supporters find compelling.

Want a good example of a nonprofit homepage that tells a story and elicits action from visitors? Let’s look at the organization Trees for the Future.

Here are some of the choices that make this an effective nonprofit landing page:

Visuals of people are used to demonstrate the impact the nonprofit makes.
The mission of the organization is defined clearly for the visitor upfront.
The option to donate is available immediately and throughout the homepage.
The website copy encourages visitors to continue exploring if they’re not ready to take action now.

In these ways, Trees for the Future makes a great first impression on every visitor.

Ultimately, while charity homepages may encompass a broader range of information than the other types of landing pages we explore, it deserves attention because of the amount of traffic it receives from visitors.

2. Lead Generation Pages

Lead generation pages, also known as lead capture or squeeze pages, are specific types of landing pages designed to capture visitor information in exchange for valuable content or offerings.

Nonprofit organizations can use lead generation pages to build their supporter base, nurture ongoing relationships, and cultivate a community of engaged individuals.

The primary goal of a nonprofit lead generation page is to entice visitors to provide their contact details willingly. Collecting this information allows nonprofits to establish direct communication channels (such as email marketing campaigns), and further engage potential supporters or donors over time.

The best lead generation landing pages simultaneously “sell” the value of the offering or download, while reminding visitors how their engagement helps further the nonprofit’s mission.

One great example of this type of nonprofit landing page is the lead generation page Maot Chitim uses to capture supporter information in exchange for a Jewish recipe book.

Source

The organization succeeds in making the download highly attractive through a combination of sneak peeks, unique benefits, and an attention-grabbing call to action.

While there are many ways to design a lead generation page, the most important goal is to make your value proposition desirable and highly credible so that visitors are eager to engage with your organization’s content.

3. Donation Pages

A donation page is a type of landing page specifically designed for collecting donations for a nonprofit organization or a charitable cause. It serves as a centralized online platform where individuals or businesses can contribute funds to support the mission and activities of a nonprofit.

Donation pages are typically hosted on a nonprofit’s website or integrated through an online fundraising platform. They provide an easy and secure way for donors to make financial contributions using various payment methods.

Pro Tip: Using a donor software platform to create your donation page can make fundraising more efficient and effective. Take our free quiz to find out which tool is best for your nonprofit. (Bad software, or the wrong software, will not only hinder donations, but incur angry phone calls from frustrated would-be donors, and a bad public reputation.)

For a real-world example of a donation page in action, we can look to the ASPCA.

Source

This donation page is effective for a variety of reasons explored below. Make sure to copy these elements for your own nonprofit landing page!

Elements of a Successful Donation Page
A Clear and Compelling Value Proposition	A good donation page clearly presents the nonprofit’s overarching mission, and makes it easy for the reader to feel that by donating, they are supporting that mission.
Compelling Storytelling	A good donation page shares actual stories of people who have been positively affected by the nonprofit’s work.
Clear Call-to-Action	A donation page should make donating the most obvious and easy action for a visitor to take through a prominent CTA button, and it should be the only CTA on the page
Donation Amount Options	Donation pages should provide a range of preset values that donors can choose to make the process easier or allow for custom amounts.
Recurring Donations	To capture ongoing support, donation pages should make it simple to set up monthly or annual donations on a recurring basis.
Donor Information	Donation pages are another opportunity to collect contact details and ask for permission to continue the conversation and relationship over email.
Social Sharing	Donation pages can boost impact by encouraging supporters to share their support on social media easily.

Nonprofits may continuously optimize their donation pages based on analytics, donor feedback, and emerging best practices to maximize their fundraising efforts and create a seamless donor experience.

Overall, a well-crafted donation page serves as a vital tool for nonprofits to engage supporters, generate financial support, and make a positive impact in their communities.

4. Event Pages

Event pages are a type of landing page specifically created to provide information and facilitate registration or participation in events organized by nonprofit organizations.

These pages serve as a central hub where individuals can learn about upcoming events, understand their purpose and details, and take action to participate in or support the event.

St. Jude’s event page for an annual disc golf tournament is a great example of this type of landing page in action.

This event page facilitates supporter engagement through a handful of intentional choices such as:

Making registration for the event the primary call-to-action
Ensuring event details are clear and readily available
Allowing visitors to donate in support of the specific event
Tracking the event’s fundraising goal and progress

Properly designed event pages generate buzz and support for a specific event, while reminding visitors how they are helping advance the nonprofit’s mission by attending.

5. Volunteer Pages

Volunteer pages are a common type of nonprofit landing page dedicated to recruiting, engaging, and managing volunteers. These pages serve as a valuable resource for individuals who are interested in contributing their time and energy in support of a particular cause or mission.

An ideal landing page for this purpose persuades visitors that volunteering is not only rewarding for your nonprofit, but also a valuable opportunity for the individual as well.

Volunteer landing pages can take many forms but often include the following information:

Volunteer Programs: A section that provides a list of available positions or roles that need volunteers with information about each option.
Volunteer Impact: Statistics or other compelling information that demonstrates the value volunteers provide the organization. Success stories or testimonials fit great here!
Volunteer FAQs: Resources and details to help volunteers answer questions they might have about contributing to your organization.
Volunteer Application: Most importantly, an online form that allows visitors to sign-up or begin the application process.

For a real-world example, we can look at how the San Francisco chapter of Meals on Wheels incorporates each of these elements into their volunteer page below.

Visitors to this landing page are given all of the information they need to determine how and why to serve as a volunteer for Meals on Wheels – including different types of programs and details about the direct impact they help make on senior citizens in the area.

The content and structure of your volunteer page depends on the specific needs and preferences of your organization. Remember, the goal is to provide comprehensive and user-friendly information that encourages individuals to become volunteers and supports their engagement throughout their volunteer journey.

6. Thank You Pages

Thank You Pages are a type of landing page used to recognize when a supporter takes a desired action (such as making a donation or becoming an email subscriber), and express gratitude.

Thank You Pages are used too infrequently. It’s tempting to think the job is done after persuading a visitor to contribute their time or money. But in reality, it’s the best time to strengthen the relationship with your supporter.

Immediately after a visitor makes a contribution, signs up for an event, or downloads a resource … is precisely the moment when they are most emotionally invested in your organization. Rather than letting this energy go to waste, a great Thank You Page converts enthusiasm into deeper connection or involvement with your nonprofit.

We think the best Thank You landing pages accomplish three primary objectives:

Affirms: A Thank You Page should, first and foremost, confirm what action a visitor has taken and thank them for making a contribution. In the case of a digital download, this might be a confirmation that the resource is on its way to their inbox. Or, in the case of a donation, this might be a simple message expressing gratitude for their gift.
Transitions: A great Thank You Page capitalizes on a supporter’s excitement and links their actions to the broader cause of the organization. Rather than ending the engagement, the landing page starts a new conversation about other opportunities to take advantage of.
Invites: Finally, a Thank You Page invites supporters to amplify their impact with other complementary actions. This could be by inviting an email subscriber to make a monetary donation to help get the resource they downloaded into more hands, or encouraging a donor to join a smaller member community.

The nonprofit Well Aware nails this structure with their Thank You Page for donations. In this way their Thank You Page validates the impact a donor just made, while leaving the door open for them to find other more meaningful ways of involvement.

How to Design High-Performing Landing Pages

Designing a high-performing landing page involves careful consideration of various elements that contribute to its effectiveness in driving conversions. Here are some key steps to help you design a high-performing landing page:

Define Your Goal: Clearly identify the primary goal of your landing page. Whether it’s generating leads, promoting a product or service, driving event registrations, or any other specific objective, having a clear goal will guide your design decisions.
Keep it Simple and Focused: A high-performing landing page should have a clean and uncluttered design. Avoid overwhelming visitors with too much information or visual elements. Focus on a single message and call-to-action (CTA) that align with your goal.
Attention-Grabbing Headline: Create a compelling and concise headline that immediately captures visitors’ attention and communicates the value proposition or the main benefit they will receive by taking action on your landing page. Use clear and persuasive language to keep visitors reading.
Engaging Visuals: Incorporate relevant and high-quality images, videos, or graphics that support your message and create visual interest. Visuals can help communicate your offering more effectively and make your landing page more visually appealing.
Clear and Persuasive Copy: Craft concise and persuasive copy that clearly communicates the benefits and key selling points of your offering. Use bullet points, subheadings, and bold text to make important information stand out and make it scannable for visitors.
Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA): Place a prominent and visually striking CTA button that clearly tells visitors what action you want them to take. Use action-oriented language and create a sense of urgency or value to encourage clicks. Make sure the CTA stands out from the rest of the page.
Capture Information Strategically: If your goal is to collect visitor information, such as email addresses, design a form which is easy to fill out and which captures only the necessary information. Minimize the number of fields to reduce friction and improve conversion rates.
Mobile-Friendly Design: Ensure your landing page is optimized for mobile devices since a significant portion of internet traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. Test your landing page on different screen sizes to ensure it looks and functions well on all devices.
Clear and Visible Contact Information: If applicable, provide clear contact information, such as a phone number or email address, to build trust and allow visitors to reach out with questions or inquiries. Display any relevant social media links or customer support options.
Test and Iterate: Continuously test and optimize your landing page to improve its performance. Conduct A/B tests with different variations of headlines, visuals, copy, or CTAs to identify what resonates best with your audience. Analyze metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and time on page to make data-driven decisions.

Remember, a high-performing landing page is focused, visually appealing, and guides visitors toward taking a specific action. Regularly monitor and analyze its performance, make data-driven improvements, and adapt to your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Here are some elements that will build reader curiosity on any good landing page:

Attention-grabbing pitch and call-to-action (CTA): The first section of your landing page is the most important, as it should be “above the fold” for any visitor on any device. It is your chance to engage visitors, and quickly demonstrate the value your digital resource offers. Here’s what the pitch and CTA do:
- Demonstrate the impact or benefit (e.g. Your partnership brings children home to forever families.)
- Create a sense of urgency (e.g. Change everything for a child in poverty today.)
- Share a startling statistic (e.g. One in 10 people lack access to clean water. We’re on a mission to change that.)
- Make an appeal (e.g. Myanmar’s elephants need our help.)
Opt-in form and summary: This section should address the problems your audience is seeking to solve in more detail as well as the solutions your resource provides. Try to speak in your audience’s language and address their emotions rather than the technical details of your content.
Sneak peek: Give visitors an intriguing look inside your course, eBook, guide, or download. Use this section to prove your expertise and highlight hyper-specific solutions that your resource provides. You might also want to include forms of social proof or testimonials if it is relevant.
Special features: Now is your chance to sell the unique features of your resource. We often find it helpful to compare how your resource is superior to other options available to the visitor so they feel like they don’t have to keep searching.
Share the benefits: Demonstrate the value your resource provides to your visitors based on what problems it solves. Help your visitors visualize and understand exactly how they can make use of your resource as soon as they download it.
Tie it back to the organization: Finally, help visitors understand how your resource supports the mission of your nonprofit and educate them on the benefits your organization provides to others.

This list isn’t exhaustive, and only the first item on the list could be considered essential. Nevertheless, any compelling landing page will have many items on the list.

Unlock Potential with Specialized Landing Page Software

Venturing a bit deeper now, it’s worthwhile exploring the capabilities of niche-specific landing page software.

Imagine a tool that’s not just a generic platform, but one that caters to the unique demands of nonprofits and their donor communities. Good news: Such tools exist.

Traditional platforms like WordPress, with their plethora of themes and plugins, are definitely suitable for building a basic landing page – familiar, reasonably versatile, and generally user-friendly.

However, if you want to go beyond just a basic digital footprint, it is worthwhile having a suite of tools and features that are of particular value to nonprofits … and equally worthwhile not being burdened with tools and features that aren’t.

Here are three we’ve found to be very reputable and reliable:

(Full disclosure: these are affiliate links, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t vetted carefully by us!)

BetterUnite: Simplified but comprehensive fundraising

This tool is designed to make a nonprofit’s digital journey as sleek, intuitive, and effective as possible in nudging crucial donation conversions.

BetterUnite has a ton of built-in features (including a CRM), and is particularly suited to nonprofits that rely on raising funds via big events. It has tools that handle ticketing, memberships, auctions, or manage volunteers, pledges, or team fundraising.

And it offers 3 pricing tiers, and has an incredibly flexible payment model. If you’re small, you can use it for free, and just pay a transaction fee (which donors have the option of covering). But you can also pay a fixed monthly fee that reduces (or eliminates) the transaction fees (excluding what Stripe or credit card processors charge).

And the company is large enough that the product is robust and constantly being improved. Offices are in Austin, TX and Melbourne, Australia (meaning they provide customer support nearly 24/7). Customer support is reputed to be amazing, evidenced by a high retention rate and always taking customer feedback into account to improve or add new features to the platform.

Donorbox: The power of tailored donations

DonorBox is particularly well-suited to crowdfunding initiatives, peer-to-peer giving, and giving by text message. Like BetterUnite, it has 3 pricing tiers, and it has a mobile app for iOS and Android-based smartphones.

Like BetterUnite, Donorbox also has an amazing ecosystem of fundraising tools. And for anything they don’t have, they offer a lot of helpful integrations. Their platform includes an embedded donation form designed to increase recurring gifts, multi-currency payments, event ticketing, and custom donation webpages. No CRM yet, but apparently that’s coming.

Supporters receive tax-compliant donation receipts, which you can customize, and each donor is provided with a self-service donor portal account for faster future giving.

Donorbox charges possibly the lowest transaction fees in the industry, and makes it easy for donors to cover those fees for you. Their Premium tier account is cheaper than most competitors’ “standard” packages, and comes with a dedicated Account Manager and Fundraising coach – that’s rare. Support is only 24/5, but they have offices around the world, so response is rapid.

And if you don’t have a nonprofit designation? Or you’re an individual? No problem, you can still raise funds through Donorbox! Very few other platforms offer this.

Fundraise Up: Data-driven AI-powered fundraising

Fundraise Up is fairly unique among nonprofit landing page software providers in this regard.

Your landing page donation form isn’t static, but evolving, learning, and progressively effective. Their AI-powered checkout uses AI to optimize the donation process and maximize conversion rates. When deployed as a donation button, Fundraise Up helps orgs see an increase of 2x online donations, 3x in recurring donors, and averages a 37% conversion rate (the global average is 15%).

And it also provides support for fundraising in multiple languages and across borders.

Fundraise Up never charges monthly fees, only as a % of the donation. There is no fixed fee option, so it can cost your organization next to nothing. As with BetterUnite and Donorbox, they allow donors to cover the transaction fees for you, but this can be problematic: Research by NextAfter shows that asking donors to cover your transaction fees can lead to them not giving at all!

But here is where their Fundraise Up shines – their AI can determine which donors should be prompted to cover your transaction costs, and which shouldn’t.

And they have a global reach: They:

Accept donations in 135+ currencies
Accept payments via local debit in many countries (ACH, SEPA, PADs, iDEAL)
Offer your forms in 22 languages, with support for country-specific features

And there are more such tools. These are simply the three we favor.

Nothing wrong with building a landing page on the back of standard, commonly-used tools. Indeed, there are advantages with those. For one, finding people who know how to use them will be relatively easy. And for another, they’re often free.

But free comes with its own hidden cost. When something breaks, or you encounter an obstacle, you’re often on your own. And what was very easy and affordable … suddenly isn’t.

Hence the value of using software and platforms that leverage the learning and mistakes of other nonprofits. If you want to find a fundraising platform that might be a good fit for your org, take this quiz!

8 Best Practices for Creating Powerful Nonprofit Landing Pages

1. Have one message only!

For blog articles, white papers, and other general content, more than one message is common, even the norm. But a landing page needs one message, and no more. Otherwise, your reader will get confused about what you are asking, and “a confused mind always says No”.

2. Clarity and focus of the page/message.

Use simple, 8th-grader language, and short sentences. Leave no doubt in the reader’s mind what you are all about.

3. Highlight what the reader gets

And nothing beats telling real-life, honest-to-goodness stories of how other people have benefitted from their involvement with your nonprofit. Readers always relate well to stories.

4. Give them something valuable

Don’t just make the landing page about getting something from the visitor. Give them something as well. This could be as simple as a YouTube video, an infographic, or an ebook. And it doesn’t have to educate or entertain (although if it does, so much the better).

5. Make giving dead easy

Short, simple, and clear always wins over long, complicated and confusing. Use design to enhance and maybe dazzle, but don’t distract or confuse.

6. Build credibility and impact with numbers

Human beings think in specifics much better than they think abstractly. For example, $100/month is much easier for the reader to comprehend than a little money every so often. To build trust with your prospective donors & volunteers, use specifics and numbers.

7. Test and iterate

Don’t write the landing page, and forget about it, or assume it’s doing what you intended it to. Test and tweak. In the marketing world, this is known as A/B or split-testing. You test two different versions of the same page against each other over a statistically-significant period, and then shut down the under-performing page. And do this repeatedly, for as long as it takes to achieve an objective.

8. Continue the relationship

Human beings crave good conversation. So keep it alive. The most generous donors and volunteers are those who value your mission and your conversation.

Nonprofit Landing Pages Made Simple

The importance of a well-designed landing page cannot be overstated.

It serves as the digital representative of your nonprofit. It acts as a persuasive ambassador for your cause. It guides visitors towards taking meaningful actions.

And it serves as a catalyst, turning mere curiosity into active involvement, and ultimately transforming lives.

Does this make sense?

If you need help with a landing page for your nonprofit …

… whether it’s a new page from scratch, or test/tweaks to an underperforming one …

… contact us to start a conversation!