Online Donation Forms That Work

Your donation form is where someone goes from "I want to support this" to actually giving. If the form is confusing, slow, or asks for too much, they leave. You'll never know they tried.

Most donation forms are too complicated. They ask unnecessary questions. They hide recurring options in dropdowns. They break on phones. They make giving harder than it should be.

Here's what actually works.

Keep it simple

The best donation forms ask for almost nothing:

• Name
• Email
• Payment info
• Amount

That's it. Everything else is optional or can be collected later.

Every field you add gives donors a reason to stop. "Why do they need my phone number?" "Do I have to create an account?" "What's my employer's address?"

If you don't absolutely need it for the donation to work, don't ask for it.

Make recurring obvious

Monthly donors are more valuable than one-time donors. They give more over time, they're predictable, and they stick around.

But if recurring is buried in a tiny dropdown and one-time is the default, you'll get mostly one-time donations.

Put recurring front and center. Show the options clearly: one-time, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual. Make recurring the same size and prominence as one-time, not an afterthought.

Recurring only works if donors can manage it themselves

Cards expire. People move. Payment info changes.

If updating a recurring donation requires emailing you and waiting for someone to manually change it, recurring breaks down. Donors need a portal where they can:

• Update their card when it expires
• Change their donation amount
• Pause or cancel if needed

Without self-serve, your recurring program creates support work instead of reducing it.

Let donors cover processing fees

Credit card processing costs money. Standard Stripe rates are 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. On a $100 donation, that's $3.20 you don't receive.

When you give donors the option to cover this, most will. They want their full gift to go to your cause.

Present it clearly: "Add $3.20 so 100% of your gift supports our mission." A checkbox, not a requirement. Some donors can't or won't cover fees, and their gift is still valuable.

Over a year of donations, this adds up. On $50,000 in annual giving, fee coverage can mean an extra $1,000+ for your programs.

Mobile isn't optional

Pull up your donation page on your phone right now. Try to make a donation.

• Does it load quickly?
• Can you read everything without zooming?
• Are the buttons big enough to tap?
• Does payment entry work smoothly?
• Can you complete the whole thing in under two minutes?

If any answer is no, you're losing mobile donors. And mobile is where a lot of giving happens now, especially from social media links and email campaigns.

Digital wallets help here. Apple Pay and Google Pay let people donate without typing card numbers on a tiny screen. That friction matters.

What about campaigns?

Sometimes you want donations tied to specific appeals: year-end giving, a building fund, an emergency response.

Good donation software lets you create campaign-specific pages with their own messaging and progress bars, while still tracking everything in the same donor database.

The donations go to the same bank account. The donors are still in your system. You just have cleaner reporting on what came from which campaign.

Testing matters

Before you launch (and periodically after), actually test your form:

Make a real donation with a real credit card. Go through the whole process. Did the receipt arrive? Did everything look right?

Test on your phone. Test on different browsers. Try a very small donation and a larger one.

A broken donation form costs you money every hour it stays broken. Know that it works.

Common problems we see

Too many amount options. "$10 / $25 / $50 / $75 / $100 / $150 / $200 / Other" is overwhelming. Four preset amounts plus an "other" field is plenty.

Required account creation. Nobody wants to create an account to make a donation. Let them give first. If you want them to create an account later, ask after the donation is complete.

No confirmation. Someone donates and sees... a generic thank you page with no details? Send them a receipt immediately. Show them the amount, the date, your contact info. Make them feel confident the donation went through.

Ignoring failed transactions. Someone's card gets declined. Do you know? Does anyone follow up? Failed donations often represent people who wanted to give but hit a temporary problem. A follow-up email can recover many of these.

The goal

Your donation form should feel invisible. Someone decides to give, they give, they get a receipt. Nothing confusing, nothing slow, nothing that makes them question whether it worked.

Simple beats fancy. Test regularly. Keep asking: "Could this be easier?"