EP 57: Nonprofit Websites and Capitalizing on Websites for Events - Part 2

Positioning review: No adjustments needed. All content is naturally conversational and experiential. Discussion of Handbid branding is descriptive and contextual. One advisory statement about annual event pages was reframed to descriptive framing noting what tends to work well.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. Join us for part two of our discussion with Monica Pitts of May Create, Jeff Porter, founder and CEO of Handbid, and Stephanie Mason as we continue our discussion about nonprofit websites.

Stephanie: I just got out of a board meeting before coming to this podcast. We were talking about the simplicity of making a donation and finding what I need on an event page. Our national organization is imposing a really onerous donation form -- you have to fill it out every time, it doesn't remember you. I threw out the concept of a one-click donation. We've got to get there.

Jeff: I know Stripe supports it. Do you chat with your clients about their CRM frustrations?

Monica: I don't regularly review what they're doing in their back office. There are certain CRMs where I've been so mad at their software. One of them -- who shall not be named -- I wrote a whole blog post about because if there are other people dealing with this, they need to know. Other developers emailed me saying thank you. But I'm not here to change everything -- I'm here to make their website work for them.

Jeff: Our underlying core principle is about user experience. If you create a user experience that engages people or makes it easy, they will do the things you want them to do. That goes both ways -- not just the end-user experience of donating or bidding, but also the back end. There are certain nonprofit donor management systems where the back end is brutal, and then the front end becomes brutal too. For us, it was like, just give me your APIs and we'll run the donation through Stripe.

Monica: They end up looking like weird revamps of spreadsheets.

Jeff: There's commercial auction software that looks like the interface my dentist uses. The name of the game is -- can you make it simple?

Stephanie: This also came up the other day. Two different nonprofits I'm connected with send out newsletters as PDFs attached to email. At the very end is a tiny QR code -- that's the donation link.

Monica: I'm not surprised. A nonprofit I know just started sending PDF newsletters this year. In their mind it's an upgrade. It's not. We can actually make it auto-compile from the website, and it would be found on Google too. Some are open to it. Others say their demographic just likes PDFs.

Jeff: There should be an ROI on your marketing. I told a board meeting to have her record a video with a call to action -- you'll get more donations. Then don't take them to a 55-question donation form. Can we go one-click? Everyone agrees conceptually, but they think these are the only tools they have. We'd say, you don't have to do it that way.

Monica: We build CoMoGives.com -- a month-long year-end giving campaign for over 170 mid-Missouri nonprofits. We raised about $2 million in one month. It started with individual forms for each nonprofit. After one year, that didn't work. We implemented a shopping cart system. Eventually we got one-click donate -- people just add to cart from a list. Donations went up. Less clicks equals more money.

Jeff: Smart. An interface that's fun and intuitive makes more money.

Monica: For events -- you might have a landing page on your website, then take them to something like Handbid for tickets and auction items. Use tools that match so the experience feels seamless. We all subconsciously know when something's not quite right, and that steers us away. Remove all barriers of entry.

Jeff: It's important that nonprofits have annual events on their website proper for Google optimization. For an annual event, it tends to work best to keep the same page each year, up all year round. Right after the event, leave it alone -- they'll see the date passed. Then update with next year's save-the-date. Multiple event page instances can cause optimization issues and wrong-year confusion.

Monica: And then you show up to the Toys for Tots concert and there's no concert because you chose the wrong year.

Jeff: I've seen it happen at a Handbid event in Lone Tree -- people showed up to the wrong venue because the nonprofit hadn't updated their website.

Monica: All you have to do is have one page for that annual event forever. If you rebuild and change the URL, just redirect. It's not complicated.

Jeff: Let's wrap up with a list of don'ts.

Monica: Don't hide your donate button. It's your cash register button. I want it at the top, loud, looking different from other navigation.

Monica: Don't hide your contact information. It should be at the bottom and in the navigation. Have a phone number. Have an actual email address people can click on.

Monica: Don't just have a bulleted list of services -- that won't optimize in Google. Have a page for each thing you do. Talk about it from your visitors' perspective. A bulleted list won't suffice.

Stephanie: Don't use stock photos that don't make sense. Don't use stock photos at all.

Monica: I don't care if your photos are blurry or grainy. If that's where you are, that's okay. Show actual pictures so people can get to know you. Those weird glowing stock humans aren't part of your organization. It's a relationship -- I want to see real people doing the work or being impacted by it.

Jeff: It can give the wrong image entirely. I went to a nonprofit site that had a river kayaking video -- that's not what they did at all.

Monica: We went through StoryBrand and learned how to connect who you are to what people see when they arrive.

Jeff: Don't hang on to old logos or brands if it's time to rethink them. Brands evolve over time. Be open to that.

Stephanie: Don't fall for the idea that changing your website will solve deeper issues in the organization. Websites are powerful tools but not the solution to every problem.

Jeff: A 1995 Honda Civic with a new coat of paint is still about to fall apart.

Monica: What about nonprofits that didn't name themselves appropriately and then completely flip? Some literally fold because no one can figure out who they are now.

Jeff: We have a client closing their doors over this. Their name made no sense, they changed it, and that lasted four months. If you've built a brand for years, stick with it unless it's truly inappropriate. There's a lot of risk in changing it.

Stephanie: If you have a donor base sustaining you and growing, I wouldn't recommend changing your name.

Jeff: This happened for us internally too. Handbid was built in 2010 doing mobile bidding. We expanded to fundraising, peer to peer, donation campaigns, text to give. Most competitors rebranded to generic names. But we've established such a brand. The clients who use us don't care about the name. Massive name changes can be risky.

Monica: Brand recognition is valuable. Your brand is more than your name and logo. You can change messaging, colors, imagery. What's more dangerous than the name is when nobody knows everything you offer because you're so layered in.

Jeff: What is it that we do and don't do? How do we prioritize resources? That's more important than what we call ourselves. At Handbid, most traffic comes in around auctions. That's what people see us as. Then they discover we do other things. A nonprofit could do the same -- get them in the door with what they're looking for and then show them everything else.

Jeff: This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Monica. Best of luck with your branding and your website, everybody. If you have website needs, reach out to Monica's team at May Create. And for your next fundraising event, consider Handbid for a simple, easy, fun experience. Until next time, happy fundraising.

Jeff: Thanks for joining us on this journey to uncover game-changing strategies behind nonprofit websites. A special thank you to Monica Pitts of May Create. We hope you've gained valuable insights. If you enjoyed our show, please leave us a review on Apple, Google, or Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe. Check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.