We’ve been working closely with two charities recently, so when I was reading through Jakob Nielsen’s alertbox archives and saw his article on Donation Usability it caught my eye.

The article describes the steps non-profit organisations should take in order maximise donations. In short it’s descriptions of two things:

• what the charity stands for (and in particular mission, goals and objectives)
• what your money is used for

People want to know what the charity stands for so they know it shares their ideals and values, then knowing that, how will they do it.

To get this right, the following things are important:

• answer the questions at a high-level on the home page
• have a clear IA to allow the user to find the underlying detail
• make the entry point to the donations process clear
• make the donations process simple (although this is usually a third-party service)

Another useful tidbit was that websites were more for small-scale impulsive giving but newsletters are better for long-term donor loyalty.

This was from the short report but there is a whopping 124-page report for the people who have got the simple stuff right already.