Every email, social post, mailer, and QR code in your year-end fundraising campaign sends donors to the same place: your donation page. And that page decides whether all that effort turns into gifts. As Ronald put it, “No matter how great your messaging is… if they get to that form and it’s not a great experience for them, they will decide not to give.”
In this webinar, 4aGoodCause President and Founder Ronald Pruitt walks through what a high-performing donation page looks like, five changes to make specifically for year-end, and how to turn December’s one-time donors into monthly supporters in January.
You’ll also see a live walkthrough of a sample year-end donation page, built with every tactic from the session.
This session was sponsored by Claire Axelrad, fundraising coach and founder of Clairification School. Claire joined the chat to answer questions throughout, and we’re grateful for her help promoting the event.
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Watch the full video
Learn how to spot why donors abandon your form, create real urgency with a matching donor, and set up a January welcome series that converts one-time year-end givers into monthly donors.
In this session, you’ll explore:
- Why December matters so much, and how much of your annual online revenue is on the line
- How your donation page conversion rate compares to the industry benchmark, and the four reasons donors leave
- Five characteristics of a high-performing donation page
- A live walkthrough of a sample year-end donation page
- A simple January welcome series to convert one-time donors to monthly giving
7 top takeaways from the webinar
1. Year-end is when donors are ready to give, and your donation page is where they do it.
According to the 2026 M+R Benchmarks Study, 37% of annual online revenue came in during December 2025, 10% in the last week of the year, and 4% on December 31 alone. Wired Impact also reports that nonprofit websites see about 60% more traffic in the final months of the year than in the summer.
That traffic arrives from every channel you use: email, social, direct mail, SMS, events. “All these roads lead to your donation form,” Ronald said. That makes the form the one piece of your campaign that can make or break everything else.
2. Most donors who reach your donation page leave without giving.
Roughly 90% of people who get all the way to your form walk away.
Donors typically leave for one of four reasons: confusion about your organization or their impact, friction from a long or complex form, distraction from extra links that pull them elsewhere, or fear that your organization or the form isn’t trustworthy.
In the live poll, 58% of attendees said they didn’t know their current conversion rate. If that’s you, you’re in good company, and it’s worth asking your platform how to find it.
Ronald’s rule of thumb: Anything approaching 25–30% is great, because it’s double the industry norm.
Additional resource: Why donors abandon your nonprofit’s donation page
3. High-performing donation pages share five characteristics.
Ronald has identified nearly 100 donation page best practices across 13 categories. He covered five in the session:
- Findable. Put a big, bold donate button in your website navigation (top right), your emails, your social profiles, even your email signature. In a NextAfter experiment, a prominent navigation button increased donation conversions by 190%.
- Mobile-friendly. About 60% of traffic to 4aGC donation pages comes from a mobile device. Your form needs readable fonts, thumb-friendly tabs and giving amounts, and mobile wallets. Test it on your own phone.
- Isolated. Give donors one path forward: completing the gift. Removing the main navigation bar increased conversions by 195% in one experiment. “Once they give, then you will have all their information and you can market to them in many different ways.”
- Concise. Use a one-step form with only the fields you need to complete the gift (amount, frequency, who they are, how they’ll pay) or maximize it (like corporate matching or a monthly emphasis). One-step forms performed up to 139% better than multi-step forms. “Don’t turn your form into a survey.”
- Compelling. Continue the story from your email or post with language and images that match your year-end theme. Fidelity Charitable reports that 65% of donors give more generously when they understand how their money will be used.
Additional resource: Donation Page Audit Checklist
4. Give year-end its own campaign and its own donation page.
Don’t send year-end donors to the same page with the same language you use all year. Create a separate campaign and page, then swap every “Donate” link on your site to point to it from roughly Thanksgiving through December 31. In January, swap the links back.
A separate page lets you match your year-end theme, track conversion rates against a year-end goal, and even build one page per channel (email, social, direct mail) so you can see exactly which channel performed.
5. A matching donor creates urgency that a deadline alone can’t.
A match ties real, doubled impact to a real timeline. You can match one-time gifts, first-month recurring gifts, or both.
One 4aGC client, Toni’s Kitchen ran a matched campaign for just the last week of 2025. That page converted at 71%, more than six times the industry benchmark. Double the Donation also reports that 84% of donors are more likely to give if a match is offered.
Once your match is in place, use your website to support it. A homepage lightbox or above-the-fold spotlight on your year-end campaign keeps the focus on giving.
Additional resource: Finding the right matching donor for your donation matching campaign
6. Set up your year-end donation page for monthly giving.
Year-end brings in a lot of one-time gifts, so make the monthly option easy to find and easy to choose. Call out a recurring gift in your page copy, give monthly its own tab, and offer suggested monthly amounts between $10 and $100.
Add a checkout conversion offer that invites one-time donors to switch to monthly. On 4aGC, that offer converted as high as 5% during year-end 2025. And encourage bank transfers (ACH), so your new monthly donors aren’t lost to expired credit cards.
Plus, the best time to convert a one-time donor to monthly is within 60 days of their first gift, with the strongest window between 7 and 30 days, according to research from Dataro. A January welcome series (thank you, impact story, social proof, formal invitation) is the simplest way to catch that window and offer monthly giving as a continued option.
Resource link: Monthly giving conversion cheat sheet
7. If you offer donor tips, keep them opt-in and keep 100% for your mission.
An attendee asked whether to turn off donor tips after a few refund requests.
Ronald’s answer: Keep them, but do it ethically. Make the tip opt-in and easy to see, show the donor their total, keep the percentage reasonable (his example used 4%), and make sure the money goes to your nonprofit, not the platform. You don’t want a platform that monetizes your donor’s generosity.
💡Fun fact: All donor tips through 4aGoodCause go directly to your organization—not the platform. Learn what makes 4aGC different than other fundraising platforms.
Raise more with the traffic you already have.
4aGoodCause donation pages convert an average of 27% of visitors, compared to the 11% industry benchmark, with nearly 100 donation page best practices built in from day one. Our built-in monthly giving pop-up also converted an average of 5% of one-time donors into monthly supporters in 2025.
Yes, that’s our platform. If you’re a small to mid-size nonprofit focused on growing monthly giving, it might be a good fit.
Book a live demo or watch on demand to see how it works.
Supplemental resources mentioned in this session
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About Claire Axelrad, session sponsor
Claire Axelrad, J.D., CFRE, is a fundraising coach and consultant and the founder of Clairification School, where nonprofits get access to thousands of articles, templates, and resources to help them raise more throughout the year. Ronald calls her “one of the smartest fundraising consultants that we know.” Learn more at clairification.com.
