Classy’s annual Why America Gives report found that one of the top reasons donors reconsider making a gift is because their preferred payment method isn’t available. This is a great indicator of the benefits nonprofits can see when leaning into user-friendly fundraising efforts in the age of social media and QR codes.

Additional data from Why America Gives shows us the social proof:

• The most popular digital wallet payments among U.S. donors are PayPal and Venmo. 
• The flexibility to choose an online donation payment method (e.g., Venmo, PayPal, and credit or debit cards) is a top factor for 35% of donors to return to donate again. 

Classy customers continue to see impressive results when bringing Venmo payments into their diversified payment processing options. This helps these organizations convert more donors and increase the likelihood that donors will return to give again. 

A great example is Many Hopes, which increased donation volume by 56% and individual donors by 53% year over year by introducing Venmo and PayPal into its embedded donation form.

Today, we’ll dive deep into what Venmo for nonprofits is all about and how to use it for everything from donations to event registration with Classy Pay. 

What Is Venmo?

Venmo is a popular mobile payment service known for fast, safe, social payments between friends and family. It’s captured the interest of 83 million customers as a seamless way to send, spend, share, and manage finances using their phone numbers.¹

How does Venmo work?

Venmo’s peer-to-peer model makes splitting payments and transferring funds easy without a physical wallet. When Venmo users receive money, they can transfer it directly into their bank account.

There are also options for instant transfers with a small fee, but most payments arrive promptly to the recipient’s account before being transferred elsewhere.

Over a million merchant websites and apps accept Venmo to simplify customer payments. The growing community of merchants that offer Venmo at checkout includes Uber, Ticketmaster, Stitch Fix, and Hulu.

Many nonprofit organizations followed the lead of these savvy for-profit organizations by offering PayPal and Venmo donations as part of a more modernized fundraising strategy. We’ll show you how these organizations do it and how you can too.

Benefits of Using Venmo for Nonprofits

Enabling donors to access the Venmo payment platform on your donation forms makes the supporter journey more relevant, engaging, and intuitive. Here are the top three benefits of using Venmo for nonprofits:

1. You Support the Conversion of Page Visitors to Completed Donations

Payment methods that feel familiar to page visitors can help improve conversion rates. As mentioned earlier, this simple payment reconciliation positively impacts donor satisfaction.

How do I make a donation using Venmo?

A donor who wishes to use their Venmo account to complete their gift of any donation amount can click on the Venmo button at checkout to open the Venmo app. Then, they can log in (if not already logged in through the app), choose which account their donation will come from, and confirm the transaction. Since many people already have their Venmo usernames and password stored on their mobile devices, donors save time and avoid friction.

Meanwhile, simply having the PayPal option on your donation pages can increase conversion rates.

2. You Encourage the Acquisition of New Donors

Venmo can help organizations reach more by tapping into new donor segments that feel more comfortable transferring money through the mobile app. Offering Venmo can also help increase donors’ trust in your organization because they’re confident they’re giving through a legitimate app. 

Which donors prefer Venmo donations?

Our Why America Gives report explored the importance of payment options among different generations of donors. It revealed that younger donors especially trust newer payment options. 

Additionally, the report consistently showed that PayPal and Venmo are in demand as preferred payment methods. With digital wallets becoming the standard, we anticipate this preference will only continue to grow.

3. You Have Help Managing Your Venmo Business Account

Venmo Charity Profiles and Venmo for Business are great ways for organizations to deliver a polished profile and professional experience when collecting payments through Venmo—PayPal offers similar benefits for PayPal business accounts. While business accounts don’t require monthly fees, there are transaction fees. 

You can skip the account setup and additional fees by accepting donations through both platforms via a seamless plug-in to your donation form, which Classy Pay offers. 

How to Set Up Venmo for a Nonprofit: FAQs

How can nonprofits accept Venmo donations?

Classy Pay integrates with Venmo to give organizations more flexibility and control. This gives supporters one of the best possible donation and checkout experiences through a single platform.

Venmo is part of Classy’s integration with the PayPal Commerce Platform. Once a Classy customer activates the PayPal processor, they can enable Venmo with the click of a button in Classy Manager. 

Classy’s Venmo integration offers individuals the choice to donate through their desired payment methods across many fundraising campaign types, including:

• Website donations
• Peer-to-peer fundraising
• Fundraising events (virtual, hybrid, and in person)
• Crowdfunding campaigns

How do I get started with Venmo on Classy?

You’ve seen the success of our PayPal and Venmo pioneers. Now, it’s your turn to offer these payment methods through Classy Pay. Organizations that have already activated PayPal in Classy Pay can enable Venmo by simply checking a box in the payment processing portal.

However, if you want to get started with Classy Pay for the first time, check out our detailed overview and follow up with an exploration of the entire Classy donation platform by requesting a demo.

Take Advantage of Forward-Looking Fundraising

Fundraising that scales in the modern age of giving and well into the future requires world-class conversion and simple transactions. At Classy, we’re all about empowering nonprofits with connected fundraising experiences that help them reach larger audiences, take advantage of new engagement opportunities, and grow supporter lifetime value. 

That includes everything from the functionality within our fundraising platform, like Venmo and PayPal payment options, to the seamless integrations we offer with your customer relationship management and email marketing platforms. We’re here to help you build a comprehensive fundraising experience from start to finish with the tools that convert passionate supporters into life-long advocates for your cause.

Copy Editor: Ayanna Julien

Article Source

1. “About Us,” Venmo, last accessed July 11, 2023, https://venmo.com/about/us/.

Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) understands the critical value of establishing lasting supporter connections and adopting the right technology to initiate and nurture each relationship. That’s why BPL partnered with Classy to further cultivate its community and increase awareness of the infringements on teens’ First Amendment rights through its Books Unbanned program.

Who is Brooklyn Public Library?

Brooklyn Public Library serves 2.5 million individuals across 61 locations throughout Brooklyn, New York. The nonprofit offers free resources and services that include literacy programs, lectures, resume and career help, computer centers, and teen internships.

Additionally, BPL received an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor for museums and libraries, for its Outreach Services department and efforts to serve Brooklyn’s most vulnerable populations.

What is the Books Unbanned program?

Books Unbanned is a program BPL launched in response to the increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books from schools and libraries. The program offers free Brooklyn Public Library electronic library cards to teens and young adults aged 13 to 21, anywhere in the United States, in a valiant effort to defend the freedom to read.

Brooklyn Public Library Delivers Curated Giving Experiences With Classy’s Comprehensive Fundraising Suite

Now, with its fundraising suite of choice, Brooklyn Public Library is ready to scale. By implementing tools like program designations and embedded donation forms (along with recurring giving, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer, and event fundraising campaigns), BPL has demonstrated its commitment to optimizing the overall giving experience for everyone involved so they can raise more to do more.

Copy Editor: Ayanna Julien

Leveraging the right technology mobilizes connection and helps elevate your unique mission through impactful storytelling. Additionally, with access to clean, comprehensive data, you receive a full picture of each supporter and discover better ways to strengthen those relationships at scale.

Over the last decade-plus, Classy’s product focus has been on creating meaningful connections through giving and empowering nonprofits to take advantage of every opportunity to interact deeply with donors.

To meet the nuanced needs of the nonprofit sector, today’s fundraising platforms must deliver best-in-class technology to support organizations in the ways they deserve. From native marketing integrations to long-standing CRM partnerships, and collaboration with modern analytics tools, leveraging the right tech stack means you can count on intentional, purpose-built offerings that grow and scale as you do.

Today, we’re sharing what we know at Classy to be the most critical elements of connected fundraising, and how our product is evolving to remain in lockstep with the needs of the sector.

What Is “Connected Fundraising” and Why Does It Matter?

When Classy builds an integration, we understand that your organization’s front-end and back-end experiences must work together. At the same time, we ensure our and our partners’ solutions remain within our respective areas of expertise.

Solutions that go too wide often stray from their core competency, lacking long-term product innovation with outdated user interfaces for donors and staff. This is why we routinely see customers migrating away from all-in-one solutions, instead opting for integrated solutions that deliver a comprehensive and thoughtful experience for every stakeholder.

Classy’s high pace of innovation, coupled with robust CRM, analytics, and marketing integrations, ensure you can leverage your data as a strategic asset now and in the future, all while keeping it accessible and centralized within the context of your tech stack.

Connected fundraising experiences allow you to facilitate unified donor journeys and personalize them to reflect the needs and interests of each individual. Getting the right data from the right touchpoints helps you achieve a fundamental understanding of how donors engage with you, opening the door for your team to turn that moment of generosity into a lifelong relationship.

Elevate Your Impact With Connected Technology

According to Classy’s 2023 State of Modern Philanthropy report, supporters who engage with multiple campaign types (e.g., crowdfunding, peer-to-peer, fundraising events) are 4x more valuable than supporters who participate in a single campaign.

Understanding who those highly-engaged supporters are, which channels they prefer, and how to reach them is only possible with connected technology. A set of comprehensive fundraising tools paired with best-of-breed integrations makes it possible to facilitate, organize, and oversee all donor touchpoints without losing anything in the shuffle.

That 360-view aids informed decision-making on how to acquire, convert, and retain your loyal donor base for the long term.

See It In Action With Classy

CRM Solutions

Since Classy’s inception, we have integrated with CRMs that empower nonprofits to personalize interactions at scale. Our long-standing partnership with Salesforce has grown to become the deepest integration in the industry. With bi-directional sync and an upcoming integration to its new Nonprofit Cloud on our roadmap, we remain committed to propelling the sector forward, together.

As technology evolves and the CRM landscape changes, we are expanding our offerings with a new beta integration to Microsoft Dynamics Fundraising and Engagement (F&E) solution. Microsoft’s recent launch of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofits (MC4N) provides new options for the sector, and Classy is committed to investing in partners invested in you.

Additionally, our native integration to Zapier is entering a closed beta phase this summer, enabling you to send your transaction, supporter, and campaign data to the CRM you prefer.

Analytics & Tracking Solutions

Beyond CRM, Classy integrates with analytics partners like Google Analytics 4 and Meta Conversions API (Meta CAPI) to power learnings from your supporter traffic.

Understanding the impact of digital fragmentation on nonprofit fundraising and the unique set of challenges that come with the sunset of third-party cookie tracking, analytics can help unlock new ways of collecting data while respecting your donors’ privacy.

This data helps determine how supporters want to hear from you and the multiple places they may be engaging with your cause, allowing for more informed communication. Leveraging data from analytics integrations also helps power ad personalization, optimization, and measurement so you can extract the right touchpoints to deliver compelling supporter experiences.

Marketing Solutions

Delivering engaging, stand-out storytelling does not stop at CRM and analytics capabilities. With native marketing integrations like Mailchimp and Constant Contact, and strong partner-built solutions like Klaviyo, you can segment donors by cohorts to send personalized, relevant communication that resonates.

Alongside your analytics and CRM integrations, you learn which stories your supporters connect with the most, and where they are listening. From work-in-progress stories to storytelling with real-life images, you are well-prepared to share your organization’s work from start to finish.

The Future of Integrations With Classy and GoFundMe

Together, with our integrated partners, Classy is here to support your end-to-end fundraising experience. With a deeply-rooted commitment to industry-leading CRM, analytics, and marketing integrations, your needs will always come first, while also ensuring your supporters receive nothing less than a world-class experience.

Our goal is to work across vendors to establish deep partner relationships that serve the distinct needs of the nonprofit sector, so you can focus on your mission. Classy and GoFundMe are testing ways for nonprofits to tap into the millions of donors engaging across our platforms so you can make an even greater impact.

Article Sources

1. “2022 Fundraising Showed Substantial Weakness Through Q4,” Research & Reports, AFP, last modified April 16, 2023, https://afpglobal.org/2022-fundraising-showed-substantial-weakness-through-q4.

At Classy, we believe effective online fundraising begins with world-class conversions, but it doesn’t end there. It’s also about connecting people with your mission through impactful storytelling and taking your donors on an end-to-end journey.

Classy’s comprehensive fundraising platform empowers nonprofits to build lifelong relationships from moments of generosity. How we do that is unique from Classy competitors, which we’ll expand on below, but our goal to help nonprofits advance their causes is a through line.

Learn more about Classy’s fundraising solution versus Classy alternatives and how our technology empowers thousands of the world’s top nonprofits to amplify real-time impact.

Evaluating Nonprofit Platform Alternatives to Classy

There are several factors to consider during your nonprofit software evaluation, and the process can quickly become overwhelming.

Today’s nonprofits can power their fundraising efforts through a comprehensive nonprofit fundraising solution or buy into a set of individually-sourced point solutions that, together, make up a comprehensive tech stack. These point solutions may include online donations, crowdfunding, event management, payment processing, or donation forms, all sourced from different software providers.

At Classy, we know that cohesion across various giving experiences builds connection and trust with supporters. Offering the right experience to the right donor at the right time fuels conversions, amplifies donors’ levels of support, and keeps them coming back. We’re so confident we shaped our product suite around it.

Classy’s diversified fundraising platform offers a comprehensive, customizable set of tools that fuel a holistic strategy. In addition to our world-class direct giving experience, Classy offers virtual, hybrid, and in-person events, online peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, and recurring giving.

Outside of Classy, there are options for additional fundraising management tools, like customer relationship management or CRM donor management software, email marketing technology, and volunteer management tools. Many software programs, like Virtuous and Salesforce, integrate seamlessly with Classy.

Point Solutions: The Risk of Going Too Narrow

Point solutions are software built to solve a single problem. This applies to fundraising technology when platforms zero in on one aspect of the online giving process, like direct giving or event ticketing.

While a program may excel in that singular area, it often leaves nonprofits managing multiple fundraising tools to build a complete tech stack. This introduces a complexity tax for staff and supporters, leaving staff to learn multiple tools and supporters struggling with donation management.

For example, a recurring donor that’s also a peer-to-peer team captain now has two different systems to manage fundraising activity.

The cost of managing multiple tools quickly adds up, resulting in decreased efficiency, return on investment, and donor satisfaction.

All-in-One Solutions: The Risk of Going Too Broad

All-in-one platforms, seemingly the simplest solution, often try to be everything to everyone at the cost of innovation and user-friendly experiences. The idea of a one-stop shop sounds alluring, but the typical reality of going too wide in your solutions could render your efforts fruitless in achieving any of your goals.

For example, it’s hard to be a best-in-class CRM, digital fundraising, marketing, and financial management platform all at the same time. The use cases for an email tool and CRM are totally different from fundraising platform. For that reason, we don’t recommend selecting a tool that does everything because we don’t believe it’ll serve your team or do what you need.

Rather than evaluating potential fundraising platforms solely for the breadth of solutions, it’s critical to evaluate the depth of each product within that fundraising suite as well.

Threading the Needle With a Comprehensive Fundraising Platform

Classy balances breadth and depth to provide a online donation platform solely focused on digital fundraising that offers comprehensive tools to engage and nurture donors in diversified ways.

Again, sustainable fundraising is about offering the right experience to the right donor at the right time. With Classy’s comprehensive direct-giving solution, complete peer-to-peer experience, world-class recurring donation platform, and industry-leading nonprofit fundraising event software, organizations can double their revenue and double their impact.

In Classy’s 2023 State of Modern Philanthropy report, we found that supporters who participate in multiple campaign types are 4x more valuable than supporters who participate in a single campaign. By increasing engagement across numerous campaign types on Classy, your organization has the potential to keep donors more involved and more loyal to your cause.

Additionally, every donor who gives on Classy can access a supporter dashboard. From their dashboard, they can keep track of their donation activity, resend themselves receipts, and edit any recurring giving plans or fundraising pages in one place. This empowers supporters to self-serve, which frees your team to focus on other priorities.

Why Today’s Nonprofits Prefer Classy

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the impact of channel fragmentation on nonprofits’ ability to connect and effectively communicate has become more pronounced. Successful nonprofits can cut through the noise by offering elevated stories, emphasizing the impact supporters have in driving their missions forward, and using data to inform supporter engagement.

Classy knows that every nonprofit’s story is unique and their giving experiences should be, too. Our platform maximizes flexibility and configurability, placing your story front and center while driving connection to every supporter:

• Our direct giving experiences integrate seamlessly with your website to drive 2x-industry standard conversion and revenue.
• Our events platform helps create memorable, authentic experiences, deeply connecting your supporters to your story and impact while empowering them to engage in other ways.
• Our peer-to-peer solution extends your reach beyond your network of supporters to theirs, driving increased supporter acquisition.
• Our GoFundMe partnership aids in realizing the full potential of peer-to-peer fundraising and its role in the overall giving landscape.

Classy also supports integrations to the leading CRM and marketing platforms, which allows you to carry the personalization of your marketing all the way through to your giving experiences.

Each of these experiences, when woven together, helps engage donors across multiple touch points. We know this is key to driving donor acquisition and building a loyal supporter base to increase donor lifetime value.

Discover What Classy Can Do for Your Nonprofit

Personalization and connection matter more than ever. To unlock the generosity of new and existing supporters, you first have to learn how to engage with them through various giving experiences that resonate online and offline.

We encourage you to request a demo of our product to see how it works and what it can do for your nonprofit. Classy Academy is another resource at your fingertips that provides step-by-step coaching on how to take advantage of all our world-class features.

After all, your donation button is your nonprofit’s main call to action (CTA). Standard guidance on showcasing your donation button for online giving includes ensuring it is easy to find, links to the correct page, and stands out using contrasting colors—but it doesn’t end there. 

Today, we’re showing you how to further strategize its usage across your different online fundraising efforts. An intentional approach helps your story reach more ideal supporters and makes visitors more likely to take action as they digest and engage with your page.

Below, we look at creative ways to format the best donation button across different fundraising campaign types, with examples from five nonprofits that bring the donor experience to the next level.

1. Peer-to-Peer Campaigns: Focus on Strategic Placement and Visual Distinction

Peer-to-peer fundraising tools allow supporters to fundraise on your behalf. A donation button on your peer-to-peer campaign helps you collect even more one-time (and recurring) gifts for your campaign. 

Since these two CTA buttons—to fundraise or donate—live on your campaign page, you want to distinguish them visually. That could mean using color variations, separating sizing, or adding a contrasting visual that guides a page visitor to the options you offer.

One example comes from Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit working to “promote social and economic justice for all Texans by leveraging the skills and resources of volunteer lawyers and other professionals to identify practical solutions to difficult systemic problems.” The nonprofit’s peer-to-peer fundraising campaign helped it raise over $35,000.

At the top of its campaign page, Texas Appleseed highlights the opportunity to fundraise and donate. The “Become a Fundraiser” CTA leads the two with a transparent background and white outline that grabs visitors’ attention. 

Next to it is the highly visible donation button in red. Each CTA’s visually distinct yet grabby design catches the eye. The strategic proximity of these two buttons—visible at the top of the fold when a supporter lands on the page—gives supporters multiple opportunities to help the nonprofit reach its goal.

Farther down the campaign page, the nonprofit elevates the peer-to-peer component by listing some of the campaign’s top fundraisers and including the headline “Support a Fundraiser” to encourage donors to give directly to a peer’s personal fundraising page.

Pro Tip: By placing a donation button strategically alongside your CTA to fundraise, you can engage more donors by offering options for how they can participate in your peer-to-peer campaigns.

2. Crowdfunding Campaigns: Vary Your Donation Button Options

Crowdfunding campaigns allow for maximum creativity with your donation button. Below are two nonprofit examples that varied donation button options across Classy crowdfunding campaigns.

Incorporate Multiple Types of Donation Opportunities

Classy customer Houston Ballet started a crowdfunding campaign to keep its company dancing despite significant challenges resulting from COVID-19. The crowdfunding page featured a clear goal to raise $5 million, and the nonprofit incorporated three different donation opportunities, all supporting the overall goal.

First, the page displays a visually contrasting Donate Now button next to its progress bar on the campaign’s homepage. The placement creates a quick, easy way for donors to see social proof that others have supported the cause, and they can immediately take action as well.

Farther down the page, the campaign uses impact blocks to suggest how different levels of donations can help support the nonprofit during these times. It uses imagery in line with its brand and includes specific details on how the donation will make a difference, such as home-training gear and digital academy classes.

In the final section of the campaign page, the nonprofit includes a Become a Fundraiser button that encourages supporters to start fundraising pages to make an even more significant impact.

Pro Tip: By offering multiple donation buttons that cover various styles and fundraising types throughout your crowdfunding campaign, you give your supporters choices for how they can help you meet your goal. Your donation buttons progressively tell your campaign’s story as the supporter scrolls through your page.

Leverage Impact Blocks to Showcase Recommended Donations

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley provides healthy meals to anyone who needs one within its community. When the pandemic put a pause on its collection of in-kind food donations, the nonprofit started a crowdfunding campaign to fill the gap in its operations and keep the momentum flowing online.

The initial donation button for Second Harvest of Silicon Valley’s campaign is easy to find on the campaign landing page in bright orange, placed next to a short video showcasing some of the nonprofit’s beneficiaries.

Next on the page is an overview of the  nonprofit’s story, which highlights how its food distribution process looks different this year. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley explains how supporters can give a monetary donation for a particular item instead of in-kind food drop-offs.

Impact blocks show donors how different gift amounts translate to specific food items typically provided in kind. For example, the $50 impact block has a graphic of a roast chicken and says you can “fill the barrel” with 85 pounds of a whole chicken. 

The visually engaging custom illustrations, complete with donation buttons in orange, are specific to its branding. You can get creative with visuals that speak to your audience and draw attention with Canva or other design platforms.

Pro Tip: By adding creative impact blocks with donation buttons on your crowdfunding campaign, you provide a fun way for supporters to understand the tangible impact of their donations. If you hit a creative rut, explore these eight simple designs you can create for free using Canva for Nonprofits. 

3. Fundraising Event: Pair One-Time Donation With Registration

In registration with fundraising, you want your supporters to register for your event and start fundraising. For example, for ticketed events, your primary CTA is to buy a ticket.

Special Olympics Washington created a registration with a fundraising campaign page on Classy for its Polar Plunge challenge. On the campaign landing page, donors see a Register button alongside the donation button in the center of the hero block, under the event logo. 

Farther down the page, the nonprofit again pairs a registration button with a donation button next to a progress circle, inspiring people to join those who have already contributed and taken action.

Pro Tip: By distinguishing your registration and donation buttons visually, you inspire participants to donate more at that moment and people who can’t make your event but still want to support.

4. Recurring Giving Campaigns: Pair Donation Button With Powerful Language

Neighborhood Homework House started a recurring giving campaign to fund its mission to support students in its community. Its initial donation button pairs with text branded around the nonprofit organization’s recurring donations campaign. It explains, “For as little as $10 a month, you can rewrite the future of a generation of Azusa students.”

Below the initial donation button is additional text describing the power of small donations and that you can start supporting now by giving up small monthly expenses. 

The campaign then incorporates impact blocks that showcase examples of things a supporter could skip each month to donate to the nonprofit instead. For example, a supporter could choose to donate their $40 tank of gas or $20 meal delivery.

Pro Tip: By shaping your donation options around your recurring giving story, you build a case for your supporters to join your campaign.

6 Bonus Tips to Round Out Your Donation Process

As you set up a donation platform that converts supporters into loyal donors, here are a few last items to check off your list to complete the experience.

1. Offer suggested donation amounts to guide people and collect donations that make a real impact based on the programs you run
2. Think about offering as many payment options as possible outside of just credit cards, such as trusted transaction apps like PayPal and Venmo
3. Leave a checkbox that lets donors opt in to cover their processing fees and give the maximum gift to your mission
4. Provide an easy way for donors to share their actions for good on social media to build cause awareness through their Facebook page or other accounts
5. Consider embedding your donation form directly on your webpage with a simple modal, widget, or pop-up
6. Test the whole process as if you are a potential donor through different mobile devices and browsers to make it as smooth as possible

Think Creatively About Your Donation Button to Increase Supporter Engagement

Strategic use and formatting of online donation buttons can increase support across different campaign types. Think creatively about what types of donate buttons to use, how to place them, and ways to brand them to your mission to engage your audience and encourage donations.

As you build your donor-centric fundraising strategy, Classy has your back.

Get ready to turn passive supporters into donors with a donation experience that streamlines the checkout process.  We found that Classy customers using an embedded checkout form during giving season saw up to a 28% improvement in revenue per site visitor.

As mobile traffic increases across our platform, embedded giving is an incredible tool to help simplify the mobile donation experience and urge supporters to complete their donations. You can start with a simple and mobile-optimized checkout form, which we’ll walk you through below.

What Is Embedded Giving?

Embedded giving experiences provide website visitors with a complete donation form without leaving your site for a separate donation page. Instead of needing to click on a separate donation page to start their transaction, they can begin right away on your home page.

There are two different ways of approaching embedded giving:

• Modal embeds or pop-up donation forms that display when people select your donate button
• Direct (or in-line) embeds where you place your form on a page in-line with other elements

We developed Classy Embedded Checkout from standard Classy donation forms, so nonprofits get many of the same benefits they’re used to on the Classy platform, from branding to donor tracking.

The ROI Nonprofits Gain From Embedded Checkout

When nonprofits focus on what modern donors want to see, they see results. Many Hopes turned to Classy’s embedded checkout forms to bring their own custom-giving experience to life for their supporters on any device they choose.

Here’s a glimpse at what Many Hopes achieved between December and April of 2021, and the same period in 2022:

• 56% YoY increase in donation volume
• 53% YoY increase in individual donors
• $975 average gift size using the popular payment option, PayPal

We’ll walk you through some easy ways to set up your embedded giving experience so you can achieve similar results.

5 Ways to Make Giving Easier With Embedded Giving

A good donor experience provides a great first impression. Delight new donors with embedded giving, and offer a reliable process that long-term supporters are happy to come back to. When you take away the confusion of where to navigate on your donation sites, you’ve already increased the chances of a completed transaction. Here are a few other tips to help you make the most of embedded giving.

1. Hook Visitors With an Attractive Look and Feel

Modal donation forms feel modern and showcase the simplicity of the minimal-step process right away. Branding your donation modal to match your website helps donors feel like they’re never leaving that experience. The consistency also shows them that you’re professional and trustworthy.

It’s also helpful to include your donation modal alongside a strong narrative. Highlight the impact of your work and provide them an avenue right then and there to join your cause. As people become more passionate about what their donations are accomplishing, they may also be more likely to share it. Word-of-mouth is how 67% of donors were most likely to find out about new causes in 2021.

Quick Tip

When you’re building your donation modal, bring your brand to life. Mirror the look and feel of your website by selecting from your brand’s color palate and language, as Many Hopes did in the example above. You can set it up with a self-serve option, using very little code, so it’s simple to get up on your site.

2. Empower Donors to Use the Device of Their Choice

It’s far less likely that donors would opt out of a donation opportunity when they feel familiar with the purchasing process. Think about the experiences surrounding donors daily with modern services and brands using intuitive apps. Now imagine you can offer donors a similar experience when they come across your site on their phones.

In 2021, most campaign types on Classy saw over half of the donor traffic come from a mobile device. Open your donation process to support mobile donors so you can capture all the people who land on your page. It’s important to consider how easy it is to donate while people are balancing work schedules, travel, or other moments of their on-the-go lifestyles where a desktop is not accessible.

Quick Tip

Look at how much traffic your campaigns typically receive from mobile devices or tablets. Consider directing donor traffic from social media platforms or physical QR code advertisements to the page on which you embed your donation modal to continue the seamless mobile experience.

3. Make Payments a Breeze

Like consumers, donors light up when they see a way to save time with a trusted payment option. Modal donation forms sync up to apps that likely already store their information, such as PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Donors also told us that a top reason they would reconsider a donation is if their preferred payment option isn’t available.

People like easy. Boost conversion for mobile traffic by clarifying that you offer the mobile payment they want to use. Nonprofits saw mobile conversion improve by more than 2 points after activating Venmo on Classy Pay in 2022.

Different payment options also broaden your reach to audiences across younger generations. We saw that 72% of millennials selected PayPal and Venmo as their preferred payment options. Those numbers demonstrate the value of simply having these logos greet them on your checkout modal.

Quick Tip

Include the payment options that your donors resonate with most. Elevate different gift amounts and frequencies to be accessible for varied financial situations. When you use Classy’s embedded checkout, you can feel confident donors have the most optimized user experience, avoiding payment fatigue.

4. Nudge Donors to Complete and Uplevel Their Donation

We’ve all become distracted during the online payment process, abandoning our cart to respond to a text message or another notification. Globally, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 71.49% with e-commerce brands losing an estimated $18 billion in revenue. 

Consider how many donors land on your donation page and begin the checkout process to then get distracted because they don’t have their credit card on them or they’re late for an appointment. Setting up cues or nudges that remind the donor of their intended donation is important to recapture the donor’s attention and guide them back toward their cart. 

Nudges can also persuade donors who select a one-time donation to become recurring donors instead. We’ve seen how valuable recurring donors are in creating predictable revenue for organizations. In fact, the average one-time gift is about $168 on Classy, and the average monthly recurring gift is $30. While the recurring gift size is smaller, recurring donors typically give for one to three years. One year of a $30 monthly donation would bring in $360—roughly 2X the average one-time gift.

Quick Tip

Activate Classy’s Abandoned Cart Nudge and Recurring Nudge for your embedded checkout so that donors are more likely to complete their donation and become recurring donors. 

5. Simplify Employer Matching

A donor wants to make the most significant impact on your cause or a challenge you’re looking to solve. When you can offer to double their donation, that impact is even more enticing.

Employee donation matching encourages workplace giving. It also broadens awareness of your cause among larger organizations that can become corporate sponsors, volunteers, or major donors down the road.

Offering an employer donation match option on your donation modal gives donors a quick way to see if their organization can match their contribution. It can also be a great tool to prompt timely giving. Most visitors see the donation match as an opportunity to make the biggest difference toward your cause.

Quick Tip

Integrate a matching gift tool into your embedded checkout experience to prompt donors to search for their employer to match their donations. Stay up to date on how Classy is offering more capabilities with partners like Double the Donation.

6. Bring Recurring Giving Opportunities Into the Spotlight

We already know donors love choices, but especially when their financial circumstances may shift, an option to automate a smaller gift over time can be appealing. Did you know 56% of donors feel a recurring gift enables them to continuously support the organization, and 47% like the option because it makes more of an impact?

A recurring donation option on your modal donation form puts the option right in front of donors who might not have known it was possible. Donation pages already bring in the most average recurring revenue; including regular giving on your donation modal can yield excellent results.

Quick Tip

Present your recurring gift option with various giving frequencies to appeal to any donor’s financial situation. Classy lets you offer monthly, weekly, daily, bi-weekly, quarterly, and annual options all on the same form. This way you can put the power in your donors’ hands, and the predictable income in yours.

Get Started With Embedded Giving on Classy

Are you ready to delight your donors with a modern giving experience? We hope you see the value in offering this simple option that only takes a few steps to set up. Bring your website visitors into your donor community, and stay up to date on new donation modal updates from Classy to continue to raise more for your cause.

Activity tracking is also making a tremendous impact on peer-to-peer fundraising. Whether the event is a run, walk or ride, or conducted in person, virtual or hybrid, activity tracking offers nonprofits numerous ways to encourage and engage their participants in their event training and fundraising. It also offers participants the more engaging experiences and digital tools that they have come to expect in their fundraising efforts.

From tracking progress to connecting with others, those fundraising efforts are conducted primarily in the mobile sphere and in mobile apps in particular. This makes sense given that Americans spend an average of 4.1 hours per day on their mobile devices, according to the 2022 App Annie Intelligence State of Mobile report.

Accordingly, nonprofit organizations are increasingly reaching their peer-to-peer fundraisers exactly where they are—on their mobile devices. So we’ve seen that integrating activity tracking into the mobile fundraising mix to increase engagement opportunities has been a natural progression, albeit a fairly recent one.

Activity Tracking Is a Solution to Engage Donors

In 2020 as nonprofits turned to virtual events due to the coronavirus pandemic, Classy partner Charity Dynamics, which provides digital marketing and fundraising solutions to nonprofits, recognized the need for organizations to help keep their participants engaged and connected with their event community. 

Activity tracking was a natural part of this solution. Training for a run, walk or ride event can be a tough ask for a lot of fundraisers, particularly if they’ve never done a race (competitive or otherwise) before.

Tracking their physical activity—steps taken, miles walked or run or ridden, and so on—can help them stay on target to reach their training goals. In fact, recent research from the University of South Australia shows that people who use activity trackers walk up to 40 minutes more per day than those who don’t (and stay motivated to continue exercising more). 

Charity Dynamics developed the activity tracker Boundless Motion as part of its Boundless Fundraising® mobile app solution and launched it in May 2020. Boundless Motion integrates seamlessly with Classy’s peer-to-peer fundraising platform, allowing organizations to implement the tracking features that best work for their audiences.

Features That Empower Fundraising

Through Boundless Motion, event participants engage with a number of features that are designed to empower their training and fundraising, such as:

• Gamification
• Corporate Sponsorships
• Leaderboards
• Participant Challenges
• Fitness Tracker Integration

Peer-to-Peer Engagement

Event participants can track their progress on the event and team leaderboards and challenge other participants or team members to hit certain fundraising or activity goal. They can also cheer each other on within the app or share their progress on their social channels for even greater encouragement. 

Team captains can rally team members through personal messages within the app and provide coaching and fundraising tips as participants train up to an event.

Activity Tracking Helps Peer-to-Peer Fundraisers Raise More

By increasing participant engagement, activity tracking is already having an immediate impact on fundraising revenue as well, ensuring that it will remain part of the peer-to-peer fundraising fabric. Last year, of active fundraisers in a national walk/run program who used Boundless Motion, the average dollar amount raised totaled $1,130 per fundraiser (versus $270 per active fundraiser without the Boundless app). 

With event participants increasingly turning to mobile fundraising and virtual communities (even as events themselves return to in person), the relationship between activity tracking and peer-to-peer fundraising can only grow stronger. Organizations can create the perfect virtual fundraising and training center right on their participants’ phones.

Nonprofit organizations leverage Meta and other online platforms to connect with supporters, often using targeted advertising. Whether it be fundraising on Facebook for a cause or finding new volunteers in the area, these efforts are powered by data to provide the most relevant message at the right time to the right audience.

That being said, the digital advertising ecosystem is quickly changing. Online users increased privacy expectations, regulations from governments, and changes coming directly from large tech platforms like Apple, have impacted the way that nonprofit organizations can collect and use data. 

For example, one of the biggest changes has been how web browsers have changed their policies around third-party cookie tracking, which has traditionally been the way that most online platforms track users online. It’s expected that by the end of 2023 most browsers will fully block all third-party cookies automatically. 

It’s clear that the nonprofit sector must move away from third-party cookie tracking and look to new ways of collecting data while also respecting privacy. Without additional tracking options, nonprofit organizations could experience a drop-off in results from their digital marketing efforts. 

These additional forms of tracking need to ensure that:

• You can still reach people who have shown interest in your organization
• Ad targeting is showing to the right audiences
• Ad platforms (that thrive on data) are able to perform to their fullest potential
• Measurement and reporting are accurate

So, what can your organization do about this ever-changing landscape? Thankfully, organizations like Classy, which understand the value of accurate data, are taking steps to build more reliable connections with ad platforms. This first step is a Classy partner integration with a tool called Conversions API, or CAPI for short. 

What is Conversions API?

Conversions API is a Meta business tool that creates a direct connection between your marketing data and Meta. This new tool lets organizations share key web and offline events, or customer actions, directly from a server to the Facebook pixel (known as server-side tracking). Server-side tracking allows advertisers to move third-party cookies away from your website or app into server-side processing via the cloud, which improves the performance and measurement of Facebook ad campaigns.

Some of the benefits of CAPI include:

• More Accurate Data: The Conversions API can help you measure ad performance and attribution across a prospective supporter’s full journey, from discovery to conversion. This helps you better understand how digital advertising impacts both online and offline results.

• Improved performance: Because CAPI doesn’t rely solely on 3rd-party cookie tracking (like the Meta pixel), your organization will be able to leverage the full power of Meta’s advertising capabilities. The more data you can feed the ad platform, the faster it will learn, leading to improved results. 

• Data Control: Conversions API gives organizations the ability to control what data is shared and when. This means that organizations that store lots of user data can control what is shared with clients to add another layer of security.

How Does Meta’s Conversion API Work?

Take the example of your nonprofit advertising during year-end on Meta. You’re trying to drive as many donations as you can and report back to your team the success of your campaign efforts. If you are unable to record a completed donation or registration event with the Meta pixel because a user has opted out of tracking, the Classy integration works alongside the Meta Conversions API to send a parallel, server-based event to Meta with extra data that can be used to help identify the event. That way you can see exactly how many donations your campaigns truly generated from Meta.

In the instance that a donation or registration occurs and an event is received by Meta from both the Conversions API and the Meta Pixel, Meta will then ‘deduplicate’ one of the events and recognize one event has occurred. Alternatively, if a user has opted out of tracking, then an event will only be sent to Meta through the Conversions API. This means that this method of tracking will help organizations more accurately measure conversions like registrations or donations regardless of whether or not a user has opted out of tracking.

Easily Implement CAPI With Classy

 Meta recommends getting started with CAPI in two ways: either directly, by using your own in-house developer resources, or alternatively, by leveraging a partner solution. If you are a nonprofit organization that has an in-house developer or has the bandwidth to set up CAPI on your own, you can find Meta’s guided instructions for the process here.

If you don’t have an in-house developer, but you’re a Classy customer, you’re in luck! Recognizing the need for nonprofits everywhere to be able to easily set up Conversions API, Classy has developed its own server-side event tracking solution that allows partner agencies and Classy customers to retrieve the data needed to optimize their online fundraising strategies. Classy’s solution to the Conversions API is incredibly accessible compared to the many alternatives of setting up CAPI with Meta. Setting up Conversions API with the Meta Pixel can also ensure more accurate data, data control, and accurate data sharing.

Without Classy, one of the larger hurdles for setting up CAPI is implementing and creating your own server-side event solution to send data to Meta. There are also data requirements for what information you need to send Meta in order for the Conversions API to work. Without developers and or the time, this can be a deterring factor for organizations who want to use Meta’s Conversions API.  

With Classy, this piece is all handled by Classy’s implementation team. Upon completing the setup of the Meta Conversions API within your Meta Business Suite, you just need to connect your Pixel ID and API Conversions Token to your Classy account. Classy will then send the events and necessary data points that Meta requires in order to properly recognize and deduplicate events.

Safely Track Data With the Classy CAPI Integration

The launch of Conversion API is a massive win for the nonprofit sector. Not only will it help organizations more accurately track results from Meta campaigns, but it will help change the way other platforms like Google, Amazon, and LinkedIn safely track users’ information. As mentioned above, there are a lot of benefits to server-side tracking, and based on current privacy and data trends, we expect to see server-side tracking become a more relied upon solution.

For most organizations, implementing the Meta Conversions API will be the first step toward server-side tracking, but remember you don’t have to go on this journey alone. Make sure you’re taking advantage of this simple-to-use Classy CAPI integration to ensure more accurate data, improved performance, and data control for your nonprofit. 

An Overview of Fundraising Campaign Types

We’ll take a look at five different campaign types at your disposal when you use a modern fundraising platform like Classy. These include:

• Donation Pages /Donation Websites
• Crowdfunding
• Peer-to-Peer
• Ticketed Events
• Registration with Fundraising Events

Choosing the right campaign type is vital to your fundraising success. Your decision affects the entire marketing and communications strategy that you’ll use to rally and engage supporters.

For example, the call to action you’d include on a donation form would be along the lines of “make a one-time donation.” For a peer-to-peer campaign, you’d change that to something like “sign up to fundraise on our behalf.” If you want to lean heavily on storytelling through photos and narrative text, or explain the power of different gift amounts through impact blocks, you might lean toward a crowdfunding campaign where people can come to donate.

Below, we’ll explore the different use cases and nuances of each campaign type and provide actual Classy campaigns examples. First, let’s go over how you can determine your nonprofit’s primary focus to help decide which type is right for your first campaign.

The Value of Using Multiple Campaign Types

It’s important to state that it can be highly effective for nonprofits to use multiple campaign types throughout the year to capture new donors and audiences according to how they’d like to give. Our annual report, The State of Modern Philanthropy, outlines how valuable a multi-campaign approach can be to a well-rounded fundraising strategy. 

As you go through the list of campaign type options, think about which combination can help you reach your target donors and raise the funds you need at various milestones throughout the year. You’ll see proof points and sentiment from Classy customers to help you envision your organization’s next successful campaign.

What’s Your Campaign Focus?

To ensure you choose the right Classy campaign type, determine your organization’s focus or top priority. This isn’t the end-all-be-all of your fundraising strategy but rather something to guide your first campaign.

Start by exploring the most immediate need that brought you to use Classy in the first place. For example, you might want to establish your main donation button on your website and build a landing page that serves as a place for someone to donate.

Define specific goals and desired outcomes

Your goal will help you choose the best-fit campaign to get you there. The key is to be as specific as possible. It could also be a good idea to envision the end of the campaign and your desired outcomes. Get clear about the donation volume you’d consider a success, how many donors would participate, the ideal length of your campaign, and how many supporters you want to build relationships with throughout the process for future campaigns.

Once your team agrees on its focus, it becomes much easier to create cohesive messaging that helps supporters understand how they can contribute to your work. Each section below begins with a sample focus statement before exploring the different campaign types and examples from real nonprofits.

Donation Page

“Our nonprofit simply needs to gather donations and build a supporter base.”

A donation page can stand as your landing page. Supporters can arrive, read a short section on your work, and complete their donations. Your nonprofit can link to your donation page from your main website through a donation button. 

From there you can take the following action to get donors to your donation page:

• Include it in your monthly email appeal for donations
• Add a promotion within your newsletters
• Create online ads 
• Develop social media posts
• Write timely blogs
• Include the URL on pieces of direct mail

Flexibility of Donation Pages

With a donation page, you can collect either one-time or recurring donations. You can offer the frequency and the donation amounts listed on the form. Further, you can use pass-through parameters to have a pre-selected donation amount automatically populated when someone lands on the form. 

Offer more choices on your donation pages with modern payment options like Venmo, PayPal, cryptocurrency, digital wallets, and ACH bank transfers. Classy also offers an embedded checkout experience with a pop-up modal that can be placed on your website to simplify the experience for your donors. 

Many Hopes brought an embedded checkout experience to their donation website to see a year-over-year donation volume increase of 56% and a $975 average gift size specifically through the PayPal option.

For example, look at how Casa Central built its donation page to be engaging enough to draw someone in yet still strong enough to stand on its own.

Donation Page Classy Campaign Example

The ROI of Donation Pages

Donation pages powered by the Classy fundraising platform bring in the most average recurring revenue of all campaign types from automated repeat donations. They also have the least amount of canceled recurring contributions in the first year from the original recurring donation compared to all other campaign types.

Crowdfunding

“Our nonprofit needs to gather donations, build a supporter base, and tell our organization’s compelling story in the process.”

A crowdfunding campaign is built for storytelling. With this campaign type, you can inspire support for your cause with a robust narrative that ultimately drives people to donate.

Crowdfunding campaigns are the landing page before someone gets to your donation page. It’s meant to draw people in, teach them about your nonprofit, show the impact their gift will make, and steward them to complete a donation. Nonprofits often use video, rich imagery, and well-written copy to accomplish this.

Crowdfunding’s Value for Community-Based Campaigns

While a crowdfunding campaign works well for story-driven appeals, it’s also ideal for time-bound appeals that fundraise against an optional, public-facing goal. You can’t do this on a donation page. In addition, when you run a crowdfunding campaign that’s bound to a set duration of time, it can create a sense of urgency to donate.

Additionally, when someone donates, you can thank and encourage them in real time on the comment wall of the campaign page. This public-facing engagement opportunity shows supporters that you and your team are grateful for the support.

It also lends an element of social proof to the campaign. With a donation page, you cannot see who’s donated, how many have donated, or gauge any sense of momentum. Here’s a campaign by Water4 that puts all of these best practices to use.

Crowdfunding Classy Campaign Example

Crowdfunding for Recurring Giving

Donation pages can effectively include a recurring giving option, but you can also use a crowdfunding campaign to build a dedicated recurring giving program. The only things that change are the call to action, which shifts the focus from a one-time donation to a monthly recurring donation, and the timeline. Recurring giving programs are often evergreen. Operation Broken Silence built a recurring giving program in this fashion.

Recurring Giving Crowdfunding Classy Campaign Example

The ROI of Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding campaigns have the highest percentage of donors on mobile devices who are visiting from social media platforms. We also see that crowdfunding campaigns are the second most common way a donor returns to give a second donation. 

Peer-to-Peer

“We want to empower people to fundraise on our behalf.”

A peer-to-peer fundraising campaign page may look similar to a crowdfunding campaign, but it has a different call to action. Instead of asking someone to donate, a peer-to-peer campaign instead asks them to sign up to fundraise on your behalf.

Some peer-to-peer campaigns will offer both options and invite supporters to donate or sign up to fundraise. That way, people can still give to your cause even if they don’t want to build a personal fundraising page.

Create a Central Hub for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Your main campaign page serves as a central hub from which supporters build their personal fundraising pages. Fundraisers will then send out their personal pages to their networks, asking people to donate.

All donations to personal fundraising pages link back to your main campaign page and increase your fundraising progress toward the goal. The true value here lies in that network effect.

As individuals reach out to their friends, families, and coworkers to share their fundraising pages, your nonprofit gets exposed to new audiences that may not have heard about your mission before. Peer-to-peer fundraising can also net your organization higher overall fundraising totals.

That’s because someone who starts a personal fundraising page can often raise more from their network than they can donate out of pocket. Not everyone can donate $100 at once, but many people have 10 friends who can each donate $10. Look at how Volunteers of America built their page.

Peer-to-Peer Classy Campaign Example

Year-Round Peer-to-Peer Campaigns

While most peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns are time-bound, like most crowdfunding campaigns, you always have the option to leave it on year-round. In these cases, you would call it a year-round peer-to-peer campaign.

Beyond that, you can build your peer-to-peer campaign as a DIY fundraising campaign, which lets supporters fundraise on their own terms and time, like Room to Grow did. Someone can donate their birthday, wedding, athletic event, or another major life milestone.

DIY Peer-to-Peer Classy Campaign Example

The ROI of Peer-to-Peer

An individual’s fundraising page brings in 20 donors on average, so your campaign could potentially reach 100 donors if even five people participated. We also saw that the average amount raised by each participant’s fundraising page in 2021 increased by 34% on average from 2020.

Events

“I want to hold an event that activates my entire community of supporters.”

Classy offers two different ways your nonprofit can tap into the power of events. First, you can choose a ticketed event, which allows you to sell tickets to your event—our online ticket sales for nonprofits feature makes this easier than ever. Second, you can choose registration with fundraising, which combines the peer-to-peer fundraising campaign with a ticketed event campaign. With the addition of Classy Live, these events can now be run virtually or enhanced in-person with mobile features.

Ticketed Event

A ticketed event is what you’ll want to choose for any event that you want to sell admission tickets for, like a gala. You can control the total number of tickets you want to sell, as well as the types of tickets you offer supporters.

You can also create special promo codes to pass out and attract additional attendees. Last, you can include a “Donate” call to action so that anyone who can’t attend your event can still make a donation to support like the High Fives Foundation did.

Ticketed Event Classy Campaign Example

Registration with fundraising is similar to the ticketed events campaign type, but it mixes in an element of peer-to-peer fundraising. Often, nonprofits will use this campaign type for endurance events like 5Ks, marathons, and run/walks.

Participants can still pay for admission to the event, but there’s an option for them to create a personal or team fundraising page as well. Some will also use this peer-to-peer functionality as a gate to entry for the event.

Someone must fundraise a certain dollar amount to guarantee their registration in the event. You can use this example from the Sacramento SPCA to inspire your own campaign.

Registration With Fundraising Classy Campaign Example

The ROI of Events

Not only are events seeing tremendous year-over-year donation volume growth after the pandemic years of 2020 through 2021, but registration with fundraising events converted at the highest rate of all campaign types. We also see ticketed events bringing in the highest percentage of donations over $1,000.

What Classy Campaign Type Will You Choose?

No matter which Classy campaign type you choose, it’s helpful to view your campaign as an iterative work-in-progress that can always be improved. One of the biggest keys to success is to have a defined focus before you start that drives a strong first version that can be improved upon later.

When you understand the call to action and are confident in the campaign type you need, you’ve done the hard part. That way, you won’t spend hours designing a page only to realize you’ve chosen the wrong type.

For more ROI related to specific campaign types on Classy, visit The State of Modern Philanthropy report. If you’re interested in learning more about how Classy can power your online fundraising efforts, please reach out to us. Good luck!

All organizations that currently use Google Analytics will need to migrate to Google Analytics 4 before then to avoid any interruptions. What’s more, data will be non-transferable between UA and GA4—meaning that it is critical to get your organization set up with GA4 well ahead of the deadline in order to retain as large of a backlog of data as possible in your new property. The good news is that there are many advantages to GA4, including its focus on data privacy, simplified data model, more flexible events, and more user-friendly interface.

This post is designed to give you a basic understanding of GA4 and show you how to get off on the right foot so that your organization can continue to benefit from Google’s best-in-class analytics tools.

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 is billed by Google as the “next generation of Google Analytics.” In the most basic sense, it is a new type of property that is added to your existing overall Google Analytics account. Key features include:

• Revamped look-and-feel and simplified menu structure, which should help make insights more accessible to the average user
• Designed to focus on privacy and future ways to track users that are not based on browser cookies
• Built-in machine learning and AI that helps surface key insights based on user data
• More flexible events structure that allows for up to 25 parameters (UA is limited to three rigid parameters: Category > Action > Label)
• Tight integration with Google’s ad products to help optimize campaign performance

Differences Between UA and GA4

There are three primary differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. 

Account Structure: Unlike UA properties, a GA4 property does not offer multiple views. This means that any filtering of the data must be done within the GA4 property using the “comparisons” or “explorations” features. You may not be able to filter the data in the same way you are used to in UA, and may need to restructure your setup into multiple GA4 properties, depending on the complexity of your setup.

Data Model: UA organizes data based on sessions, whereas GA4 organizes data based on events. What this means is that UA has a hierarchical or nested data model and GA4 has a flat data model. There are advantages to the flat model. Namely, that all events exist side-by-side (sessions included), so they are easier to access and report on. This is also a reason why data is non-transferable: because the two platforms structure data in different ways. 

Event Schema: Both UA and GA4 support events, and both platforms allow you to add additional pieces of information that are sent along with those events. However, the structure for events in UA is strict: you can provide a value for “Category,” “Action,” and “Label,” as well as send a value and other custom information.

 In GA4, the structure for events is much more flexible: you can send up to 25 parameters along with your events, and you get to specify what those parameters are named, instead of having to adopt relatively vague terms (Category, Action, Label). This will allow users to create parameter names that are much more self-explanatory and pass many more parameters back with a single event, providing more insight and giving the user additional ways to break down the data.

Automatic Collected Events: Once your GA4 property is active, you’ll immediately track a number of standard events. Whereas Universal Analytics only provided metrics such as Time on Site, Bounce Rate, and Pages Per Visit as standard engagement metrics, GA4 takes a more intelligent approach. The out of the box events tracked include:

• Scroll rate
• Site search
• Video engagement
• File downloads

Custom conversions you may have set up previously for UA using a platform such as Google Tag Manager (GTM) will likely need to be recreated for GA4. Thankfully, there is a corresponding GA4 event tag type that is available in GTM. While you can simply make a copy of your existing UA event tags and change the tag type to GA4, we recommend taking the opportunity to think through how you can improve on the events you have set up by leveraging the 25 custom parameters you now have available in GA4. 

For additional information about the differences between UA and GA4, review Google’s official help documentation.

How to Implement Google Analytics 4

Implementing GA4 will depend on the platform and, in some cases, whether or not Universal Analytics is already installed. No matter the case, the first step is to create your new GA4 property in your existing Google Analytics account.

Website

If your website already has a Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) property installed, use the GA4 Setup Assistant wizard and follow these steps to collect data using your existing tags. (You must be using the gtag.js snippet on your site for this method to work properly.)

If you are using Google Tag Manager on your website, you can follow these steps to use the GA4 Configuration tag type to implement GA4. 

Classy

You have two options for implementing GA4 across your Classy account:

1.) Using Classy’s Native Google Analytics 4 Integration (Standard)

This method is preferable if you are not currently using GTM across your Classy account, want a simple way to install GA4, and are happy with the way that data (including transactions) currently populate with Classy’s UA integration.

1. Visit GA4 Property
2. Copy Measurement ID (under Admin > Data Streams > Select Stream > Measurement ID)
3. Log into Classy
4. Select Apps + Extensions
5. Choose Google Analytics 4
6. Paste Measurement ID
7. Press Enable Google Analytics 4

Note: If you enable Classy’s Google Analytics 4 integration, your account will not be eligible to use Google Tag Manager due to a Google limitation.

2.) Using Classy’s Google Tag Manager Integration (Advanced)

This method is ideal if you want to begin or maintain the use of GTM across your Classy account while also implementing GA4. It is also worth considering if you would like to customize the way that events and/or transactions flow from Classy into GA4, as you will have control over parameters and variables.

Follow our guide for step-by-step instructions on how to use GTM to install GA4.

When to Get Started With GA4

Google will be sunsetting Universal Analytics by July 1, 2023. You technically have until then to implement Google Analytics 4, but you shouldn’t wait. You don’t want to begin at square zero come July 2023. In order to have at least a year’s worth of data to compare back to, we recommend implementing GA4 for your organization by July of 2022.

For more information on GA4, check out our webinar, How to Unlock Better Reporting Using Google Analytics 4 and Classy.

This post was written by Classy’s partner Media Cause. Media Cause is a mission-driven marketing and creative agency that helps nonprofits grow and accelerate their impact. We take a people-first approach to developing powerful creative, scalable growth strategies, and targeted communications that connect with individuals across their entire supporter journey: from awareness and recruitment to fundraising and advocacy, and every touchpoint in-between.

In fact, this platform switch presents a perfect opportunity to re-engage this critical group of donors and even acquire greater levels of support.

Below, we discuss how you can make this migration as streamlined as possible, seize this opportunity to reconnect with your recurring donors, and create a targeted outreach plan that inspires supporters to recommit to your cause. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

3 Simple Steps to Migrate Your Recurring Donors

Many nonprofits are quick to feel intimidated by the idea of a recurring donor migration and what it might encompass, but the process is not as complicated as it seems.

There are three clear-cut steps for your organization:

Step 1: Email your recurring donors and ask them to set up recurring donations (according to the frequency option they desire) on your new Classy campaign.

Step 2: Cancel these donors’ old recurring gifts in your previous platform.

Step 3: Call any recurring donors who have not yet set up new donations on your Classy campaign, and ask them to make donations over the phone. Your staff can manually enter in these new donations and cancel those in the former platform.

The great news is that this process is not only simple, but it also has the potential to transform into a major donor stewardship event.

Pro Tip: Classy makes it seamless to migrate donors from your existing platform. Learn about these migration opportunities and more.

A Stewardship Opportunity You Can’t Miss

The recurring donor migration process can become a unique opportunity for your team to personally re-engage this vitally important cohort of supporters.

Each targeted email or phone call creates the opportunity for a meaningful touchpoint that reconnects your recurring donors with their impact on your mission. The direct calls, especially, are moments to remind them of the real people behind your brand and share person-to-person interactions that can deepen those connections.

Use these messages to call to mind:

• The milestones your donors have helped you reach so far
• How their ongoing support will impact your programs moving forward
• Any upcoming initiatives their donations will directly support
• The people and personalities behind your mission
• How upgrading their gift can make an even greater difference on the lives of those you serve

You can also explain to donors how this transition to Classy will give them even greater flexibility and control over their own recurring subscriptions. On Classy, they’re able to customize their payment frequency, the dates they’re charged, their payment method, and even the end dates for their gift plans. Let your donors know how your organization deeply considered their needs and wants when deciding your platform transition.

Overall, understanding that this is a stewardship opportunity beckons another layer of strategy. Get smart with your messaging by segmenting your outreach.

Segment Your Outreach

An intentional, segmented outreach plan will ensure customized messaging that creates a positive experience for your donors. Whether you organize supporters by their credit card expiration dates, or the size or frequency of their donations, consider how each touchpoint can serve as a piece within a larger, personalized narrative versus a one-off administrative message.

Here are three ways you might segment your recurring donors.

Group 1: Recurring Donors Set to Expire in the Next 30 to 60 Days

Email this group of recurring donors and let them know that their card is about to expire. Ask them to start a new donation with their most up-to-date information through your brand new campaign or recurring giving donation page on Classy.

This message is also an opportunity to upgrade donors’ gift sizes. Thank them for their continued support and ask if they might consider increasing their donation by a certain amount. Be sure to demonstrate what that additional support would mean to your organization in terms of impact.

You can also use this outreach as an opportunity to be transparent and further develop your brand’s voice. Consider communicating to your donors why you’re updating your recurring giving program, what you need from them to help it succeed, and outline the benefits both your supporters and beneficiaries will receive from the change.

Group 2: Your Recurring Donor All-Stars

While their credit cards might not be set to expire anytime soon, the next group to consider could be your “all-stars.” To assess which recurring donors you have the strongest relationships with, segment your list by the length of your relationship, donation amount, or by how often they open your messages.

If you decide to sort your donors by length of relationship, consider referring to them as your “founding members” to make them feel like they’re part of an exclusive group. Let them know you’re revamping your recurring giving program, and you’re reaching out to personally invite them over. Thank them for their longtime support and walk them through setting up a gift on your new Classy campaign.

This could also be an opportunity to introduce any new perks for your recurring donors. Consider what else you could provide to help strengthen their connection to your team. Exclusive content? Specific impact updates? Branded swag? Position the transfer and relaunch as a way of saying thanks and offering new benefits to increase the chance donors will engage.

Group 3: Recurring Donors You Don’t Know as Well

After you’ve reached out to your all-stars, it’s time to reach out to your recurring donors with whom you don’t have quite as much history, or as strong of a relationship.

Introduce your new recurring giving campaign and acknowledge the work your supporters helped make possible thus far. As with the previous groups, let them know how your new program is an improvement and how it offers them even more flexibility with their payment methods, frequencies, and overall subscription plans.

Communicate how you’d like to take this opportunity to learn more about them. In addition to making a donation on your Classy campaign, perhaps you can ask them a survey question or two to help you better understand how you can serve them as valuable members of your community.

Ready to Migrate Your Recurring Donors to Classy?

Migrating your recurring donors to Classy can be a seamless process. Just as importantly, it offers you the chance to personally connect with your supporters and rejuvenate their passion for your mission.

Let them know how your recent change in platform will also improve the flexibility and control your recurring donors have over their own giving. Strategic planning and communication can turn this necessary transition into a stewardship opportunity that yields even greater, long-lasting rewards for your organization.

Warn to learn more about how you can not only transfer, but ultimately up-level your recurring giving campaign? Talk to a Classy expert today.

The donation page experiences that lead to deeper donor trust and more completed transactions are the ones that feel consistent with all other campaign pages a donor may engage with from a particular nonprofit organization. To achieve consistency across your nonprofit campaigns, unite your nonprofit website and main donation button with the software powering your events, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer fundraising efforts.

The Power of Your Donation Page

Your donation page is likely a year-round source of revenue for those looking to take action outside of specific campaign periods. In 2021, we saw how important an online donation page is to acquiring and retaining recurring donations.

Here’s what The State of Modern Philanthropy 2022 revealed:

• Donation pages bring in the most recurring revenue on average compared to all other campaign types, at $15,534 per campaign and a median of $707
• When a donor made a second donation to any campaign in 2021, either to the same organization or a new one, 60% did so through a donation page

8 Tips to Elevate Your Donate Page Design

Frequently, an organization’s donation page is its own worst enemy in getting site visitors to complete their gifts. There are a few essential donation page best practices that, if followed, make it pretty straightforward to entice donations from both one-time and recurring donors.

Here, we’ll cover eight great donation page examples with easy-to-implement donation page best practices that you can test out right after reading this post.

Donation Page Best Practice #1: Keep It Short

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your donation page can feel overwhelming. Share enough information to motivate supporters to donate without inundating them with too much information.

You’ll also want to think about the number of fields you ask someone to fill out. Are they all necessary? If not, consider cutting back to make the process simpler.

Ask questions that help strengthen your relationship with each donor. We see a creative example of this from the Blocking Hunger Foundation. This nonprofit tracks each donor’s birthday for future engagement opportunities.

Limit the amount of copy, images, media, and links on your donation page to only what’s necessary. If you have a lot to say and show, organize content logically to make it easier for readers to follow.

Blocking Hunger Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #2: Write a Great Headline

Your donation page should have an attention-grabbing headline that reminds donors of why they were compelled to give in the first place. Lean on action-oriented words to communicate the importance of donating to your organization at that moment, with an amount that will be truly impactful.

When you present potential donors with a clear value proposition, they’ll be more likely to follow through.

If your donation page visitor reads nothing else on the page but the headline, ask yourself:

• Would that individual still be motivated to donate?
• Would they understand precisely how important that donation is to your organization?
• Would they feel that their gift is critical right now?

Many Hopes Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #3: Add Recurring Gift Options

There’s a difference between adding a recurring gift button to your donation page and building a recurring giving experience. Encourage supporters to explore the possibility of expanding their impact through regularly scheduled donations on the campaign type that brings in the most recurring revenue on average.

They could choose to donate on a  monthly, weekly, daily, annually, quarterly, bi-weekly, or semi-annual basis to best align with their own preferences.

When you put the power in your donors’ hands, you’re more likely to get someone to opt into your recurring gift program.

From there, add a suggested donation amount for each frequency. Below are the average gift amounts we saw when analyzing over 12 million donations in The State of Modern Philanthropy 2022.

• Average monthly recurring donation amount: $31
• Average quarterly recurring donation amount: $73
• Average semi-annual recurring donation amount: $82
• Average yearly recurring donation amount: $100

Days for Girls Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #4: Customize the Text on Your Call to Action Button

You might be surprised to learn how much the text on a button can affect click-through and conversion rates, ultimately determining your donation potential.

A call to action should draw people in with total clarity on what to do next. In most cases, you likely want your donation page visitors to complete your online donation form. You may also feature buttons on your page to sign up for a newsletter or follow you on social media.

The key is to narrow in on the essential task: donating. Use language that emphasizes the ease of your donation process, like “you’re just one click away,” or “our toolkit will provide you with everything you need to succeed.”

Try experimenting with different button text to see what resonates. For example, instead of “submit,” try:

• Donate Now

• Make a Difference

• Send Your Gift

• Stand Up for Children

• Save the Environment

Forever Green Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #5: Add a Compelling Visual Aid

Humans are visual creatures. If your donation page doesn’t already include a visual element, add one to show potential donors why they should support you and how their gift will impact your mission.

Your nonprofit donation page should serve as a natural extension of your website. The simplest place to start is by weaving your existing brand elements into your donation page. Carry over your organization’s distinctive logo, colors, font, imagery, and overall style to maintain your aesthetic.

Ask your fundraising software provider about enabling domain masking and plugging in photos or video that bring your brand to life. StacheStrong did this in a way that invites new donors into their story, then asks them to contribute to it.

StacheStrong Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #6: Prioritize Your Mobile Experience

Donation pages received 56% of traffic from mobile devices in 2021. The more organizations adopt, optimize, and promote their donation pages as accessible on any device, the more we expect that number to rise.

Knowing the potential impact of engaging and converting millennial donors, it is especially crucial to adapt to shorter attention spans and simple experiences.  Offering the most robust fundraising software that is automatically mobile-optimized is a great first step.

It’s always a good idea to test your donation page experience on various devices to ensure every visual, text box, and button works without a hitch.

Arkansas Children’s Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #7: Make It Simple to Pay

There’s nothing worse than an abandoned cart. Still, it’s the reality for brands and nonprofits alike as consumers have more expectations around a seamless checkout. Remove friction from the payment process by offering your donors multiple ways to give through ACH bank transfers, digital wallets, PayPal, Venmo, and cryptocurrency.

Each payment method has its unique value, so including all of them on your donation form brings you the most benefit. Quickly remove barriers at checkout and include several ways to pay with a four-step, fully-branded donation pop-up modal.

Modern payment options built for mobile experiences will shape conversion potential in the years to come. Our research shows that one-time donations made through PayPal were 30% higher than credit card donations for organizations who activated it during the giving season, and conversion lifted by four points on average. Classy recently launched Crypto Giving, and we can’t wait to see its impact on the most significant months of giving this year.

Saprea Donation Page Example, Powered by Classy

Donation Page Best Practice #8: Use a Multi-Channel Marketing Approach

Once you’ve put the time and effort into optimizing your donation page, make sure to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. We found that users navigating directly to fundraising campaign pages was the top driver of traffic in 2021, followed by organic social media sharing.

The more times you can get your donation page in front of your audience, the better. Understand the power of word-of-mouth marketing and influencer trends rising on social platforms to bolster your efforts and deepen people’s connection to your cause.

Consider providing the same concise language you use for your donation page to your loyal supporters or social communities to share with their networks. Each touchpoint can leave an imprint on your community and, over time, eventually move them from consideration to action.

Leverage Your Donation Page to Attract, Convert, and Retain More Donors

It’s time to make your donation site a fundraising powerhouse. You may just be a few steps away from creating a long-term donation revenue machine that runs right alongside your timely and seasonal efforts.

Find out how to optimize more of your campaigns with Classy platform data collected across 54,000 active campaigns in The State of Modern Philanthropy 2022.

The world of cryptocurrency donations is quickly evolving. With Crypto Giving built into the Classy platform, nonprofits can confidently capitalize on another innovative payment technology to attract new donors and drive meaningful impact. 

Top 3 Reasons to Accept Crypto Donations at Your Nonprofit

In 2021, the value of the crypto market soared from $965 billion to as much as $2.6 trillion. Now sitting around $2.1 trillion, it’s clear that the digital currency is here to stay. 

Despite the market’s recent volatility, cryptocurrency offers an incredible opportunity for nonprofits to reach a new group of philanthropists who can help propel the sector forward. 

Knowing that crypto has solidified itself as an important part of our economy, here are three reasons why your nonprofit should consider adding the digital currency to your list of flexible giving options.

1. Donors Want Options

The data from our 2021 Why America Gives report proved that flexible payment options are non-negotiable for many of today’s donors. In fact, the option of multiple payment options was one of the top factors donors say lead to an excellent donor experience. 

It’s also important to note that donors give more when they have choices. Our findings from The State of Modern Philanthropy 2022 report proved that nonprofits using modern payment options on Classy see larger gift sizes on average than those that don’t. Specifically, the average one-time donation was nearly 1.5X more when nonprofits offered ACH, PayPal, and digital wallet payments. 

2. Crypto Presents a Win-Win for Donors and Nonprofits Alike

An estimated 295 million people worldwide now own cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin and Ethereum growing particularly quickly. Now is the opportune time to bring cryptocurrency into your donation experience to attract the millions of philanthropic investors looking for a place to give. 

The key to attracting this new donor audience is to first make them aware that they can donate cryptocurrency directly to the nonprofit of their choosing. Classy is the first to offer this functionality natively within its platform. We intend to make it just as easy to give and accept crypto donations as it is to give and reconcile donations made with PayPal or credit cards.

In addition, crypto donations present a unique win-win opportunity for both donors and nonprofits. Not only do crypto investors receive major tax incentives, but nonprofits receiving these donations avoid tax on the donated asset.  

From 2019 to 2020, crypto donations to donor-advised funds (DAFs) at Fidelity Charitable more than doubled from $13 million to $28 million. The 2021 value of total cryptocurrency donations is over $300 million, and that number is only expected to grow. 

3. Millennial Investors are Hungry to Give

Cryptocurrency donations offer the unique opportunity to attract a younger and more diverse demographic that skews toward philanthropic giving. In fact, young people are 4X more likely to hold cryptocurrency than older generations.

Data shows over 35% of millennial investors own cryptocurrency, and those who don’t are likely to consider investing in it within the next year. Plus, nearly nine in ten Millennials say charitable giving is an important part of their lives. 

Data also shows that young crypto donors are more likely to be nonwhite. According to Pew Center Research, Asian (23%), Hispanic (21%), and Black (18%) adults are more likely than White adults to say they have ever invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency.

If nonprofits can do their part in marrying Millennials’ interest in digital currency with their charitable values, donation potential will skyrocket. 

Make Crypto Easy With Classy

What Is Classy’s Crypto Giving? 

We’ve teamed up with Coinbase to offer nonprofits a seamless way to accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USD Coin on their Classy donation forms. 

How Does It Work? 

We want to make it just as easy to accept crypto donations as it is to accept and reconcile credit card or PayPal donations. That’s why Classy’s Crypto Giving is built directly into Classy Pay, which means that receipting, payout reporting, and reconciliation will happen directly in-product, similar to Stripe, PayPal, or Venmo. In addition to BTC, ETH, and USDC, we are now able to process BCH, LTC, DOGE, DAI, USDT, APE, and SHIB. 

The crypto donation option will live right on your Classy donation form, giving you the tools you need to acquire new crypto donors without the support of a third-party processor. Enjoy the freedom to turn it on and off at the campaign level, and simply toggle between crypto and flat donations. 

How Do I Ensure Compliance When Accepting Crypto Donations?

Through our partnership with Coinbase, you can receive transactions from both Coinbase and non-Coinbase wallets. However, Coinbase only ensures compliance of the transactions from Coinbase wallets.

If you accept transactions from non-Coinbase wallets, your organization is responsible for compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) standards set forth in the USA Patriot Act. That means if a transaction violates compliance, you’ll be responsible for any penalties or fines, which are typically issued by government agencies such as the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury.

If you do not want to be responsible for the compliance of donations from non-Coinbase wallets, please reach out to your Classy account contact directly and ask them to turn off support for non-Coinbase wallets.

How Do I Activate Crypto on My Donation Forms? 

If you’re already a Classy customer with Classy Pay activated, we’ve broken down the process for activating crypto here.  

For customers who haven’t activated Classy Pay yet, explore our support article for the step-by-step setup process. Once you complete this step, you’ll be ready to activate crypto. 

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about Classy’s online fundraising platform or booking a demo with our team, don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Let’s Make Crypto Mainstream for Nonprofit Fundraising

Crypto doesn’t need to be complicated. Tap into the growing pool of crypto holders by offering a place to donate their digital currency. With Classy, you can keep the backend process simple while attracting a new audience of donors to help reach your goals. 

When you think about fundraising events like the ice bucket challenge, 100-mile runs, or your CEO taking pies to the face at your office holiday party, do you wonder what motivates these individuals to go to such extreme lengths to show their support?

The Martyrdom Effect suggests that the prospect of pain and effort increases charitable giving. In today’s virtual and hybrid fundraising landscape, there are countless opportunities to apply and reinvent this concept in a way that excites both new and existing donors to strengthen their connection to your cause.

Tap into gamified fundraising technology to create more fun, inclusive experiences that bring out the competitive nature in your supporters. Below we’ll explore the concepts of activity tracking and fundraising gamification as they relate to your organization, and discover how Classy’s new integration with Kilter, the most inclusive activity-based engagement platform for good, can help reach wider audiences, boost engagement, and increase fundraising potential.

Re-Energize Your Community With Fundraising Diversification

Kilter platform data shows that campaigns with gamified fundraising opportunities raise 3X more than traditional online fundraising campaigns.

There are plenty of ways to gamify the online fundraising experience. Live stream fundraising on platforms like Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube Live is a great way to connect with a younger audience. Classy Live is another option for intimate virtual or hybrid events. The platform’s robust venue simplifies the attendee and admin experience with activity tracking, virtual breakout rooms, mobile bidding, merchandise sales, and more. 

Fundraising diversification is critical to sustaining long-term relationships with new and existing supporters and retaining the support of committed sponsors. Gamification offers a simple way for organizations to refresh their campaigns and re-energize their nonprofit communities. 

4 Ways to Leverage Activity Tracking at Your Nonprofit

When you think of activity tracking, your mind likely goes straight to running, walking, or biking. That’s definitely part of the equation, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here are four simple thought starters surrounding activity tracking to get your creative juices flowing. Determine which events make the most sense for your audience, and learn how to capitalize on each opportunity to fuel your mission. For more specific ideas, read 22 ideas for activity-based fundraising in 2022.

1. Marathon & Endurance Teams, Walk/Runs/Rides – This is really a no-brainer. If you have teams in marathons or triathlons, host your own walks/runs/rides, or have supporters doing their own races, you should always provide a way for this community to track their activity. Doing so will create the element of competition and give people a way to include their friends and family in their efforts. In addition, you will open up doors for more revenue through corporate sponsorships, gain the ability to send information directly to your supporters through push notifications, and ultimately acquire more donor data. 

Pro Tip

Consider participating in Kilter’s trademarked series of events called Miles For Meaning to access more opportunities to keep your endurance community engaged throughout the year.

2. All-Inclusive Activity-Tracking Events – Offering events where everyone can participate no matter their age, location, or how they like to “donate their hustle” is one of the best ways to engage and grow your community. Expand your view of activity tracking to include meditation, healthy meal prep, volunteering, reading, gardening, and so much more. Turn your supporters’ everyday health, wellness, or lifestyle activities into meaningful moments that drive impact.

3. Activity-Specific Events – Consider building an event with a community goal based on a particular activity your audience enjoys, like reading, playing pickleball, or packaging meals for your local food bank. Encourage your supporters to come together to collaborate, compete, and take fundraising potential to new heights. One example of this could be setting a community goal to log 250,000 reading minutes from June to August. As participants track their progress, the total reading minutes will display on an interactive leaderboard. For every 10 minutes logged, event sponsors are pledging $1 up to $100,000.

4. Corporate & Employee Engagement Events – You might be hearing from your corporate partners that they want more opportunities to engage their employees in their efforts to support you. This partnership is not only good for their bottom line, but also gives you the chance to collect more donor data and offer additional opportunities for people to give. Give them what they want by providing gamified online experiences that are inclusive for all employees and increase corporate giving potential. For example, one partner set up a one-week “Miles For Meals” challenge and donated $20 per mile their employees logged up to $10,000. They also incorporated company swag and merchandise to give away based on the miles logged by employees.

5 Must-Haves for Your Activity-Tracking Event

Now that you have some ideas, making it a truly gamified experience is the fun part. Here are five components to include in your next event to cultivate, engage, educate, and drive higher fundraising potential.

Leaderboards: Fundraiser leaderboards are the centerpiece of engagement that continually drive people back to the event page throughout the course of your campaign. Utilize leaderboards in your next competition for people to keep track of their own score or fundraising progress in comparison to others in your community. If you have team-based events, participants can easily keep tabs on their team score and fundraising totals versus all other groups pursuing that top spot. 

Real-Time Matching Donations: Your corporate sponsors and individual donors want to maximize the impact of their contributions. Allow your supporters to unlock real-time donation matching when they hit certain fundraising milestones or achieve particular activity goals. 

Incentives and Prizes: No matter which event type you choose, your supporters will always be motivated by cool stuff they can win. In addition to traditional fundraising incentives, bake in more ways for people to earn swag and win prizes based on their activities and where they stand on the leaderboard.

Push Notifications & In-App Content: Take advantage of customizable push notifications to send messages directly to your community. Share impact statements, educate your community on your mission, promote sponsor messages, and recognize all of the people putting in work.

Mobile Fundraising Experience: Simplify your gamified fundraising event with an activity-tracking experience that integrates with your current fundraising solution. The Kilter + Classy integration allows nonprofits to keep their fundraising experience on Classy while using Kilter to offer activity tracking events that engage larger audiences. Kilter’s mobile app makes it easier for fundraisers to share their Classy fundraising pages with their extended networks and keep tabs on their progress with the in-app leaderboards.

A current Classy customer shares why integrated activity-tracking experiences are critical to their goals:

Nonprofits using Kilter to incorporate activity-tracking events into their annual strategies have seen an 11X return on investment, 10-20% new supporters, and 3X higher fundraising per engaged participant using both the fundraising and activity-tracking tools.

Bring Your Integrated Activity-Tracking Event to Life on Classy

Take advantage of today’s turn-key tools and technology to create a simpler gamified fundraising experience. Leveraging these tools, like Classy’s integration with Kilter, will help you reach more people, bolster engagement, and diversify your revenue streams while simultaneously avoiding the headaches associated with costly and time-consuming event planning. 

Whether your nonprofit has a two-person team or a staff of 200 employees, every opportunity you take to improve your daily operations can make a difference in reaching your fundraising goals.

The first step toward efficiency is consolidating your fundraising technology. An integration between your customer relationship management (CRM) platform and online fundraising platform is a simple time-saving solution that can help you collect all of your donor data in one place.

Learn how Classy seamlessly integrates with Salesforce to power growth for nonprofits worldwide. Discover how HOPE Atlanta, Metro Atlanta’s most established agency committed to fighting homelessness and hunger, capitalized on this integration to optimize their data collection, and explore how your organization can do the same to maximize fundraising potential.

4 Ways a CRM Integration Can Boost Efficiency

1. Automatically Transfer Data Between Platforms

Forty-seven percent of nonprofits are challenged when it comes to capturing and managing accurate data on their constituents. It’s much more difficult to create an effective fundraising strategy or growth plan when you lack a firm grasp on your donor data.

Just as open, streamlined communication is critical to the success of your nonprofit team, adopting tools that communicate with one another in real-time is one of the most important components of data collection.

The Classy for Salesforce integration makes it possible to sync your online fundraising data, make informed decisions, and personalize your donor touchpoints with ease.

Cut down on time spent manually importing and exporting your data to make more room in your calendar for the work that matters most—accelerating progress on your mission. HOPE Atlanta did just that with the integration to create more time for donor stewardship.

2. Gain a 360-Degree View of Donor Activity

To effectively target and tailor your communications, you need to first understand how, when, and why your donors are engaging with your cause. Simplify this process with a CRM system that integrates with your fundraising platform to gain a comprehensive look at donor activity throughout all stages of the donor journey.

Nearly a third (31%) of nonprofits that used a CRM system for donor relationship management exceeded their goals, according to Salesforce.org’s 2020 Nonprofit Trends Report. Nurture relationships by identifying supporters who have decreased their involvement and develop engagement strategies to get them back on track. Keep tabs on major and long-term donors as well, as they can be the perfect candidates for a recurring giving appeal or future event sponsorship.

HOPE Atlanta’s donor retention rate steadily increased after adopting Classy for Salesforce. Their team was able to target donors before, during, and after campaigns with more personalized messages and motivation that felt relevant to each individual.

3. Eliminate the Risk of Error

Mistakes can happen when entering hundreds of data points manually. A CRM integration not only saves time but also increases accuracy. Gain hours back in your day and gather more clear-cut insights by opting for a technological solution to this tedious task.

4. Streamline Internal Communications

A CRM integration can help you keep tabs on which team members have been in contact with particular donors, the dates of their last touchpoints, and what was discussed so your team can avoid saturating donors’ inboxes or, worse yet, forgetting to reach out.

It’s critical, however, that you choose a CRM integration that your team can easily adopt and use without straining too much of your organizational resources. Seventy-six percent of nonprofits say a lack of resources to train employees challenges their adoption of new technology.

Classy for Salesforce is an intuitive, easy-to-use tool that simplifies the data collection process, so everyone on your team can learn quickly and contribute to your larger goals.

Centralize Your Data, Raise More for Your Mission

Classy for Salesforce enables you to cultivate lasting supporter relationships, identify new opportunities to boost revenue, retain support, and increase your impact.

Gain access to a near real-time data sync to better understand your donor base and engage with supporters in more personalized ways. Complete with a custom control panel that serves as the hub of your integration, Classy for Salesforce allows you to:

• Access an array of pre-loaded recommended reports and dashboards
• Sync historical Classy data over to Salesforce
• Connect directly to Nonprofit Success Pack or NGO Connect
• Monitor the health of data syncing to your instance
• Enable certain configurations like custom field-mapping or enhanced contact-matching

When you connect your platforms, you gain a holistic view of your audience. Improve your organizational efficiency, get more out of your fundraising efforts, and see the return on your hard work.

Whether you’re a new or existing Classy Live user, we’ve detailed how you can plan a fundraising event to remember. You might be looking to bring together a worldwide virtual audience or enhance your in-person event with technology. Either way, we’ve covered the next steps to make it a reality.

The State of Fundraising Events 2022

The past two years taught us that change is the only constant in fundraising events. We continue to see fluctuating trends, regulations, safety preferences, and donor behavior. Luckily, nonprofit event platforms are more nimble than ever. Leaning on the right technology can mean the difference between seeing a sub-par turnout and offering an accessible, remarkable event experience that keeps donors coming back. 

Fundraising events will continue to be a pathway to unlock generosity worldwide. Their evolution in the past couple of years, however, now demands the marriage of virtual and in-person attendee experiences. Thankfully, there are tools available for nonprofits to not only achieve this, but to capitalize on the endless opportunities to improve these experiences and thereby maximize fundraising results.    

Classy Live sets nonprofits up for success in whichever venue they host. We continue to see users gain back time and ease in the event planning and day-of experience. Our goal is to continue helping organizations like yours see that same value.

Host a Seamless 100% Virtual Event

Classy Live gives you a robust virtual event venue to engage attendees with a meaningful and connected experience. Let’s dive into how this technology can boost your virtual event experience.

Establish Your Event Ticketing and Registration Process

Get set up through a Classy-powered ticketed or registration with fundraising campaign where you can:

• Create your event branding and details
• Display a variety of ticket types (e.g. early bird, general admissions, VIP)
• Give supporters the ability to donate directly to your cause
• Enable promotional codes to drive registrations

All registrations will sync from Classy to Classy Live and its associated mobile app. Event admins can track registrations and personalize welcome emails. 

Include peer-to-peer fundraising as part of the registration process: Classy’s registration with fundraising event type makes it easy for attendees to create a personalized fundraising page. Registrants can even join a team to help you raise more funds leading up to and during your event. Individual and team fundraising leaderboards sync to Classy Live to keep the friendly competition going during your event. 

Build Your Classy Live Virtual Venue Experience 

Drive attendee engagement within your virtual venue to fuel more day-of-event transactions. 

Classy Live features that will set your virtual event apart

• Agenda: Add multiple sessions, highlight speakers, promote an auction, or drive specified networking periods for attendees.
• Breakout rooms: Host smaller, more intimate conversations about specific topics like program updates or a story share from a beneficiary, or gather teams to cheer each other on as they cross their virtual finish lines.
• Auction: Host a virtual silent auction, drive direct donations by displaying fund-a-need items, and even sell fixed-price items or merchandise to drive more fundraising revenue.
• Campaign progress bar: Enable the campaign progress bar to be ever-present during your virtual event to show the total amount your community has raised. 
• Sponsor recognition: Display your partners on your event page, recognize speaking sessions they’ve sponsored, and give them virtual booths where attendees can participate in digital Q&A directly with sponsors.
• Livestreaming: Classy Live has native livestreaming, or you can stream from your preferred technology, including Zoom, YouTube Live, StreamYard, and OBS, to easily broadcast your event content with your audience.
• Attendee profiles and speed networking: Get to know attendees better by prompting them to create a profile when they enter your virtual venue. Our AI-powered technology will pair them for a quick conversation with individuals with similar interests if they participate in speed networking, creating that desired connective experience.
• Event Content: Upload event resources and content like your annual report, a letter from someone you’ve helped, or instructions to participate that your attendees can access at any time. 

Enhance a 100% In-Person Event

Whether your events have always been in person, or you’re transitioning from virtual back to in-person, save time in your planning and processes with Classy Live. Simplify your registration, event management, and day-of experience, so both your staff and attendees can focus on the event instead of timely logistics. 

Bring Your Event Ticketing and Registration Process Online

Kick-off your event with a smooth online registration process: The overall value of your in-person event can skyrocket when you implement a virtual venue that makes the attendee experience feel modern. All of the functionality we walked through above for totally-virtual events is at your disposal, but below are some particular use cases to elevate your in-person event. 

Here are a few benefits of using Classy to power your registration process:

• Ticketing: Sell full tables or individual tickets through the same registration page for more significant events and galas 

• Fundraising commitments: Allow registrants to commit to specific fundraising amounts to participate in events, such as endurance challenges and races

Send personalized welcome emails right from the platform: Give your attendees all the information they need. Include details to help attendees prepare for the event and a QR code for simple check-in at the door. Prepare attendees with directions to download your mobile app through Google Pay or App store to fully experience the event’s features through their phone. Admins can use the Classy Live mobile app to check attendees in through their QR code, name, or email address at the event.

Build Your Classy Live In-Person Experience 

Bring the event to the palms of your attendees’ hands with the Classy Live mobile app.

Grant all registrants access to the app ahead of time, where they will be able to:

• Participate in auctions and bid on items conveniently 
• Purchase any merchandise or fixed-price items you’re promoting
• Have a constant view of what you’re broadcasting live
• Access event content such as resources, assets, and sponsor materials
• Communicate with other attendees and staff through chat

Streamline Your Event Logistics 

Get ahead of table and seating management: With Classy Live, you can visually represent your seating assignments ahead of your event. Easily assign table numbers, highlight sponsors or table captains, and drag-and-drop attendees to tables. Auto-seating allows event admins to fill the floor plan automatically and move guests around as needed. You can add merge tags to SMS and emails you send to attendees to share their table numbers.

Introduce simple event check-in and registration: With the Classy Live mobile app, event admins can quickly check attendees in at the door via first name, last name, email, or by scanning their QR code. If you get walk-up guests who haven’t yet registered, you can easily register them at the door. 

Inform guests with text and email communications: You can easily text event reminders and updates to attendees via text message or email with built-in communication tools. 

Create a digital display to showcase fundraising progress: Highlight specific auction items or text-to-donate progress on screen at the in-person event. Introduce live thermometers to showcase overall donation activity to encourage more direct donations.

Build More Opportunity for Donations 

Present auctions and mobile bidding: Upload all of your auction items (silent and live) to Classy Live to promote ahead of your physical event. During the event, attendees can:

• Bid on silent auction items through the event mobile app
• Receive automatic outbid notifications
• Continue to bid until your auction closes

If you’re hosting a live auction, you can easily add the winner’s information, trigger an email to check out, and quickly gather the winner’s payment information.

Host fund-a-need or paddle raises: Suppose you’re driving direct donations to a specific need during your event. In that case, you can utilize the fund-a-need item in Classy Live to promote that specific program or initiative and add preset donation amounts for attendees to commit to. On the day of the event, you can rapidly record bidder numbers of attendees who are committing individual donation amounts. This “quick add” mode allows you to easily track donation commitments and send automated emails to enable attendees to pay quickly. 

Use text-to-donate throughout the event: Gather instant donations at specific moments within the day’s agenda. Through Classy Live, you can create a keyword specific to your event and promote it through printed materials at your event. Attendees can text your keyword to the phone number provided to donate directly to your need or cause easily. These donations will appear in your fundraising total. 

Sell fixed-price items or merchandise: Now you can allow both in-person attendees and those who couldn’t make it to purchase event swag. Add fixed-price items that attendees can access via the event app. 

Host an In-Person Event That Welcomes Virtual Attendees

Many nonprofits won’t want to choose between their virtual or in-person attendees. Luckily, hybrid event models are becoming more of a norm in 2022 and beyond. Classy Live makes it easy to establish connected experiences for in-person and virtual attendees. 

Use your preferred mix of features and functionality from in-person and virtual experiences to establish your unique hybrid event model.

Some of the specific ways nonprofits use Classy Live for their hybrid event experiences include:

• The Classy Live mobile app enables in-person attendees to be able to communicate and engage with virtual attendees through chat and networking
• Enabling breakout rooms allows virtual attendees to participate in their virtual tables and still engage with other attendees 
• Enable virtual attendees to bid on silent auction items, purchase fixed-price items, and promote a virtual fund-a-need initiative
• Livestream portions of your physical event like an opening ceremony or a live performance to share in real-time with virtual attendees who can experience it all from home

Try Out Your Event on Classy Live

Your nonprofit event idea deserves the best chance of being a hit. We’re here to help you accomplish that. Make it engaging and accessible for any passionate supporter who wants to attend, and make your life easier in the process.

Explore how Classy Live can power your next event and fuel your long-term mission. 

A large-scale campaign with a broad reach to pull in the most support possible for your cause requires a lot of time and creativity. Turning that effort into a Campaign Template unlocks the potential to host more campaigns creating greater efficiency and more control than ever before. You’ve always been able to duplicate a campaign in Classy, but the launch of Campaign Templates will help scale your long-term fundraising strategy.

A campaign template gives you:

• The ability to create a foundation for multiple campaigns
• An option to lock branding and content that stays consistent across campaigns
• Complete transfer of campaign details between the template and child campaigns
• The ability to make small changes easily across multiple campaigns at once

Learn how to use Classy’s fundraising campaign templates to expand the possibilities of your fundraising efforts and make your day a whole lot easier.

How Classy’s Fundraising Templates Save You Time and Control

Nonprofits can now use our new Campaign Template feature. You can use a template to create a foundation for multiple campaigns with the same look and feel. For example, you might host an endurance event with a unique campaign for 40 participating cities. You can also easily create a template to set your campaign imagery, event content, custom questions, promo codes, email content, and branding.

Once your foundation is complete, you can publish your template so that each city can create child campaigns from that template. The child campaigns can then customize their unique event elements specific to their cities like location, date, time, fundraising goal, and more. You can also choose to lock branding, content, imagery, and more at the template level so that all associated campaigns are consistent.

The benefit of starting with a template is that you can perfect your campaign layout look and feel, and you have centralized control over any inevitable changes that need to be made across associated child campaigns. If you add a new custom question or update a sponsor, you can edit the Template and publish them across all 50 campaigns in just a few clicks.

Your nonprofit will gain back time and avoid updating campaigns individually for inevitable changes to a series to invest in other donation-driving priorities.

Use case: create consistent templates across chapters

Federated or chapter-based organizations can use a campaign template for their main donation form or annual peer-to-peer campaign as an efficient way to onboard new chapters. Share templates with a newly onboarded account to create their chapter’s campaign for complete brand consistency. You’ll be able to control exactly what can be edited at the chapter level based on your preferences.

How Fundraising Campaign Templates Scale Efficiency

Campaign Templates will help nonprofits create a foundation for fundraising efforts by providing them:

• Ease of use: Create a campaign template as the starting point for hundreds of campaigns without calling on Classy’s professional services
• More time and resources: Create a foundation for your multi-city events and large-scale campaigns, so you always have somewhere to begin
• Brand consistency: Lockdown campaign colors, imagery, content, and branding elements that you want to remain consistent across your events or campaigns
• Streamlined campaign edits: Add or edit your template and push changes like a new promo code or custom question to hundreds of campaigns in minutes, viewing updates in near real-time
• Collaboration across accounts: Share templates across your multi-chapter, foundation-based organization or develop a foundation for training and onboarding team members with a consistent campaign look and feel

Use case: Create an annual giving campaign template

Are Fundraising Campaign Templates Right for You?

Do you host run/walk/ride or events that span multiple locations and partners?

Use Classy ticketed, Registration with Fundraising events, or even peer-to-peer campaigns to manage a series of branded events in different locations. You may use identically-branded Registration with Fundraising campaigns that only require you to swap out the event location, dates, sponsor information, and local contact information. You could also use a template for your peer-to-peer campaigns, swapping out the headline and changing some text in the appeal section.

Do you work with multiple partners, corporations, or universities?

Set up peer-to-peer or crowdfunding campaigns for each partner, corporation or university to manage and ensure brand consistency. You have the freedom to create a Classy campaign for community partners, corporate sponsors, or individuals and families to leverage for any use case they need.

We’ve seen organizations create campaigns administered by families or individuals using pages already set up with primary branding and the ability to fill in the text and personalized photos in certain sections. In contrast, other campaigns remain locked for brand consistency. Some organizations provide campaign pages for community groups to fundraise on their behalf or partner with universities to host a large-scale event series.

Do you host a campaign series?

Create pages to control elements of your campaigns if you’re already using many Classy donation pages for appeals across email, social media, or digital ads. We’ve seen organizations create new donation pages as various calls to action (CTAs) in emails, videos, and web ads. Typically, these donation pages have a consistent header and background image.

Is your team part of a chaptered organization or foundation?

Maintain consistency and brand control across multiple accounts. Templating can be used to create an annual peer-to-peer campaign, walk series, and donation form(s). Some organizations use this when new chapters are onboarded to Classy so they can create their campaigns off of the template, avoiding the need to look back at style guides for branding and content consistency.

5 Pro Tips to Create Your Campaign Template in Classy

1. Build It: In Classy, there is a new “Templates” tab that lives in the side navigation bar where you can create a template based on an existing campaign. The “Pages” and “Email” sections will be carried over from the campaign you select, including all copy and design. Once you publish your template, you can create campaigns off of it right away.
2. Organize It: All campaigns you create based on a particular template will be accessible from a “Campaigns From Template” tab to see them together easily. From there, you can make changes to your template and see exactly which campaign will reflect the edits. You can also just as easily detach campaigns from a template.
3. Measure It: You’ll be able to see the transaction volume of each campaign associated with particular templates in one place, so you can determine which ones to continue replicating for future campaigns and which ones you should tweak to make more effective. Identify which fundraisers in a peer-to-peer campaign move toward their goals and which aren’t. You can target outreach to these slow-moving fundraisers as a result. You can also use a template to A/B test specific elements of your donation page. Look at everything from your appeal language to your CTA while keeping other campaign elements consistent. When you create multiple versions of the same donation page, you can easily see which variations lead to the most donations. You’ll be able to more clearly pinpoint what resonates with your unique donor base as a result.
4. Lock It: You have full control over what you choose to lock in your template such as content and branding. All associated child campaigns will not have the ability to edit fields that are locked at the Template level which gives you complete control over your brand.
5. Share It: Templates can be shared across connected accounts in Classy through a “Share Settings” tab to save time among various chaptered organizations or among teams who run similar campaigns. This gives everyone involved the benefits of measuring campaigns against common benchmarks and easily tweaking for success.

Put Fundraising Campaign Templates to Work

Learn more about templates on Classy in our support article. Dedicate the time to create your campaign templates now to save hours of campaign building in the future. That, in turn, will free you up to focus on other areas to drive more support for your mission.

Learn how to get access today.

In April 2021, we launched new recurring frequencies to give you and your donors more options to build and execute a powerful recurring giving strategy. Now, we’ve added even more recurring frequency options: daily, weekly, and bi-weekly. 

In addition, we’re excited to announce the launch of our new recurring end dates, which gives your donors the option to select an end date for their recurring plan directly from your donation page. You and your donors can also easily edit active recurring plans to include an end date, providing greater control and flexibility.

Below, we dive into a few ways you can leverage these new frequencies and recurring donation end dates to engage and convert donors.

Recurring Frequency Use Cases: Daily, Weekly, and Bi-Weekly

These new frequency options can inspire some creative campaign ideas to engage your recurring donors in new ways. A few use cases include:

• Awareness weeks or months: Suggest daily donations during an awareness week, or perhaps weekly donations during an entire awareness month.
• Religious tithing and holidays: Offer a digital tithing option with weekly recurring donations. Daily donations can create a unique experience for supporters during religious holidays like Ramadan.
• Supporter budgets and schedules: Supporters might be more able to give on a recurring basis when the frequency matches their pay schedule. Their pay periods could fall on the 15th or last day of the month, making a bi-weekly recurring frequency option useful.

These are just a few examples. With additional recurring frequencies, your organization now has even more creative freedom to ideate and execute campaigns, calls to action, and programs that stand out and boost supporter engagement in new ways.

Pair these flexible frequencies with Classy’s new recurring end dates feature to continue cutting through the noise by providing donors with a greater sense of autonomy over their commitment to your cause.

How End Dates Improve Recurring Donor Retention

Donors faced with the option to make an ongoing gift ultimately want to be able to control and manage their donation, including how long they want their recurring plan to run. They might be able to commit for only a specific length of time, or their willingness and financial ability could leave it more open-ended.

Giving your supporters the ultimate control over their recurring donation, including the ability to set its end date, can build more trust among your donor base. This improved trust can, in turn, translate into improved retention. The more your donors trust your nonprofit and feel that you’re prioritizing their giving experience, the more likely they’ll be to sign up, promote your cause, and even take additional action again in the future.

This feature also saves your staff time and effort in the long run. While conventional wisdom may tell you to not offer end dates on recurring plans to extend the life of each plan, the reality is that many donors will end up wanting to cancel at some point. Servicing all of these requests can create an organizational burden for your nonprofit, as well as ultimately lead to an unpleasant giving experience.

Allowing your donors to manage their own plans—like they’re accustomed to doing with the rest of their online subscriptions—puts them in the driver’s seat. That empowerment goes a long way towards building trust while also eliminating the administrative burden of servicing these requests.

Valuable Use Cases for Recurring End Dates

This feature also offers your organization more customization to execute specific campaign types where an end date can be important.

Some examples include:

• Religious events: As noted above, end dates can be particularly valuable for religious observances, like Ramadan or Hanukkah, that involve a finite, highly concentrated period of giving throughout your community.
• Seasonally-based campaigns: An end date is valuable for campaigns that run for specific lengths of time. For instance, if your organization focuses on education, you can run a fundraising campaign that asks donors to equip teachers in the classroom for the duration of a school year. Simultaneously, parents could start personal fundraising pages that ask friends and family to give a monthly donation to support their child over the course of the school year, or until they graduate.
• Sports or team leagues: The same concept applies to sports leagues. Your organization could ask for recurring donations to support a particular team or a specific season. Parents could also start fundraising campaigns on their child’s behalf, or on the behalf of coaches, and solicit recurring donations from their networks for the duration of the season. Recurring donations could also go toward a specific fund, like a team’s annual travel budget.
• Funding a particular project: If your organization is building a school, monument, or any other project over a length of time, consider requesting recurring gifts to support that build until its projected completion date.

With Classy, recurring donors have total control over their gift plan. They’re able to customize their payment frequency, the dates they’re charged, their payment method, and now the end dates for their recurring subscriptions.

We’re cooking up even more features to optimize the giving experience for your recurring donors, which we’re excited to announce in the coming months. When you give this flexibility and control to your donors, you can improve your overall recurring retention rates and set your organization up for scale.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Classy made its first acquisition in our 10-year history. Classy has acquired Fondi, a next-generation virtual and hybrid event platform. For current and future Classy customers, that means access to a robust solution that supports donor engagement, promotes fundraising, and enables admins to run their events with ease.

We promised to invest in customer-forward product development after closing on our recent Series D funding round. That included not only internally built products, but also an acquisition strategy to round out our product suite to add immediate value for our nonprofit community. We chose to focus on virtual events as our first acquisition for this exact reason—the instant and significant benefit it would provide.

The pandemic caused fundraising teams large and small to rethink their event strategies, recognizing events overall as a critical source of revenue and relationship building. Virtual and hybrid event models opened the door to broader participation on a global scale, enhancing visibility and improving accessibility to worthy causes around the world.

Events run with a virtual or hybrid component have only gained sophistication and creativity with time. With this acquisition, our customers and their donors will have the technology to elevate their virtual events, or incorporate a virtual element into their event through auctions and mobile bidding, networking and breakout rooms, and a mobile app that we’ll be looking to release soon.

Fondi is relaunching as Classy Live, providing the Classy community with an innovative and elegant platform to host virtual events and engage attendees both in-person and digitally. This may be our first acquisition, but it’s just the start of what we hope to accomplish for our nonprofit customers.

Our passion for making a difference in the social sector spans a decade, and we remain motivated by working toward connecting more people to causes they care about. This announcement reflects our commitment to making it easy and fulfilling for nonprofits to engage supporters when and how it matters to accelerate the good in this world.

Christopher Himes, Classy CEO

Meet Josh Parolin, Classy’s New Vice President of Engineering 

Classy CEO Christopher Himes sat down with Josh Parolin, former Fondi co-founder and CTO. As Classy’s new VP of Engineering focusing on the Classy Live platform, Josh shares how Classy Live will help change the virtual and hybrid events landscape.

Himes: Josh, tell us more about your career path and the experience that you’re bringing to your role as Classy’s new VP of Engineering.

Parolin: I built my career in both the nonprofit and SaaS worlds, so coming to Classy feels like a natural next step.

I’m passionate about solving problems through technology, and it’s really product innovation that helped me grow in my previous roles as Web Director at Invisible Children, Software Engineer at Zendesk, and Senior Software Engineer at Eat Just.

Most recently, I’ve spent seven years as the Chief Technology Officer at LENND, leading their technology and product efforts. In that time, I’ve brought events of every size to life, which include the 2021 Presidential Inauguration, PGA Championship, and Outside Lands Music Festival.

Much like Classy, we wanted to provide nonprofits with great technology to further their missions. It was the catalyst for creating Fondi, an events platform explicitly geared towards fundraising to virtually engage and connect with donors.

I’m joining the Classy team with a passion for strategically addressing new technology opportunities that advance our giving platform in the direction of our innovative nonprofit customers. I’m ready to deliver tools that create an effortless event experience for attendees and the fundraising professionals hosting them.

When I picture success, I picture more people forming relationships with causes that help them make a difference in the ways they feel called to do so.

Himes: When I first saw the technology, I was super excited. Classy had evaluated other tools beyond what we have internally built in order to support our customers, but we immediately knew that this was the perfect fit when we saw it. Tell us more about the unique value Classy Live will bring our customers. 

Parolin: Classy Live is the next wave of giving experience enhancements that keep fundraising relevant, engaging, intuitive, and flexible for supporters who are ready and eager to do more good.

By aligning our intelligent fundraising approach with the sector’s virtual and hybrid event needs, Classy will make fundraisers more effective in engaging their supporters and forming relevant connections that last.

Nonprofits will manage their events with a complete solution, inclusive of the essential details that bring experiences to life on the day of an event. Classy’s ticketing and fundraising technology coupled with Classy Live’s day-of event platform make it possible (and simple) to engage attendees through a variety of practical tools.

Nonprofits can use Classy Live’s native live streaming tools to host professionally branded experiences with live chat, or connect their stream from Zoom, YouTube, or Vimeo. Speakers even have a backstage area to virtually connect and practice before going live.

Our auction and mobile bidding capabilities allow nonprofits to host silent auctions during their events, creating more revenue opportunities. Classy Live also makes it possible to sell merchandise and fixed-price items.

Nonprofits can use Classy Live’s breakout rooms to keep attendees engaged and connected with each other. Host virtual tables, or organize fundraising teams to cheer each other along as they cross their virtual finish lines. Fundraising activity and progress syncs directly into Classy Live, keeping attendees motivated to hit the overarching campaign goal.

Not only will Classy Live provide an engaging virtual experience for event attendees, but with built-in email and texting capabilities, chat, and polling features, nonprofits have multiple ways to keep their attendees connected to their event.

Gain insight into your donor base with Classy Live’s dashboards and engagement data to discover what’s resonating most with your audience. Acquire the knowledge to confidently back up your strategy, steward valuable relationships, and retain loyal donors.

Himes: What is the long-term vision for Classy Live?

Parolin: Today, the Classy Live offering enables nonprofits to sell tickets to their events and encourage fundraising through individual and team fundraising pages. Fundraising progress pulls into the Classy Live platform to show:

• Live leaderboards
• Donation notifications
• Campaign progress bar
• Donations during the live event

The Classy Live platform gives nonprofits the ability to create a customized virtual event venue. It’s simple to build a custom agenda, add live streamed content, chat with attendees, conduct polls, host breakout rooms, run silent auctions, and offer mobile bidding.

Additional product capabilities like an event mobile app, text-to-give technology, and live auctions are already on the roadmap to launch in the coming months. We’ve also got our eye on more Classy Live tools for fundraisers in the future.

Nonprofits won’t be limited to hosting live events on Classy Live. We see them using this technology to cultivate new donors through webinars with specific program updates, virtual member meetups, virtual patient support groups, and more. We’re excited to keep exploring the use cases to connect supporters virtually with organizations they care about.

The possibilities are as endless as the creativity of our nonprofit customers.

Explore Classy Live

Break down geographical boundaries and provide an engaging event experience that raises more for your cause with Classy Live.

Classy’s ticketing and fundraising technology coupled with Classy Live’s day-of event platform gives organizations the ability to boost fundraising activity and manage events with ease.

Check it out today and learn how Classy’s first acquisition can help advance your nonprofit mission.

That’s because nonprofits have risen to the occasion amongst a global pandemic, humanitarian injustices, environmental disasters, and economic distress.

For many of us, the first question we ask when we hear about someone or something in trouble is, how can I help? The answer is often donating to nonprofits who are responding to the crisis at hand. When we feel helpless, nonprofits make us feel like we can make a difference. 

Classy’s mission is to mobilize and empower the world for good. We promise to connect people with the causes they care about through engaging and intuitive giving experiences and to help nonprofits be more relevant to supporters over time by providing technology and insights.

As nonprofits step up, we must too. 

To us, the answer is not only building world-class fundraising technology that allows nonprofits to raise more but also holding ourselves accountable for doing good in the world. As a Certified B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation, Classy considers the virtuous relationship between the customers who use our technology, the employees who help build and service it, the community and environment in which we exist, and the financial partners who make it all possible.  

The Stakeholder Model

The premise of the stakeholder model is to equally balance the needs of each stakeholder and never at the expense of another. It complements the Public Benefit Corporation status in that voting board members must consider the impact any decisions made would have on all stakeholders. 

As you’ll see in the report, Classy’s stakeholder model was challenged this past year. As the world shifted, priorities were pulled in every direction. 

We wanted to meet our employees’ health and wellness needs in a remote environment for our staff. For our customers, we wanted to build reliable technology for nonprofits on the frontlines of COVID-19, for social justice organizations responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, and to provide extra strategic fundraising support to the nonprofits who had important missions but weren’t in the news.  

About the Report

The Impact Report is organized by Classy stakeholders. The data dives into our measured impact of the last three-quarters of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. The Impact Report methodology is proprietary to Classy. Still, it is inspired by the B Corp Assessment, the industry-leading certification for businesses committed to a better world. 

Since this year also marks Classy’s 10-year anniversary as a software company, we recognize this milestone throughout the report by telling the stories and celebrating the work of our incredible nonprofit customers who stood beside us throughout the years. 

Some standout statistics from our Impact Report include: 

• Nonprofits using Classy’s platform saw an average checkout conversion rate of 23%
• 68.8% of Classy customers grew their recurring donation volume in the past year
• Overall, Classy customers experienced a 314% increase in recurring giving subscriptions initiated
• 73% of Classy’s staff have been granted stock, stock options, or stock equivalents
• 55% of Classy staff connect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts to their intent to continue working at Classy

Thank you for participating in our first Impact Report and supporting our community. We believe in the power of transparency and partnership, and invite you to ask questions, challenge us, and converse with us in our collective drive to build a better world.

The Best in Classy recognizes fundraising excellence within the Classy nonprofit community. We’re thrilled to showcase 50 organizations that took the flexibility and supporter-centric nature of our fundraising platform to launch campaigns that activated their donors when and how they needed.

Our interactive, easy-to-navigate Best in Classy site invites you to see exactly which organizations and particular campaigns lead the way in checkout page conversion, donor retention, annual donation volume growth, donor experience, and robust campaign portfolios.

So dive in! Explore tangible campaign examples and the results they’ve produced, and discover streamlined channels to network with our top 50 organizations further. Filter your search by cause sector, employee count, or location to discover nonprofits you can learn from to sharpen your skills and elevate your fundraising strategy.

Join us in Celebrating the Best in Classy Fundraisers

Get to know the fundraisers who doubled down on their strategies to engage, convert, and retain support, and have since continued inspiring others with their innovative ideas.

The Best in Classy celebrates leaders in the following five categories:

Most Streamlined Donation Process

These organizations offer streamlined giving processes that allow more donors to access, navigate, and donate to their campaigns. As a result, they have the highest checkout conversion rates, defined as the percent of visitors who land on a donation page or initiate the event checkout process and complete a donation or ticket purchase.

Meet Our Leading Organization:

University of Nebraska Foundation leads the group with a 69% donation page checkout conversion rate. Their use of visual storytelling, a clear goal, and an easy path to take action unites their community around their compelling campaigns on Classy.

Most Loyal Supporters

These organizations have the most loyal donors, bringing in a dedicated supporter base that makes their mission possible through frequent interactions, recurring donations, and one-time gifts. They see the highest donor retention rates on the Classy platform, measured by dividing the sum of recurring and repeat donors by their total number of donors.

Meet Our Leading Organization:

We celebrate Tunnel to Towers as our top organization in this category, achieving an 88% donor retention rate. Their inspiring peer-to-peer campaigns built on Classy ignite donor passion and empower their supporters to repeatedly give in meaningful ways.

Most Options to Give

These organizations offer supporters the most ways to give, getting strategic about differentiated campaigns held each year to support their mission. Campaigns include everything from peer-to-peer fundraising and crowdfunding, to virtual events and recurring giving programs. By diversifying their revenue streams, these organizations can fuel their fundraising goals on Classy to sustain their impact.

Meet Our Leading Organization:

We celebrate Baptist Health Foundation Jacksonville as our top organization in this category, offering their donors and supporters various ways to get involved through Peer-to-peer fundraising, online ticketed events, crowdfunding campaigns, and a straightforward donate button on their website through the Classy platform.

Highest Annual Growth

These organizations have seen the highest annual donation growth on the Classy platform between 2019 and 2020, thanks to the incredible response from their donors and optimization of Classy’s tools.

Meet Our Leading Organization:

We have Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support leading the way in this category. They’ve seen the largest leap in annual donation volume with thoughtful giving experiences that connect their cause with more donors and steward them to continue their impact as loyal supporters.

Best Donor Experience

These organizations have the best donor experience, fueled by their dedication to provide supporters with the simplest and most fulfilling path to give. The Classy data team created a proprietary formula that assesses campaigns using factors we know lead to a positive donor experience, used alongside the insight of our internal experts to select those leading the way.

Meet Our Leading Organization:

Operation Broken Silence’s The Heart of Nuba campaign is an incredible example of the Classy giving experience, earning themselves a spot at the top of our list. When asked how they’ve created such a seamless donor experience, their team shared that “Classy’s customizable campaigns and donation pages are a beautiful backdrop for the Sudanese stories we share, which in turn propels donors to do more.”

Will You Join the Next Generation of Best in Classy?

Our dedicated Best in Classy site shows how each featured organization paired its unique cause and mission with Classy’s fundraising tools to deliver an experience that attracts, nurtures, and retains loyal donors.

If you’re not using Classy to run your fundraising website or campaigns today, the 50 campaign examples on our site can show you what it looks like in action for an organization like yours.

If you’re a member of the Classy community, learn more about how to boost your fundraising ROI in the coming year with our tailored lessons on Classy Academy and our latest research in Classy’s 2021 State of Modern Philanthropy Report.

You can use Classy’s templates to keep a finger on the pulse of the most important metrics for your organization, customize those templates to best serve your goals, or create your own custom reports from scratch.

In this post, we’ll cover some of the Classy report templates worth setting up as you get started with data analysis and common customizations for those reports. We’ll also highlight three custom reports in particular that you can use for inspiration.

Classy Report Templates to Track Important Metrics

If you’re not sure where to start with Classy reports, try a template. From your Classy account menu, select “General Reports” from your navigation menu and then “Recommended Reports.”

This will provide you with a list of different report templates that can help you begin to visualize your most important data. The Classy report templates include the following:

• Attendees: Use this report to see anyone who has attended an event for your organization.
• Upcoming Expiring Recurring Plans: Identify recurring plans with upcoming credit card expirations.
• Returning 1-Time Donors: These donors have donated multiple times to your organization and would be great candidates to convert to recurring donors.
• Failing Recurring Giving Plans: These recurring donations were not successful for any certain reason; reach out to the donors to remedy it.
• Recurring Plans Over 1 Year: Highlight active recurring donors that have been a year-long supporter.
• Inactive Top Donors: It has been a year since these top donors contributed to your cause; remind them of your mission.
• Inactive Top Fundraisers: These fundraisers haven’t had a donation within the last week; give them a word of encouragement and advice to help with their fundraising efforts.
• Recently Refunded Transactions: Streamline your finance processes by quickly identifying refunded donations and transactions.

Data Points to Customize in Classy Templates

You can also start with a Classy report template and then customize it to narrow in on specific data that interest you.

Some of the most common customizations nonprofits use include:

• Updating Date Ranges: You can easily update the date ranges for your reports to review data for whichever time frame is of interest to you, such as looking at the data for the previous quarter, current fiscal year, or duration of a specific campaign.
• Filtering Out Offline Donations: Classy users have the option to track offline donations through the software. However, you might want to just look at the activity for your online donations. If so, it’s easy to filter out offline donations in your report.
• Adding Donor Information: You’re able to add whatever donor information you might need to help you manage the relationship. For example, if you’re running a “Returning 1-Time Donors” report, you might want to add in the donors’ phone numbers or addresses to make it easy to send them personalized outreach encouraging them to become recurring donors.
• Filtering for Specific Donation Types: If you’re curious how many donors are using different payment methods, you can filter your reports for things like donations made via digital wallets versus other transaction types.

3 Custom Reports to Add to Your Data Monitoring

Classy’s report templates are a great place to start with your data monitoring, but there are other custom reports you can run, as well. Below are three of the most common reports we see nonprofits use.

1. Pacing

Pacing reports show how much your nonprofit raises over time. This can help you understand your current performance and set future goals. When creating a pacing report, you’ll need to determine how you want to measure your growth, such as:

• Month over month
• Quarter over quarter
• Year over year

Once you see your growth over time, you’ll want to use that information to understand what’s happening. If you raised more over time, look at the strategies you implemented, such as sending more email appeals, which may be useful to continue implementing in the future. If you raised less over time, review which campaigns were more successful than others so you’ll know where to invest future energy.

2. Zero-Dollar Fundraisers

You may have peer-to-peer fundraisers who haven’t raised any money since beginning their campaigns. Rather than recruit more fundraisers, you can identify these zero-dollar fundraisers and offer them the support they need to be successful.

When you create this report, you’ll want to select the date filter to exclude any fundraising pages created within the last week. Once you have your list, you can pull the email addresses for any zero-dollar fundraisers and send them an engagement email series with tips and tricks to help them get their first donations.

3. Supporter Celebrations

You can also use custom reports for creative ways to connect with your donors, such as wishing them a happy birthday. To do this, you’ll simply go to your supporters list and then add the “birthdate” column.

Once you have your list, you can either simply wish your supporters a happy birthday to build your relationships, or you can also encourage them to consider starting a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for your nonprofit as part of their celebrations. Birthday fundraisers have become increasingly common given social media platforms, such as Facebook, suggesting them to users.

Use Custom Reports to Track Progress and Grow Your Efforts

Analyzing reports on your data can help your nonprofit grow and connect more meaningfully with your supporters while remaining efficient. If you want to dive into the details on making Classy reporting work for you, make sure to check out our Classy Academy course on data and reporting.

Food banks have the critical job of providing meals to those facing hunger, which is no small feat. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a larger number of people in need of their services.

In 2020, food banks distributed 6 billion meals to those facing hunger in the United States.

Launch a compelling crowdfunding campaign to take advantage of National Food Bank Day this September and raise more to impact more lives.

Optimize your campaign, boost your organization’s visibility, and take a sizable step toward your year-end fundraising goals with this list of quick tips.

Reach New Heights On National Food Bank Day

Create a well-designed, cohesive crowdfunding campaign to support your mission on National Food Bank Day with these must-have elements.

1. Welcome supporters to your campaign with a strong hero block

Your hero block is the first thing a supporter sees when they land on your campaign. It typically consists of a graphic and impactful text that sits at the top of the page. Inspire donors to take action by choosing design elements that seamlessly draw them to your donation form.

Step 1: Upload a custom image to use as your headline.

Use a headline image on your landing page instead of a simple text headline to add visual appeal and give you more control over how your page looks. The Food Bank of South Jersey incorporated this design for their Virtual Food Drive campaign to create a deeper connection with donors.

Step 2: Remain consistent with the branding of your other assets.

Ensure that your National Food Bank Day campaign is a natural extension of your brand to establish trust with your supporters.

Step 3: Define a single call to action.

Focus on just one call to action, to donate, on your crowdfunding campaign to boost conversions.

Try It on Classy

Easily customize your hero block on the Classy giving experience platform with our easy-to-use design tools. Simply select the part of the page you want to edit and your design tools will appear automatically.

2. Communicate a sense of urgency with your supporters

Tell your story with a sense of urgency to motivate immediate action. Emphasize the timeliness of your ask with specific dates and showcase the impact each donation will make on the life of a beneficiary.

In this example, Capital Area Food Bank uses powerful statistics to clearly define the problem they’re addressing in their campaign and highlight the harsh reality of rising food insecurity in the DC Metropolitan area.

Customize your “About the Campaign” section to clearly and concisely communicate your goal for National Food Bank Day, and why it’s relevant right now. Provide tangible examples of how your campaign will support your beneficiaries, like “Hitting our goal by September 3 would allow us to provide warm meals for over 1,000 members of our community.”

Speak to the increased demand for your services, and how these needs won’t be met without support from your generous donors.

Try It on Classy

Within minutes, you can customize your crowdfunding campaign description on Classy to tell your story, define your goal, and inspire action.

Keep in mind that you can always come back and edit this information in the future if you need to refresh your language, include a new quote, update a statistic, or reframe your goal.

3. Make your donation button stand out

Make sure your supporters know exactly where to click by placing a visually contrasting donation button in your hero block.

Display a clear “Donate Now” button next to the progress bar on your campaign page to tie your ask to tangible social proof that others are supporting your cause. You can see a great example of this with Second Harvest of Silicon Valley’s crowdfunding campaign.

Try It on Classy

Call on your supporters to donate with a personalized button. Create an emotional response that cements the action of giving by using Classy’s advanced designer to edit your button’s text or style. A short, simple phrase like “Feed the Hungry” can help supporters understand the impact of their donation, which makes them more likely to donate.

4. Add customized impact blocks to showcase the value of each gift

Show donors exactly what each donation helps to accomplish with impact blocks. For your National Food Bank Day campaign, you could quantify the impact of various gift amounts through months of groceries provided to a family, the number of meals that could be served at your food bank this month, or even the number of sandwiches you will be able to provide to a local school.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley connected dollar amounts to examples of how many food items each gift would provide.

Use a high-resolution image or engaging graphic with a customized description in each block to reflect what’s being shown. Keep your copy short and provide strategic options for recommended donation amounts. Remember, the suggested amounts should align with your organization’s typical donation amount, as well as stretch goals.

Try It on Classy

In a few quick steps, you can change the images, donation amounts, and descriptions featured on your impact blocks. You can easily add more if needed, or reorder your set by dragging individual blocks to the location you want on your campaign page.

5. Avoid links to another webpage

Keep your supporters on track to donate by limiting the number of distractions on your page. Limit the navigation options available, even to your own website, to keep donors moving straight to your donation form.

The more focused your page is on one call to action, the more likely your donors are to give.

6. Make your campaign page interactive

Make your donors feel appreciated with a prompt, personalized message of appreciation posted in direct response to each gift.

Display recent donations and comments on your page to keep donors engaged and inspired, and to offer a space where donors can explain why your cause is important to them. This digital hub of communication between donors and administrators encourages connection and gives each supporter the instant recognition they deserve.

Try It on Classy

Classy’s activity wall allows you to quickly recognize and thank donors in real-time, scale your outreach, and build donor loyalty. Once a supporter donates, you can reply directly on the activity wall with a public, personalized message. The donor is then immediately sent an email with a link back to the campaign landing page, notifying them you’ve started a conversation.

7. Offer a recurring giving option

Every time someone donates to your nonprofit, your form should give them the option to make it a recurring gift. Even if a donor has never previously considered a recurring gift, the option itself may intrigue them while they’re already in the mindset of giving.

Lean into the generosity surrounding National Food Bank Day to establish a predictable stream of revenue, protect the long-term financial health of your organization, and help you scale.

Although the monthly giving frequency is the most common, many forward-thinking nonprofits offer various giving options. Presenting your donors with choices makes their budgeting more manageable and reduces their likelihood of churning. Classy’s Recurring Donor Sentiment Report found that 50% of recurring donors prefer to give outside of just monthly increments when given a choice.

The Greater Boston Food Bank offers its donors a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual giving option.

Try It on Classy

Classy allows nonprofits to offer their donors eight recurring giving frequencies based on their preference, including:

• One-time
• Daily
• Weekly
• Bi-weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly (every three months)
• Semi-annually (every six months)
• Yearly (every 12 months)

Simply scroll down to the Donation Frequencies section of your campaign and toggle the frequencies on or off to suit your needs.

8. Consider SEO best practices

Give your campaign some juice by prioritizing your page’s search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is the process of earning traffic from your search engine organically. Organic traffic means you aren’t paying for ads or sponsored content placement. To earn that coveted traffic on National Food Bank Day, consider the following best practices:

• Include the keyword, National Food Bank Day, in your campaign name and page URL
• Position the keyword as far left as possible in your title tag (what appears as the clickable blue text in the search engine result pages and also at the top of your internet browser)
• Keep your title tag to 60 characters or less to avoid cutting off the copy
• Include relevant campaign information in your meta description to tell users what they can expect to find on your page
• Include a clear call to action at the end of your meta description to encourage users to click

9. Optimize your campaign for mobile

Mobile devices drive 58% of total traffic to Classy campaigns, lead to 21% of total donations, and guide 27% of social media traffic.

To ensure a seamless user experience regardless of the device your supporters are using, make sure to:

• Reduce the number of required textbox fields on your donation page
• Increase font and donation button sizes
• Trim unnecessary text
• Decrease image sizes to promote faster load times

Most importantly, adopt mobile-responsive fundraising software. Donors expect the giving experience to be easy and seamless. Don’t let a poorly-built form be the reason you miss out on a donation this National Food Bank Day.

Try It on Classy

Classy donation pages are automatically mobile-optimized. You can even preview what your page will look like on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device to ensure it’s ready to go.

10. Share your campaign on social media

4.2 billion people use social media worldwide as of 2021.

To ensure you don’t miss out on potential donors, get strategic with your social media strategy for National Food Bank Day.

When you engage with followers on social networks, you:

• Reach new donors in new areas of the world
• Increase fundraising campaign participation
• Boost visibility and overall exposure of your cause

Overlap the content you create between various channels to expand your reach with less effort. Be sure to include your campaign URL in the bio of each account. Post engaging content about your campaign goal, stories and photos of the impact each donation could have, testimonials from beneficiaries, or research that supports your call to action.

11. Steward donors through year-end

Leverage the momentum your organization establishes on National Food Bank Day to build toward your year-end fundraising goals.

With Giving Tuesday fast approaching, encourage your donors to stay engaged with your organization via social media, upcoming holiday events, recurring giving, or even just subscribing to your newsletter.

Consider launching a follow-up campaign after National Food Bank Day with a targeted CTA to donate again on Giving Tuesday. Tell your donors how much you appreciated their gifts, and how much of an impact they will make. Motivate them to strengthen their impact through the year-end season with continued support for your cause.

Make the Most of National Food Bank Day

With these 11 best practices in mind, get started on your crowdfunding campaign today. Speak to the urgency of your ask, remind donors of the critical importance your food bank serves, and emphasize the difference each dollar can make.

Eager to learn more? Request a Classy product demo or explore our free resources:

• The Guide to Nonprofit Storytelling
• The Nonprofit’s Donation Page Checklist
• Checklists for Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer, and Event Fundraising Campaign

Eric joins the Classy team from Medallia, a Saas-based customer experience management platform. He brings over 20 years of technology experience,13 years of which were with SaaS products across various verticals, from finance and retail to hospitality.

His deep focus on customer experience will mesh seamlessly with Classy’s commitment to a customer-first mentality. He will lead our new product development, keeping the nonprofit top-of-mind. This will ensure that Classy continuously delivers cutting-edge technology that meets our customers’ needs to drive more funding and, ultimately, more impact.

Meet Eric Pannese

Nonprofit Started, Nonprofit Focused, Always

Driving action for the greater good is not just the outcome of our products but the core of who we are at Classy.

Like much of our staff, Eric is no stranger to the social sector. He served on the board of Meals on Wheels San Diego County and Rancho Penasquitos Little League, giving him a proper understanding of what fundraising professionals need to succeed.

The Future of Classy’s Giving Experience Platform

Our mission is impossible without a substantial investment in technology. From experience on the front end of our platform to our powerful integrations, Eric will lead our product management and design teams to expand our offerings to the nonprofit sector thoughtfully.

Get a Sneak Peek of What’s Ahead:

Expanded Payment Options

Venmo and Paypal will be integrated with Classy Pay this fall, making Classy one of the first platforms for offering both payment options.

Embedded Checkout

Nonprofits will now have the option to embed a checkout form directly on their website, streamlining a supporter’s checkout journey while donating online and increasing conversion.

Recurring Giving

We will continue to invest in innovation in recurring giving so donors can engender long-term loyalty and ongoing support for causes they care about. This includes launching new recurring frequencies that include bi-weekly, weekly, and daily recurring frequency options in addition to the existing annual, semi-annual, quarterly, and monthly recurring frequency options.

Large-Scale Events

For nonprofits whose revenue relies heavily on events, Classy is investing in a more robust virtual events platform, including hybrid event capabilities. This will also include the launch of Campaign Templating, which allows an organization to create a foundation for all associated campaigns so you don’t have to start from scratch. This is especially helpful for nonprofits whose chapters run affiliate events, virtually, in-person, or both, across the country. Other enterprise events features will include tools for managing transaction and participant engagement on the day of an event, communication tools, and other features that enhance the supporter experience.

Keep Up With the Data and Trends Informing Fundraising Today

Alongside our technology innovation, we’re on the pulse of fundraising data that will shape giving experiences that move the needle for our current and future nonprofit customers.

• Download Classy’s 2021 State of Modern Philanthropy Report based on benchmarks from 4,800 nonprofit organizations.
• From there, see what’s on the minds of today’s recurring donors in our 2021 Recurring Donor Sentiment Report.
• Measure your current fundraising metrics against our data and get guided results in our Fundraising Benchmark Assessment.

Unlocking Generosity Through Classy

From our B Corp and Series D Funding announcements to welcoming a new Chief Executive Officer and influential board members this year, we’re continuously doubling down on our commitment to our product. If you’re interested in joining our interdisciplinary team of technologists to build the best fundraising technology available, please view and share our open roles here.

In this post, we’ll cover what pass-through parameters are and how to incorporate them into your nonprofit’s website or Classy donation page. We’ll also cover a few best use cases to give you some ideas on how to test them out.

What Are Pass-Through Parameters?

Pass-through parameters are special tags you can add to the end of a website address that allow you to pass information from your website or email campaigns to your Classy donation website. You can use them to customize suggested donation amounts, pre-select the recurring giving option, or even have some of a donor’s information already filled out on a form.

For example, let’s say a donor wants to give $250 to The Salvation Army. On the nonprofit’s webpage, they’d first select the $250 option, as shown below circled in green.

Once they click the “Donate” button, they’re sent to The Salvation Army’s Classy donation form. The green circle on the website’s URL below shows where the pass-through parameter is that tells the campaign page to pre-select the $250 donation amount on the Classy donation form.

Pass-through parameters essentially allow for a web experience customized to a user’s responses. Classy supports a variety of pass-through parameters, including contact information, donation amount, recurring frequency, and currency.

You can learn more about the technical aspects of pass-through parameters and how to incorporate them into your links in our Guide to Pass-Through Parameters.

3 Best Practices for Using Pass-Through Parameters

There are a few different ways nonprofits can use pass-through parameters to improve the donor experience. We’ve summarized some approaches you can try below.

1. Embed a Donation Form Directly Onto Your Website

Your nonprofit may want to embed a donation form directly on your website rather than link out to your Classy page. You can do so by adding a widget to your website that provides donors with easy access to your donation form. The information donors enter into that form will then pass through to their Classy donation page when they click submit.

Whichever fields your donors fill out directly on your page will automatically populate into the Classy donation form for a quick checkout process. If donors are using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or an ACH transfer to make their donation, this can then turn into a one-click process.

KIPP Public Schools uses this approach for a seamless donor experience. The screenshot below shows the donation form they’ve incorporated onto their website, as well as some sample information entered into the form.

After clicking the “Payment Info” button, all of that information is included in the pass-through parameters in the URL for the Classy donation form, as shown below.

As a result, the form is fully filled out and just needs the donor’s credit card number to complete.

2. Customize Your Email Appeals for Different Donor Segments

When you’re sending out your email appeals, you don’t want to direct your major donors and your smaller donors to a campaign page suggesting a $15 donation. While that amount might appeal to a particular segment, it doesn’t make sense for a major donor whose last gift was $5,000.

Pass-through parameters allow you to send emails with tailored links for each of your donor segments. Once you’ve established the different donor groups for your email segments, the link you embed into their emails will include pass-through parameters that align with their expected donation amounts, just how The Salvation Army example included “amount=50” in the URL to tell the form to pre-select $50 for the donation amount.

If you want to customize the process even further for a select group of your biggest donors, you can custom-populate their donation forms to include all of their information automatically, such as name and address, for a highly personalized donation experience.

3. Encourage Recurring Giving and Simplify Your Message

Recurring giving is a key donation strategy for nonprofits to ensure they have a reliable funding source through challenging times. Pass-through parameters can encourage your supporters to join this effort.

You can set up pass-through parameters so that the monthly giving option on your donation form is pre-selected when a donor clicks through to it. You can also tailor the frequency of a recurring gift to be weekly, quarterly, or another timeframe.

Pass-through parameters can also help simplify the ask on your recurring giving campaign page. Having a full donation form can pull attention away from the stories and imagery you’re using to inspire supporters. Instead, you can have a streamlined donation form that collects basic donor information and the recurring amount.

Many Hopes uses this approach for its monthly giving campaign, where it invites donors to join The Family. The bulk of its campaign page is dedicated to telling the nonprofit’s story through imagery, video, and text. However, it also includes a donation widget at the top that collects the donor’s gift amount, first and last name, email address, and phone number.

Those fields, as well as the recurring option, are then included in the URL for the Classy campaign page, as shown in the green circle in the screenshot below. These pass-through parameters pre-select $50 on a monthly basis as the donation amount, and pre-fill in Sally Donor’s name, phone number, and email address.

Use Pass-Through Parameters to Elevate Your Donation Forms

Pass-through parameters allow you to customize the donation experience for your supporters based on different segments and campaigns. They’re an easy way to make the donation process simple and seamless.

For more ways to level-up your nonprofit donation form and optimize your fundraising campaigns for conversion, request a product demo or explore our checklists:

• The Year-End Fundraising Checklist
• Your Giving Tuesday Master Checklist
• The Nonprofit’s Donation Page Checklist
• Checklists for Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer, and Event Fundraising Campaigns

Hybrid event models are quickly emerging as a new standard for nonprofits. To provide your organization with a blueprint on how to build an engaging hybrid event of your own on Classy, we broke down Pasadena Humane’s 23rd Annual Wiggle Waggle Walk & Run campaign into quick tips, tangible takeaways, and actionable next steps.

Discover how to pair the reach of a virtual event with the excitement of connecting in person through a hybrid fundraising campaign on Classy.

Meet Pasadena Humane

Mission: To lead the way toward a compassionate and caring community for all animals

Cause Sector: Animal Protection, Welfare and Services

Employee Count: 130

Location: Pasadena, California

Years on Classy: 2

See a Fall Hybrid Fundraising Campaign in Action

Pasadena Humane leveraged a registration with fundraising campaign on Classy for their largest event of the year that includes a dual registration option for in-person and virtual participants. The proceeds of this campaign help save the lives of thousands of animals in the Pasadena community with programs such as foster care, wildlife rehabilitation, adoption, animal rescue, and more.

This strategic event model opened the door to donors far beyond their borders, inviting new audiences to invest in their cause and support their mission.

How Classy Helped Launch This Hybrid Registration With Fundraising Event

Classy’s giving experience platform offers Pasadena Humane the flexibility, scale, and advanced design tools to delight their donors with a beautiful campaign. Here’s a deeper look at this hybrid event example:

Campaign Goal: Keep user experience top of mind to attract new supporters, boost conversion, and support fundraisers to reach their potential.

Method: Create a clear, quick, and easy-to-navigate registration process with customized descriptions to explain what each ticket purchase entails and how it ties back to the cause.

Tools to Make It Happen: Classy’s registration with fundraising campaigns make it easy to create as many registration options for an event as needed. Organizations can quickly customize their registration details with information like estimated fees, fundraising commitments, or registration costs.

Takeaways for Your Next Hybrid Fundraising Event

1. Unlock earning potential with a dual registration option

When the power of in-person event attendance meets nationwide virtual support, your pre-existing revenue ceiling disappears.

Make the registration process as simple as possible for all attendees by providing clear calls to action, detailed descriptions of what is included with the virtual versus in-person ticket options, and a list of FAQs to guide attendees over any hurdles.

To ensure your fundraisers’ success, create fundraiser toolkits that provide guidance both technically for the peer-to-peer fundraising sign-up process and strategically for outreach to potential donors.

2. Boost your exposure with peer-to-peer fundraising

Classy’s registration with fundraising campaigns activate attendees to raise money on behalf of your organization through peer-to-peer fundraising. Because of that, they typically raise a median amount 4.5 times greater than ticketed events, according to the 2021 State of Modern Philanthropy report.

Once a supporter submits their registration on Classy, a peer-to-peer fundraising page is automatically created for them. This eliminates an extra step for fundraisers, thus increasing the number of participants.

By layering a hybrid event model with a registration with fundraising campaign, your organization can double its exposure to attract new donors and open the door for greater levels of support.

3. Customize your campaign with unique branding

Your campaign’s landing page is the first page supporters will see. On Classy, you can easily customize elements like your header, hero block, and “about” section to align with your branding.

Tap into features like a progress circle or fundraising leaderboard to build social proof, or add custom blocks to bring your campaign to life in a way that feels aligned to the mission of your organization.

Hybrid Events are Here to Stay

Hybrid is the future of fundraising, and Classy’s customizable campaigns make it easier for thousands of nonprofits to adapt to this new fundraising model. As you brainstorm your next event idea, a virtual component should remain a well-established part of your organization’s strategy.

Be sure to check back next month for another campaign example to keep your fundraising fresh and inspired by new ideas. Until then, explore our free fundraising event resources for more ways to expand your reach, amplify your impact, and raise more for your mission:

• Virtual Events Toolkit
• 12 Fall Fundraising Ideas Inspired by the Back-to-School Season
• How to Attract Donors From Around the World With Your Virtual Event
• Virtual Fundraising: Post-Event Tactics to Retain and Re-engage Donors
• 13 Virtual Fundraising Event Takeaways From 4 Marketing Professionals
• Checklists for Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer, and Event Fundraising Campaigns

Classy for Salesforce Version 6.7, released in December of 2020, offers a whole new look and feel for the Classy for Salesforce Control Panel. Our latest release, Classy for Salesforce Version 6.8, has made huge strides in our already robust contact matching feature set by including three additional email fields for matching functionality in Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and offering an option to choose which Classy data (supporter address or billing address) to check against for existing contacts.

We’re also excited to announce our latest update to Classy for NPSP, Version 1.4. This release includes an update to GAU allocations and new recurring frequencies amounts.

Let’s dive into the details of these new features and how they’ll help improve your overall Salesforce experience.

Classy for Salesforce Version 6.7: New and Improved Control Panel

The new Classy for Salesforce Control Panel pulls your Salesforce performance metrics front and center, allowing you to easily access the health metrics associated with your Salesforce instance, like System Configuration, Latest Sync Issues, API Credentials, and Resources. You can now update your package directly through the Control Panel under “Recommended Installations” instead of having to update in Classy Manager.

This update is particularly useful given that the end users of Classy for Salesforce aren’t always the same people on your team working directly in Classy Manager. Classy is proud to constantly work towards improving the user experience, and we hope you’ll find this update supports your overall ease of use.

Classy for Salesforce Version 6.8: Improved Contact Matching Functionality

We know that ensuring your organization maintains a clean database of donors and donations is crucial to your ability to successfully engage with supporters. That’s why we’ve prioritized improving the contact matching options for Classy for Salesforce users.

In Classy for Salesforce Version 6.0, we rolled out Enhanced Contact Matching. Rather than only being able to do contact matching by a supporter’s email address, this update added the ability to use the “Duplicate Management” setting in Salesforce, so your nonprofit could define what matching rules to have in place to define if a contact should be matched to an existing Salesforce contact.

With Version 6.8, we’re taking this another step further and addressing the top two requests we’ve gotten from our Classy for Salesforce customers. We’re happy to now offer our customers Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) email fields matching functionality and the option to choose which Classy data (supporter address or billing address) to check for existing contacts. Below, we describe the benefits of both in more detail.

Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) Email Fields Matching Functionality

Before this update, if you were using Classy for Salesforce and wanted to perform matching against NPSP’s custom email fields in a Duplicate Management rule, you could only use the standard Salesforce Email field. With this update, you can create rules to check against the three additional email fields in NPSP (personal email, work email, and alternative email).

To enable these options, go to Settings > Account & Contact Management > then toggle on NPSP Email Matching. Anyone with an active Classy to Salesforce account will have access to this setting, not just Classy for NPSP users.

This greatly reduces the number of duplicate contacts created because the feature pulls from a larger data set. We know that in today’s day and age, supporters oftentimes have multiple email addresses, so we’re happy to offer this option to your organization to help streamline the deduplication process.

Option to Choose Which Classy Data to Check Against

When your supporters make a donation through a Classy donation form, they have to submit their personal address (labeled “supporter address” on the platform) and a billing address for their payment method. With this update, we’re giving you the option to choose between using the supporter address or billing address as part of a Duplicate Management rule.

In the past, we used the supporter address to create a contact, but some organizations asked us to use the billing address instead, assuming it would be a supporter’s most up-to-date contact information. However, after this switch, we heard from some organizations that they’d actually prefer using the supporter address, as sometimes a supporter’s billing address isn’t their own.

Regardless of whether you decide to match against the supporter address or billing address, Classy for Salesforce will always populate the billing information custom fields on an Opportunity, so the billing data will still be available if you choose to use Supporter data for Contacts.

This latest update is in direct response to your feedback. You now have the power to choose which contact makes more sense for you and your donors.

Classy for NPSP Version 1.4: GAU Allocation Update and New Recurring Frequencies

In Classy, your campaigns support the ability to create multiple Program Designations and allow your supporters to choose where their donation will be allocated within your organization. With the update to GAU allocations in Classy for NPSP Version 1.4, the Program Designations in your Classy campaign will now be correctly reflected to the GAU allocation listed on your Salesforce Opportunities. If you already have the “Enable GAU Allocation Integration” enabled in your Classy for Salesforce Control Panel, this update will automatically be reflected in your account after you upgrade to Classy for NPSP Version 1.4. If you don’t have this feature enabled, upgrade to Classy for NPSP Version 1.4 and go to your Control Panel to toggle on this feature.

We also recently rolled out new recurring donation frequency options within Classy to include yearly, semi-annual, quarterly, and monthly recurring donations frequencies. With the release of Classy for NPSP Version 1.4, whether you’re using NPSP’s Recurring Donations object or Classy’s Recurring Donation object, both will reflect the new recurring frequencies options.

At Classy, we’re proud to continue to improve our software for your organization’s use. While we’ve shared the latest Classy for Salesforce updates in this post, there’s still more on the horizon. We hope these latest Classy for Salesforce features help your nonprofit continue to work hard toward your mission. As always, please let us know what you think of the updates and reach out if you need support.

That’s why today, I couldn’t be more excited to announce that Classy has raised $118 million in Series D funding led by Norwest Venture Partners.

So, why raise financing when the company is already strong and profitable? In short: to meet the tremendous demand for our suite of products (current and future). Coming off a tumultuous, yet record-setting year for giving, we saw a 15-year trend of online fundraising accelerate like never before. The nonprofit sector was already moving this way—it was the thesis that Classy was founded upon—but 2020 changed everything. Long gone are the conversations about online as a future investment. The future is officially here, and it’s here to stay. 

But we can’t rest on our laurels. The online world is evolving fast. So with this new funding, we’re doubling the size of our product and engineering organization over the next two years. We’ll accelerate our work on the core fundraising suite, which is always improving (that’s the beauty of SaaS). We’ll continue to add features to our hugely popular payments product, Classy Pay. And we’ll keep investing in the future, with a focus on recurring giving, hybrid events, and new-channel donor acquisition. 

We’re also exploring synergetic markets like corporate giving, which has suffered from a similar technology deficiency over the last 40 years. The lines are blurring between for-profit and nonprofit models like never before, and the strain of 2020 proved to us that the traditional CSR model is outdated and broken. 

New Beginnings

Our funding announcement opens up a new and exciting chapter for Classy and its stakeholders—not only for our customers with accelerated product development and support, but also for our team and our community. 

First, Classy is officially changing from a C-Corporation to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This move follows our earlier announcement that we have become a Certified B Corporation, the highest standard of social and environmental performance for business. The move to a PBC integrates our commitment into the company’s governance, one of the most meaningful steps you can take as a business to ensure that your values are everlasting.  

On the team side, we also have a few exciting moves to share with you.

First, the Board of Directors is thrilled to welcome two new members. The first is David Su, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners who will be joining the board as part of the financing. The second is Depelsha McGruder, the COO at the Ford Foundation, and the founder of Moms of Black Boys (M.O.B.B) United, a nonprofit dedicated to positively influencing how Black boys and men are perceived and treated by law enforcement in society. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome David and Depelsha to the Board as part of this next chapter. 

And finally, after over 10 years as Classy’s Chief Executive Officer, I’ve decided to transition to a full-time Executive Chairman role and hand the CEO reins to my longtime Classy partner, Chris Himes. 

Chris has been involved with Classy for over seven years as an advisor, investor, Board Director, and most recently as an operator, currently serving as Classy’s Chief Operating Officer. He’s a tremendous leader with a background in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and I couldn’t think of a better person to help take Classy to the next level. In my new role, I’ll be focused on next horizon product development, Mergers & Acquisitions, and playing a leading role on the Board of Directors. 

We recently sat down with Chris to reflect on his partnership with Classy over the years, our shared vision for the future, and how our Series D will enable us to accelerate the impact of more organizations around the world. 

I couldn’t be more excited about Classy’s future, and for the future of all of our stakeholders. Please join me in welcoming David and Depelsha to the team, and Chris to the new role! 

Onward!

Scot Chisholm

McGruder, the Ford Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer, oversees Ford’s global operations and finances for its offices in New York, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For the past 85 years, the Ford Foundation has invested in innovative ideas, visionary individuals, and frontline institutions advancing human dignity around the world. 

Before joining the Ford Foundation, McGruder served as COO of New York Public Radio (NYPR), where she led daily operations and strategic planning for WNYC Radio, WNYC Studios, WQXR, Gothamist.com, and The Greene Space. During her tenure, she played a critical role charting NYPR’s path forward in the midst of an evolving media landscape, setting the course for the organization’s digital content and local news, talk, and cultural programming.

Prior to her role at NYPR, McGruder spent 17 years at Viacom in senior leadership positions at both MTV and BET Networks, including as SVP of programming at BET and SVP of business operations and strategy at MTV. During her tenure at Viacom, she launched mobile, broadband, and video-on-demand businesses for MTV, as well as two new cable television networks to serve underrepresented LatinX, African American, and youth audiences.

McGruder is also the founder and president of Moms of Black Boys United and M.O.B.B. United for Social Change, sister organizations working to positively influence how black boys and men are perceived and treated by law enforcement and in society. 

She holds a BA from Howard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

The Vision to Supporting Impact at Scale 

McGruder has spent her career, in both the for-profit and social sector, with organizations that have had a higher purpose for society. That’s why she was immediately drawn to Classy’s mission of mobilizing and empowering the world for good and helping nonprofits raise more money online. 

As a leader who’s served at a large nonprofit, founded her own nonprofit, and leads critical functions at the Ford Foundation, she views working with Classy as an exciting opportunity to not just move one organization’s mission forward, but to become a resource to thousands of nonprofits of different sizes and cause categories—similar to the Ford Foundation, which distributes funds to organizations around the world. 

“For me, serving on the board of Classy is an opportunity to have impact at scale,” says McGruder. “I view it as an extension of my work at the Ford Foundation. In addition, Classy has a really impressive platform and business model with a lot of potential for growth given the broader societal shift to online giving.”

McGruder’s varied experience across the for-profit and social sectors enables her to understand the deep interconnections between both, and she identifies Classy as an example of how a for-profit model can positively impact the nonprofit model. As she has experienced, the separation of the nonprofit space from the for-profit space can have more to do with regulations than any difference of a higher mission, purpose, or people within the organization. It is this recognition which drew her to Classy, a certified B Corporation dedicated to building great technology to support the most important causes in the world.

“Classy is a for-profit business that helps nonprofits grow and thrive, and the business is only successful when its nonprofit customers are successful. I believe it’s possible to do well while doing good,” says McGruder.

A Cross-Sector Leader Who Has Built and Pushed Nonprofits Forward

McGruder’s unique set of experiences gives her a broad perspective on a wide range of issues that will positively influence Classy’s direction. 

Her 17-year tenure at Viacom has made her an expert on branding, market segmentation, digital, sales, business development, strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisition, and overall business operations and strategy. Couple that with her multiple and ongoing experiences as a nonprofit leader, and her journey and wealth of knowledge makes her a remarkable guide and asset to help ensure Classy is the best partner possible for social impact organizations.

“While serving as COO of New York Public Radio, I lived the experience of a large nonprofit needing to constantly attract donors, retain, and grow their contributions over time. With M.O.B.B. United, I’ve been in the driver’s seat of building a nonprofit from the ground up and trying to create a path to funding. And at Ford, I get to understand the opportunities and challenges of a wide range of nonprofit organizations who are working in some way to root out inequality across the globe. I’ve had quite a journey and I look forward to applying what I’ve learned from all of these experiences to help take Classy to the next level.”

When asked about what she feels is next for Classy, McGruder believes in Classy’s brand and place to be a household name for anyone in the social sector—and that Classy should be the first place nonprofits go when they think about increasing online and recurring giving. She also sees the opportunity to extend Classy’s impact to serve the wider public and help connect those who are looking to give with the right opportunities and causes. We’re proud that our B Corp Certification and current process to become a Public Benefit Corporation have helped us make headway on our expanded impact with the larger community and world, and we’re excited for what else is to come. 

Overall, McGruder says her approach to board service is to learn first, then assess and provide recommendations. In her view, one has to first and foremost understand internal opportunities and challenges from the management team’s point of view based on their deep knowledge and extensive experience, then figure out how to help accelerate their vision.

A Personal Spark

Perhaps what makes this partnership so meaningful is the deep personal excitement and connection that McGruder feels toward Classy. 

One thing that really drew her to the company was how it started, with Classy co-founder Scot Chisholm’s personal drive to raise money for cancer because of his mother’s successful battle with the disease. 

“I believe the best ideas are born from a personal connection and a need to solve a problem that really matters to someone,” says McGruder. “I am amazed at how Classy evolved from a personal desire to donate to cancer research in San Diego into a multi-million dollar SaaS platform, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!”

But McGruder’s strong passion for Classy extends beyond its origin story. The opportunity to join Classy’s board of directors came about during the most personally challenging time of her life, when she wasn’t looking to take on additional responsibilities. Her husband of 16 years passed away unexpectedly at age 49 just a few months ago on Christmas Day.

Learning about Classy created a spark and excitement through those darkest moments, which compelled her to accept this role. 

And the feeling is entirely mutual. We cannot be more humbled and thrilled to have McGruder join our board of directors and help push Classy to the next stage of its growth. Please join us in welcoming her to the Classy family.

As CEO, Chris will build upon the foundation laid over the past 10 years, seven of which he served as advisor, investor, board director, and, most recently, as Classy’s chief operating officer. Chris will continue Classy’s track record of creating world-class technology to serve the social sector.

We recently sat down with Chris to talk through how his career experience—from Fair Trade to Salesforce to Classy—has uniquely prepared him to take on this role, his vision for Classy’s future, and why his obsession with verifiable value will lay the foundation for everything the company does moving forward.

Q: You’ve been a huge part of helping to build Classy over the past seven years. Tell us about that journey and why you are able to step into this new role now.

A: It’s not often you find a company where great people and technology serve thousands of nonprofits who make the world a better place every day, but I’ve been lucky to be a part of the Classy journey for a while now.

I first learned about Classy when I was working at Salesforce.org and was blown away by what I saw. Here was a company radically rethinking what the social sector could expect of their online fundraising technology, and it was clear the impact that technology could have. After facilitating Salesforce’s first investment in Classy and a lasting partnership between the two companies, I became a Board Member and advisor to Classy in 2014. From then on, I’ve done all I can to support the company’s growth as we went on to help nonprofits collectively raise $1 billion for social good on the platform in 2018.

Two years later, I joined as chief operating officer just as we were witnessing the generosity of so many donors in the wake of COVID-19 and this past summer’s social justice movement. The events of this past year have changed giving as we know it and the role of technology has never played a more important part in helping nonprofits fund their missions. This was evidenced by the fact that nonprofits on the Classy platform raised over $1 billion in 2020 alone.

I’ve spent my career between a top tier SaaS company and the nonprofit space, which gives me a unique understanding and the experience to effectively serve our customers. I know how better technology translates into more revenue to drive more impact for the world.

Q: Tell us more about your career path and how this experience will lend itself to your role as CEO here.

A: I began my career working at the nonprofit that runs Fair Trade, a global movement that makes sustainable development goals a reality. There I helped to evolve a leading program for conscious consumption and higher incomes for disadvantaged workers. I led their core Certification operation and launched the Global Producer Services group. We certified dozens of product categories, partnered with international agencies and companies to invest in capacity building for developing countries, and invested in technology to further our mission. Eventually, I took on the role of CFO and joined their Board of Directors.

From there, I joined the team at Salesforce when there was only one product. In my six years at Salesforce, the company grew tenfold as cloud computing came of age. As an SVP and division COO, I learned the value of earning customer trust and loyalty every day, and I became obsessed with delivering verifiable customer value.

Getting to bring this obsession to life at Classy to better serve our nonprofit customers is what gets me up in the morning. Classy isn’t a tool to just passively accept donations. We are a platform with a robust suite of fundraising tools geared towards providing a seamless donor experience that encompasses all types of online fundraising to drive higher engagement and revenue for your organization.

Q: So what’s next for Classy? How does this customer value obsession come to life?

A: Classy is evolving to be a true product-led company. We just raised $118 million in Series D funding and, with that, we plan to overwhelmingly invest in our product and engineering teams. This doesn’t just mean that we’ll be releasing new features faster; we are working to make profound improvements on our already-strong underlying tech stack. That’s the beauty of being a SaaS company. As technology advances, we can make our product better, faster, more reliable, and more productive, which increases customer value. It all leads back to this.

It is a core company philosophy – great technology drives more revenue for nonprofits, which means more resources to tackle the complex challenges they are trying to solve. And for me there is no more important market to serve than the social sector.

Classy is focused on extending its lead in donor conversion and retention, while creating a new wave of recurring giving tools to help nonprofits build highly predictable revenue models that help them to maximize their service and impact. Through our platform data, we know that recurring donors are five times more valuable than one-time givers and research has shown that each additional second of web page load time translates to a 7% conversion rate drop. Without the best online fundraising technology, nonprofits are leaving money on the table.

Classy is here to make sure that no longer happens. Currently, about 20% of total giving on Classy’s platform is done by donors who pledge to give on a regular basis, but in the next couple of years, we plan to build a billion-dollar recurring business for our customers.

We are also constantly improving our security and scalability. Giving is a half trillion dollar market and we have to be ready for it. We have proven measures in place to provide a safe and trusted fundraising platform including using secure cloud architecture and multiple security measures to protect data, including AWS Virtual Private Cloud and PCI Level 1 Certification. We have dedicated personnel focused on platform security and our network is constantly scanning for vulnerabilities so donors can be assured their data is safe when giving to an organization through Classy.

Q: How does Classy’s culture play a role in this customer-first mindset?

A: At Classy, we have a business model that prioritizes our four main stakeholders, which are our customers, our team, financial durability, and our community.

For our customers, this means we deliver unquestionable ROI. For our team, we bring on the best talent, give them the opportunity to work with the most important causes in the world, and invest in their growth and well-being. In considering our financial sustainability, we aim to create durability with top-tier returns for decades to come so our customers can rest assured that we will be here as long as they need us to help fulfill their missions. And for our community, we believe in holistic value creation and therefore must practice what we preach. Much of this stakeholder model comes to life through our B Corp Certification, which holds us to the highest standards of social and environmental performance out there for business. I’m proud to say, we’ve also accelerated our timeline to becoming a Public Benefit Corporation.

As a stakeholder-first company, we have also decided to pay back our PPP loan, which we took from the federal government during the first few months of the pandemic to keep our staff fully employed and to ensure we could continue to serve the social sector at full capacity during a time of increased need. We are grateful for the security it provided, but we are fortunate to have emerged from the last year stronger than ever and are happy to be able to pay it back so that the money can be used to support others. We’re also excited to launch our first-ever impact report this year; bring back our annual conference, the Collaborative: Virtual Sessions; and relaunch the Classy Awards to honor the most innovative nonprofits and social enterprises. The last ten years have seen many milestones for us and our customers, but we are just getting started.

Q: Thank you, Chris. Anything else you’d like to add?

A: We’ve got an exciting road ahead of us and lots of work to be done. We don’t just want to give our customers access to the best technology today. We have the scale to continue to innovate and deliver the resources nonprofits will need in the future. Classy will be there, as a trusted partner with world-class technology, as long as it takes to fulfill your mission. This also means we’re looking for amazing, diverse talent nationwide to join our mission to mobilize and empower the world for good. If Classy sounds like a fit for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team.