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

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

Stephanie: I just got out of a board meeting before coming to this podcast. And we were talking about the simplicity of making a donation. We were just talking about it with us, like the simplicity of finding what I need on an event page. And the complaint, because we're just a regional chapter of a very large national organization who is imposing a really onerous donation form -- that's just tough. You have to fill it out every time. It's not like it even remembers you. And I threw out this concept, which everybody got excited about -- the concept of a one-click donation. We've got to get to a one-click donation.

Jeff: I know Stripe supports it. How do we get that kind of stuff on the form? Do you chat with your clients a lot about, hey, I love your CRM, it's beautiful, but this is ridiculous?

Monica: I do not, actually. I've interviewed a few CRM developer representatives on my podcast just to learn about them because people ask me about them. But I don't regularly review what they're doing in their back office. There are certain ones where I have been so mad at their software that I'm like, I do not like your software. It is evil. And it makes me very frustrated. And then one of them -- who shall not be named -- I was so mad about it that I actually wrote a whole blog post about it because I was like, if there are other people out there dealing with this thing, they need to know. I got emailed by other developers that were like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for writing this. I was banging my head against a wall. And fortunately, that client has since moved to another system. But if they ask, I'll obviously talk to them about it. I'm not here to change the way that they do everything. I'm here to make their website work for them.

Jeff: What we've talked about -- and this is one of our underlying core principles -- is about user experience. It's not like, hey, we can help nonprofits raise more money through getting people to bid more. Those are all tools to get there. We believe the key is the user experience. If you create a user experience that engages people or makes it easy, they will do the things you want them to do. And that goes both ways. It's not just the end-user experience of trying to donate on your website or bid in your auction. It's also the back end of these things. For whatever reason, there are certain nonprofit donor management systems where you look at the back end and you say, really? This is brutal. And then the front end gets to be brutal. For us, it was like, just give me your APIs and we'll run the donation through Stripe and then insert it into that so we don't have to use your form.

Monica: They end up looking like weird revamps of spreadsheets. And you're like, how did this ever happen?

Jeff: I actually -- it's not a nonprofit, but it's a veterinary client story. I was like, you guys are super small, you're really busy, you should be able to intake your clients and it should automatically go into your system. So I log in to see what it looks like and I was like, whoa. The 1990s called -- they want their website back. And then I thought to myself, this is what they have to use every single day. It kind of reminded me of when I go to the doctor's office and the lady up front only has one monitor. How does she do her job?

Monica: There's commercial auction software out there that looks very similar to that -- like the interface that my dentist uses. And I don't know how they type in all those notes on that Windows 95-looking interface.

Jeff: It definitely gets tough. The name of the game ultimately is going to be -- and I think this goes for everything that a nonprofit is using that they're also asking their employees and their donors to use -- can you make it simple?

Stephanie: This also came up the other day. I saw this from two different nonprofits I'm connected with. They send out newsletters, and you know what they are? They are PDFs. Attached to the email. And I have to read through the PDF. And at the very end of the PDF is a QR code that is so small -- and that's my donation link.

Monica: I am not surprised. I also have a nonprofit that sends me newsletters in a PDF and they actually just started it this year. In their mind, it's an upgrade. And I'm like, this is not an upgrade. It's an attachment on an email. It's awful. Every time I see the PDF newsletter, I go to that nonprofit or client and I'm like, first off, why is it a PDF? Are you printing it and mailing it? And then second, we can actually make this thing auto-compile from your website. You could put the information into your website and then it would be way easier to use everywhere else and all of your other marketing. And it would be able to be found on Google. And they're like, what? Some of them are okay with that. Others are like, no, no, no. We have a really old demographic. And this is just how they like to read the newsletter.

Jeff: And when you ask them, they probably haven't even thought about it -- like, there should be an ROI on your marketing campaign. We were in this board meeting and I said the PDF is great -- the content is great, the format not so great. They said, how will we make it better? I said, literally have her record a video of herself and either email or send this out with a link below. You can do this in Loom if you want. And you'll be amazed -- with a call to action right in the video, you're going to get more donations. And then the next stage is don't take them to that donation form that's got 55 questions that I have to fill out every time. Can we go one-click here? Everybody conceptually agrees, but it's one of those things people don't think about that way. They say, these are the tools I have, so this is what I have to offer. And between all of us, we would say, you don't have to do it that way.

Monica: One of the things we learned -- we build a website called CoMoGives.com. Anybody who wants to should go look at it. We're really proud of it. It's a month-long online giving campaign -- a year-end giving campaign for over 170 mid-Missouri local nonprofits. We raised about $2 million on this website in one month. When it first started, everybody had to fill out an email form for every single nonprofit participating to make their donations. After one year of that, they were like, this does not work. So we implemented a shopping cart system, which eventually had a portal for the nonprofits to log into and ways for people to volunteer. We eventually got it to where they were donating the transaction fees. And then we had the one-click donate because people were having to go through the list and click on each nonprofit. We were like, no, no, no -- now we just have a list, click add to cart. People are doing add to cart from the same spot, and donations went up. We were really impressed with how people responded to these extra pieces of technology because we would come back every year and people would be like, I don't like this, we don't like that. And we would be like, all right, how do we fix that?

Jeff: Smart. Make it easy. Less clicks equals more money. 100 percent. An interface that's fun and intuitive makes more money.

Monica: Thinking more in the line of events -- maybe you have an event landing page on your website with some information and description, but then you're taking them to something like a Handbid or one of the others where there's the event page where they're going to actually buy the tickets and see the auction items. Really using tools that match -- it's not so obvious that your theme is one thing on this page and completely different on the next. Having tools where you can make it seem like a seamless experience elevates the event. All of us have the subconscious ability to know that something's not quite right, and that can steer us away from making a decision. You want to remove all the barriers of entry.

Jeff: And I think it's really important that nonprofits have their annual events on their website proper, because then they will actually optimize in Google and people can find them. For an annual event, it tends to work best to keep the same page each year. It should be up all year round. It should not go down. People ask, but what do we do in between? Right after the event happens, just leave it alone because they're going to look at the date and know that it's passed. Then as soon as you know next year's date, just go up and add a save-the-date for next year. What can happen if you put up multiple instances of an event is either it doesn't have time to optimize and people can't find it when they're searching, or you have multiple instances showing up in Google and the most recent one is not always at the top. If you're not super detail-oriented, you won't notice it's the wrong year.

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

Jeff: That has never happened to me. But I have been doing check-in at a Handbid event over in Lone Tree, and people came up and we couldn't find them on the guest list. Finally I'm like, what event are you going to? And they tell us -- it's not a Handbid event. We Google it and last year that event was at this venue. This year, the event was 20 or 30 minutes away at another spot, same date. She said, well, I looked it up on their website. And sure enough, they had not updated the date and location of the event.

Monica: People do it all the time. People drive sometimes 30 minutes to an hour or longer to get to your event. Children have their whole week crafted around the excitement of going. And then they show up and it's not there. All you have to do is have a page for that annual event that is always that page on your website forever. And if you rebuild your website and you change the URL for it, you just need to have a redirect over to the new page. That's all you have to do. It's not complicated. It's very straightforward. And you can make people happy.

Jeff: We can wrap up this podcast with a list of don'ts. Let's give our audience a list of things not to do. It sounds like the first one is do not leave last year's event information up on your website -- update the information. What else would you put on your don't list? Give us three to four don'ts that you typically would tell your nonprofits.

Monica: Don't hide your donate button. A lot of people like to nestle it under "Get Involved" because -- I actually don't know why they do it. It is your cash register button. It should be up in the front. I want it up at the top. I want it on the top quarter of your website. I want to see a donate button. I want it to look different than the other navigation. I want it to be loud and I want it to hit me in the face. So don't hide your donate button.

Monica: Also, don't hide your contact information. I don't understand why people do this. It should be at the bottom of your website. You should have a contact page listed on the navigation. Remember, a lot of our donors are going to be people who weren't born with the internet. They are used to having a contact link up in the navigation that they can click on and find your information. Make sure there's a phone number there. Nobody's going to steal it from you. You're not going to get monstrous amounts of spam. Have an actual email address that people can click on and send an email from whatever platform they want to. So don't hide your contact button.

Monica: I would also say don't just have a bulleted list of your services, because that's not going to optimize in Google. People aren't going to find you that way. We actually have to have words on our website that we want people to find us for. Usually that involves having a page for each one of the things that you do. Talk about it from your visitors' perspective and think about what they need to know. A bulleted list will not suffice. The only website that can get away with not giving enough information is Google. And it's because they make the rules. So they get to break them.

Jeff: Fair enough. Because we've all been on the Google form where you're like, I need steps seven through 14 that I am clearly missing.

Stephanie: I have one more. Don't use stock photos that don't make sense. Don't use stock photos at all. I hate it.

Monica: Because here's the deal. I don't care if your photos are slightly blurry or grainy or if they're not lit right. If that's where you are as an organization, that's okay. I'm seeing you as exactly what you are. Be proud of that and show actual pictures of you so people can get to know you and meet you. Those weird glowing humans are just weird glowing humans and they're not part of your organization. And let's be honest, you're just not as good looking as them, right? It's fine.

Jeff: Speak for yourself. Come on.

Monica: You're not that pretty. I'm just kidding. No, but you have to look at what's real. It's a relationship. I don't want to have a relationship with a stock photo. I want to have a relationship with the real people doing the work, or I want to see the people being impacted by the work. So you don't show up at their event and go, you don't look like the lady on the website.

Jeff: And it can give the wrong image entirely because I went to a website the other day that was a nonprofit site. I thought it was going to be about stream cleanup or water preservation because it was this big river with trees around it and people kayaking down the river. And it's a video. That's not what they did at all. So I was very confused. I actually wrote them and was like, this does not make sense. We should change this.

Monica: It's a pretty video, but it doesn't match. We went through the Donald Miller StoryBrand exercise and we learned a lot about how you connect who you are to exactly what people see when they arrive at your website.

Jeff: The other don't I would add -- and Stephanie, you can add yours after -- is don't hang on to old logos or brands if it's really time to rethink them. For whatever reason, there's emotional attachments to brands. Every organization out there, for-profit and nonprofit, their brand evolves over time. You've got to be open to that.

Stephanie: My don't would be -- going back to the beginning of the podcast -- don't fall for the idea that or the sales pitch that changing your website is going to solve deeper issues in the organization. Websites are very powerful, amazing tools. But sometimes they are not the solution to every problem.

Jeff: Look, you have a 1995 Honda Civic and it's about to fall apart, and you put a new coat of paint on it. It's still about to fall apart.

Monica: I have a question for you, Jeff. So you were talking about the brand and the evolution. One of the things I've seen nonprofits really struggle with is they didn't name themselves or brand themselves appropriately the first time. And then they just flip it, like completely, something completely different. And some of them literally fold because no one can figure out that this is who they are now. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jeff: You just brought up something that just came up. We have a client that's closing their doors. For the longest time they were named something, and their name made no sense for what they did. They changed their name to be a little bit more aligned with what they do. And that lasted about four months. People just lost it. If you've built a brand for five, six, seven, eight, nine years, stick with it. Unless it's so inappropriate or completely off target, if it's just a name that's still a good name but doesn't really match what you do, there's a lot of risk in changing it.

Stephanie: Absolutely. If you have a donor base that's sustaining you and growing, I probably wouldn't recommend changing your name. If that donor base is there and they're supporting you and they know who you are, then I think it's okay.

Jeff: This happened internally for us too. Handbid was built -- the name came from 2010. We launched the company in 2011 and we were doing mobile bidding and auctions. Then we expanded beyond that -- fundraising, peer to peer, donation campaigns, text to give, you name it, all for nonprofits. A vast majority of our competitors decided, because they do all those other things too, to rebrand themselves as "giving this" or "causes that." They went generic with it. I understand why they did, but we've established such a brand. Does it seem weird that Handbid would be running your peer to peer? I don't think so. The clients who use us don't care. And the people who come to the site all they want is the easy user experience. Massive name changes like that can be risky.

Monica: And brand recognition is valuable. Your brand is more than your name and more than your logo. You can change the way that you explain things, change the colors, the imagery, change your messaging altogether. I did some consulting with an organization that does so many things. I was like, we're going to have to organize this somehow so people can wrap their mind around it. Then we're going to start a campaign to educate from within about all the things you do. That's more dangerous than the name -- when nobody knows everything you offer because you're so layered in.

Jeff: And we've had lots of these conversations on various boards through the years. Let's talk about our core focus. What is it that we do and what is it that we don't do? How do we prioritize our resources? That's more important than what we call ourselves. At Handbid, the vast majority of our traffic coming in is around auctions -- charity auctions, fundraisers, auction software, commercial auction software. That's what people see us as. Then when they walk in the door and see us, they say, oh, they do these other things too. A nonprofit could do the same thing. Get them in the door with what they're primarily looking for and then show them all the other things they can do.

Monica: I definitely feel the same way. When people just up and change their brand and call us and say, hey, we've changed our name and everything, here's our logo, we're going to cater to a new demographic -- I'm like, holy cow, we might have a huge problem. And I don't know how to tell you this.

Jeff: That's awesome. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thank you so much, Monica. We really appreciate you being on the podcast today. Thank you guys for listening. Best of luck with your branding. Best of luck everybody with your website. If you guys have any needs related to website and you have questions, we'll make sure that you have Monica's contact information. You guys should give them a shout. They'd be happy to help you. And then for your next fundraising event, obviously, we'd love for you to consider Handbid -- a simple, easy to use, awesome, fun, great-designed experience as it pertains to the event. So go check that out as well. And until next time, happy fundraising.

Jeff: Thanks for joining us on this compelling journey to uncover the game-changing strategies behind nonprofit websites. A special thank you to Monica Pitts, the creative mind behind May Create. We hope you've gained valuable insights and actionable tips that will help you take your nonprofit website to the next level. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.