The Beginner’s Guide to Online Donations:

Save/bookmark the link to this page for future access to the chapters.

 

What you will Do. Skills you will Learn.
Simply follow 14 weekly steps to get these three important online fundraising tech tools up and running:

Part 1. Your Web Presence. Create a modern, effective website that will call supporters to action to make a donation, volunteer, or subscribe.

Part 2. Digital Marketing and Communications. Connect with the supporters that your nonprofit needs through email newsletters, blog posts and targeted web pages.

Part 3. A Google AdWords Grant. Apply for a $10k/mo AdWords grant that will send high potential new subscribers, donors and volunteers straight to your nonprofit’s website.

 

The book is for people who are new to online fundraising-or who want to increase their level of online donations. The chapters present a simple, step by step progression showing how to do this. All technical concepts are presented in easy to grasp, jargon-free language, one simple step at a time: Perfect!

 

Ch. 1: How to Create a Website for Your Nonprofit. Setting Up Your New Website: choosing a name, web site services and connecting to the Internet.

• Guide 1. Choosing a website host and registering your website address.
• Guide 2. WWW: Weebly, Wix, or WordPress? Choosing a platform.
• Guide 3. Selecting an attractive website theme with modern features.

Ch. 2: Design a Website that’s User Friendly & Google Will Love.

• Guide 4. Important basics: quick and easy navigation—and mobile phone friendly too.
• Guide 5. Organizing your initial pages: keep the structure simple—but plan for growth.
• Guide 6. Quick start your SEO: Make including these ultra simple search magnets in your initial pages a habit now.

Furnishing Your New Website
Ch. 3: How to Create a Website: Your Brand, Page Design & Content.

• Guide 7. Branding: adding a logo and slogan; choosing fonts, colors and columns.
• Guide 8. Posting a new blog and adding a new webpage: Let’s create 2 copy/paste/edit templates.
• Guide 9. Four ways to add written content: which one is the easiest for you to use? Plus, adding links and photos.

Ch. 4: How to Accept Donations Online & Build an Email List Now.

• Guide 10. Four must-have copy/paste webpage snippets for tables, bullets & indents.
• Guide 11. Get collecting right away: Quick start volunteer and subscription forms. Collecting online donations.
• Guide 12. Pre-Publish Checklist: Final page edit. Checking spelling, grammar and links.

Simple Landing Pages. Simple SEO
Ch. 5: Landing Pages that Convert & Optimized Keywords.

• Guide 13. Keywords and the 21st Century Communication Secret: [Shhh… It’s all about them!]. Use the same language your visitors use.
• Guide 14. Landing Pages are Your Salesmen: They convert a casual visitor into a donor, volunteer or subscriber.
• Guide 15. 12 steps to building a perfect landing page template. Bonus checklist.

Ch. 6: Simple SEO Tools: Keywords, Writing and Content Marketing.

• Guide 16. Demystifying SEO. Use keywords in your headings, page title, page description and content. Post information rich, long content.
• Guide 17. Writing Techniques.
• Guide 18. Build visibility and attract visitors: Promote your blog or landing page to colleagues: earn their links (Google likes links!).

PART 2. MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
Marketing & Communications
Ch. 7: Fundraising Goals, Target Markets and Your Nonprofit’s Story.

• Guide 19. Your needs: get specific about your support goals. Do you want supporters that are donors, volunteers, subscribers? How many?
• Guide 20. Who is your target market: Who are these new supporters you are hoping to reach? What causes do they want to support? We need an avatar here!
• Guide 21. Your brand: who are you? What does your nonprofit do? Specifically, in sound bites, let’s make this sound attractive to your new supporters.

Ch. 8: Write a communications calendar, targeted communications channels, launch a campaign.

• Guide 22. Develop an achievable communications calendar.
• Guide 23. Your communication connection: where will you launch your first campaign? Clearly define the channels that connect you to your target supporters: newsletter, blog, social media, AdWords?
• Guide 24. Launch your first campaign. Let’s connect your first campaign to your perfect landing page—and convert visitors into donors.

Email List Building and Email Newsletters
Ch. 9: Email List Building: signup forms, pop-ups and incentives.

• Guide 25. Collecting subscribers. What information should you ask of a new subscriber?
• Guide 26. Installing pop-ups on your website. Which type? Where? What should they say?
• Guide 27. Do you have a free offer? Compiling an e-book or membership program to entice new subscribers.

Ch. 10: Romance subscribers: subject lines, the best email format, click-through buttons, launch a new compelling email campaign.

• Guide 28. Subject lines. Your chance to be both creative and a Sherlock too.
• Guide 29. What should your email look like? How long? What will lure subscribers to click through to an actionable landing page?
• Guide 30. Launch. Write a new, compelling, newsletter, dovetailed with an action-oriented landing page. Then send it!

PART 3. A GOOGLE ADWORDS GRANT
How to Apply for an AdWords Ad Grant
Ch. 11: Grant requirements, apply for an AdWords grant, create a sample AdWords campaign using landing page keywords.

• Guide 31. Step-by-step: How to apply for the $10k/month AdWords advertising grant.
• Guide 32. Setting up a simple, sample AdWords campaign to complete the application process.
• Guide 33. Paste your new ad into your Google AdWords Account to complete the application process.

Ch. 12:

• Guide 34. Organizing a structure for campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads.
• Guide 35. Keywords: how to find them and what they do. Two dependable ways to find effective keywords. Get this right and you’ll get a home run every time.
• Guide 36. Writing ads. Think outside of the box? Hmmm. How to be wildly creative while working inside of a box.

Managing and Optimizing your AdWords Account
Ch. 13: Powerful, simple tools. AdWords quality score and ad rank. AdWords performance statistics: What’s your goal?

• Guide 37. Powerful, simple tools: ad extensions, descriptive URLs, expanded titles, budget, ad schedule and location.
• Guide 38. AdWords quality score and ad rank: bids, clicks, relevance, visitor experience, position and conversions. Yeesh. White Speech Bubble.
• Guide 39. AdWords performance statistics: What’s your goal? Clicks? No. Your ultimate goal is donations—right? Consequently, what should you optimize first? What should you weed out?

Ch. 14: Keyword Optimization: 3 Ways to Find Customer Search Terms.

• Guide 40. Minimizing poor CTR keywords and maximizing high performing keywords. Negative Keywords. Duplicate Keywords. Grouping Keywords. Keyword placement in the ad text.
• Guide 41. Landing Pages and AdWords Conversion Tracking Codes. Tracking Conversions.
• Guide 42. Google Analytics. Google Webmaster (Search Console). Site Maps.

Want to enjoy the book’s learning process with a teacher? See the online, teacher-led courses behind this book:

OL 540 Certificate Program: Nonprofit Google AdWords Training Program.

OL 640 Certificate Program: How to Build a Website Training Program

 

Contact us with questions.

 

We look forward to your insights and comments!

 

Sincerely,

 

Tim Magee

Executive Director

Center for Sustainable Development

 

Tim Magee is the author of:
A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation, Routledge, Oxford.
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Online Donations. September 2016.

 

Copyright © 2016, Tim Magee

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