Your nonprofit works hard to attract donors. Emails, social media posts, fundraising campaigns. The whole gamut.
What happens when someone clicks your Donate button and never gives?
The problem may be the donation page itself.
M+R Benchmarks 2026 found that mobile devices accounted for 52 percent of nonprofit website visits in 2025. Yet, mobile visitors generated only 28 percent of online donation revenue.
Desktop visitors gave an average of $168 per gift. Mobile visitors $88.
These numbers do not prove that poor mobile design caused the difference. Donor habits, age, gift size and other factors may also play a role. But they give nonprofit leaders a strong reason to examine their mobile donation experience.
Here are five practical ways to start.
1. Make your Donate button easy to find
A supporter shouldn’t have to hunt for that Donate button.
Research from NextAfter found that 28 percent of the 143 nonprofit websites made the Donate button difficult to find on mobile. It took more than 3 seconds for people to find.
What to do: Open your nonprofit’s website on your phone. Ask someone unfamiliar with the site to find the donation page.
Can they find it quickly? Does the button stand out? Is the word “Donate” clear?
NextAfter reported an experiment in which a button that took mobile visitors directly to the donation form increased donations by 50 percent. That is encouraging. It is not a guarantee that the same change will produce the same outcome for you.
2. Make giving easier
Typing on a phone is frustrating.
Long forms, tiny buttons, confusing errors, and unnecessary questions can cause even the most-patient to give up.
What to do: Complete your entire donation process on a phone, from the homepage to the confirmation screen.
Look for problems:
- Forms that require too much typing
- Fields that are difficult to tap
- Errors that do not explain how to fix a problem
3. Give donors convenient payment choices
Some supporters prefer credit cards. Others prefer digital wallets or services such as PayPal.
M+R’s 2026 report found that 79 percent of nonprofits accepted PayPal, while 58 percent accepted Google Pay and 57 percent accepted Apple Pay.
What to do: Check which payment methods your donation platform supports. Review your donor data, platform costs and audience needs.
Make sure each payment option works on a real phone.
Don’t add payment methods simply because other nonprofits use them. Track which options your supporters complete gifts.
4. Explain what a donation will do
A donation form should remind people why their gift matters.
A supporter may arrive from a fundraising email or social media post. If the donation page gives little context, the reason for giving may become less clear.
What to do: Add a short, specific explanation of how gifts support your work.
A food bank, for example, might explain that donations help provide groceries to local families.
Keep the message brief enough to read on a phone.
You can test versions of your message. Change one major element at a time and compare results.
5. Measure completed gifts, not just website traffic
More visitors do not automatically mean more donations.
M+R Benchmarks 2026 says that 1.6 percent of all nonprofit website visitors made a donation in 2025. The average was $1.33 in donation revenue per visitor.
What to do: Review your website and donation platform analytics. Track:
- Mobile and desktop visits to your donation page
- Completed gifts by device
- Donation-page conversion rates
- Average gift size by device
- Where visitors leave the donation process
Start with the biggest gap you can verify. If many people visit your mobile donation page but few complete gifts, investigate the form before spending more to drive traffic.
Make one change. Record the results, and compare performance over a suitable period.
Want to find more value in your nonprofit’s existing marketing? Team Trust Productions helps nonprofits make their videos and marketing work harder. Request a free 15-minute video marketing review to identify three ways to get more value from the video content you already have.