Digital Giving for Small to Midsized Nonprofits: Best Practices in 2025

You probably don’t need us to tell you that digital giving is here to stay.  

Today about half of all fundraising efforts are conducted online, and surveys have found that regardless of the fundraising venue—in person or online—most Americans prefer to give digitally, through tools like online platforms, mobile apps, or text-to-give. In fact, digital giving is now such an intrinsic component of charitable giving that even small to midsized nonprofits with limited paid staff and modest budgets now have no choice but to provide all the digital giving bells and whistles—or risk losing donors. For nonprofits with so many priorities and so few resources, dialing in digital giving can seem beyond reach.  

Does this predicament sound familiar? If so, you’re far from alone. Over 75% of registered nonprofits have budgets under $1 million.  

But here's the good news: There are lots of practical, doable strategies for even small-scale nonprofits to implement and optimize digital giving. If you’re a team member of a:  

• faith-based organization 

• community service group 

• local arts or culture group 

• area health and human services organization 

• school or PTO 

• youth or sports organization 

• or other small to midsized nonprofit

you can start using the suggestions in this article today to help your organization maximize revenues and strengthen donor engagement.  

Who are we? We’re Roc Giving, powered by Payroc. We specialize in serving small to midsized nonprofits. We support your missions by providing an affordable digital giving platform with intuitive tools, just the right amount of features, transparent pricing, and modern reporting and user interfaces.  

So let’s take a look at the digital giving best practices for small to mid-sized nonprofits in 2025. We’ll review recurring donations, mobile optimization, donor personalization, reducing friction, leveraging social media, promoting transparency and trust, using text-to-give, and continuous measuring and optimization.  

1. Choose the right donation platform 

Perhaps the best first step for smaller nonprofits to take in optimizing their digital giving is choosing a donation platform that’s a good fit.  

If you’re not already using a digital donation platform, please skip ahead to the bullets below.  

If you are already using a digital giving platform, now is a good time to assess if it’s working well for you. Ask yourself and your team: Does your platform lack essential capabilities, or conversely, is it too complex? Do your staff and volunteers struggle to use it? Does it lack customization in campaign setup? Does it force you to use separate processes for payment processing and online giving? Does it require lots of manual bookkeeping and administration? Does it make it overly difficult to access the donation and campaign insights you need? Is the customer support you need poor or nonexistent?  

These common challenges are all signs that your current donation platform may not be the right fit for your organization. And without a donation platform that meets your needs, you won’t be able to make good use of the other digital-giving best practices enumerated in this article—and your funding and donor engagement will suffer.  

ACTION—Move to a donation platform that offers:  

• Ease of use for your staff and volunteers 

• Recurring giving 

• Simple, mobile-friendly donation forms 

• The ability to accept credit cards, debit cards, ACH (digital checks) 

• Design tools so you can make donation pages and forms look like your brand 

• Affordable, transparent fees 

• Automated thank-you receipts 

• Basic donor data 

• Real-time reporting 

• Real-person support 

2. Make recurring donations the default 

Recurring donations provide you with a consistent revenue stream as well as stronger donor relationships and engagement. They can and should be the bedrock of your revenue plan. 

Fortunately, sustained giving is up. Monthly donors now give 42% more annually than one-time givers. And according to the M&R Benchmarks study, in 2024, monthly donations accounted for 31% of online fundraising, up from 27% in 2023.  

And digital giving is what makes recurring donations possible. Digital payment options allow donors to “set it and forget it.” They’re easy and frictionless.  

ACTION—Lean into recurring giving.  

Take a close look at your organization’s recurring giving structure and digital giving options, and make improvements wherever you can. 

• Prioritize monthly giving, sustaining memberships, commitment giving, circle of support giving, champion giving, or whichever recurring-giving nomenclature and structure works best for your organization. Consider making this your primary funding focus for the coming year.  
• Make it easy for donors to sign up, preferably with one click. Also provide a range of recurring donation methods, including credit and debit cards and ACH (digital checks). Also offer several access points if you can, such as a giving link or page on your website, QR code, and text-to-give.   

• Recognize and reward loyalty. Don’t forget to let recurring donors how much they’re appreciated. Find simple, maintainable ways to show them your organization’s gratitude. Handwritten thank-you notes are a nice touch. Regular updates describing the impact of their giving are always meaningful.  
• Ask donors to cover or share platform fees. Some digital giving tools offer this option, which allows your supporters to pay for, wholly or in part, the processing fees for their donations. Consider activating this feature, and explain to your donors why and how to use it. You may be able to simply add an opt-in checkbox to your payment form.  

3. Optimize for mobile to make donating easier  

Today’s donors expect giving to be easy and feel good. Part of this equation is donors’ reliance on mobile phones. In 2024, about one-third of charitable donations were made on mobile devices, and 57% of nonprofit website visitors arrived via mobile devices.  If your website and donation pages are mobile-friendly and fast-loading, donors can navigate them more quickly and make donations more efficiently. 

ACTION—Test your donation pages and forms on mobile, then adjust.  

• Simplify your donation form. Studies indicate that abandoned transactions are a significant problem in the nonprofit community. Up to 70% of visitors who begin an online donation do not complete it. What is your abandonment rate? What if you could lower it by even 10 or 20%? A quick tip: If donors need to pinch and zoom, your form isn’t mobile-friendly. Offer a one-click donation option if possible.  
• Use QR codes on all your marketing materials, print and digital, to allow donors to jump directly to your donation platform.   
• Enable text-to-give because it converts well. It’s fast and convenient for donors.  
• Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly. 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices, so they need to be brief and feature a large, clickable donate button.  
• Offer multiple payment options (credit, debit, ACH) to make it easier for donors to give with whichever method they prefer. And don’t forget to feature recurring giving!  
• Close out donation transactions with a warm thank-you. If your donation platform generates a pop-up confirmation screen after a donation is completed and/or automatically sends a confirmation email, be sure that the message in these communications is appropriately warm and grateful.  

4. Personalize to help donors connect and feel heard 

A good digital giving platform will let you easily segment and personalize donor asks and communications so that you’re delivering targeted content as much as possible. After all, that’s one of the great things about digital giving—information is stored in sortable, searchable databases, allowing you to match donor interests and giving histories to funding priorities.  

ACTION—Work on segmenting and personalization 

 Try speaking to unique subsets of donors. Compared to in-person fundraising, digital fundraising can seem cold and impersonal, but it can be made more high-touch with personalized emails and SMS campaigns that attend to donor history and preferences.   

• Connect the dots. If a donor has given to a specific cause with your organization in the past, build on this information by acknowledging their past gift and connecting the current ask to this giving preference.   

• Communicate regularly with donors between asks. Send personal thank-you messages and updates. Acknowledge repeat donors with exclusive updates and tokens of appreciation. And don’t forget to ask for feedback along the way, too. Getting the balance and frequency of requests and relationship-building right is important.  

5. Use text-to-give and SMS giving links so donors can give instantly 

If this is a feature of your digital giving platform you haven’t yet used, we encourage you to learn more about it and give it a try. It’s direct, easy, and effective. In fact, text giving sees open rates of 98% (compared to 20% for emails) and response rates over 45%. And if your current digital giving platform doesn’t offer text-to-give (or makes it too hard to use)? Well, that’s yet another important reason to consider switching to a platform that meets your needs.  

ACTION—Find out how your donors respond to text giving 

• Build an opt-in list. Text messages are limited to 160 characters, and nonprofits must build and maintain an opt-in list for this purpose, but these challenges are more than worth the potential rewards. 
• Try text giving at events. When your donors are gathered together and motivated to support your organization, ask them to donate on the spot and watch what happens. This is also a good time to invite stakeholders to opt in to text giving.  
• Run a recurring gift campaign. Try text giving for a major recurring gift campaign. It’s a great way to convert one-time donors to monthly donors.  
• Use story-based appeals. Texting a very brief impact story with a giving link can be highly effective at driving donations on a certain day that’s meaningful to your organization.  

6. Continuously measure and refine  

In digital giving, as with all forms of giving, it’s essential for nonprofits to know their stakeholders. The difference with digital fundraising tools is that robust engagement and payments reporting data is available at your fingertips, making analysis easier and more effective.  

• Track donor engagement with analytics tools. What was your opens percentage? Response rate? Conversion rate? Average gift size? Drop-off rate? Figure out what your key metrics are and follow them for asks and campaigns over time, then make adjustments as you go to try to improve your numbers. As they say, the more you know . . . 
• Use A/B methods to test messaging and calls to action. It can be hard to predict which messages and what wording will best convey your nonprofit’s funding needs and impact stories. So consider spending a little extra time up front and A/B test your messages with a small group before sending out a mass appeal. Test one variable at a time: Subject line, call-to-action wording, image or no image, short vs. long text, etc.  
• Analyze donations for trends and opportunities. Export your donor data and use a spreadsheet tool to look for trends in giving by time (which months or events generate the most giving?), average gift size by campaign or donor type, number of new donors, recurring donor growth, campaign effectiveness, and more. Then use what you learn to increase giving. If your average gift is $42, for example, ask for $50. If donors are lapsing, send out re-engagement emails or texts. 
   

Reach out for a little help 

Small to midsized nonprofits do an outsized amount of the helping in this world, and Payroc wants to give back. That’s why we designed Roc Giving specifically to support smaller and mid-sized nonprofits in their critical efforts to transform lives and communities.  

Our digital giving platform offers:  

• Custom campaigns: Fully brandable donation pages and campaigns. 

• Donor choice: One-time, recurring, or pledge-based giving. 

• Smart insights: Real-time analytics to guide decisions. 

• Fee offset option: Let donors choose to cover fees. 

• One-stop shop: With Roc Giving, online giving and payment processing are unified. No need for separate processes, reporting, and support.  

• Future-proofing: Access to upcoming features like text-to-give and more. 

• Dedicated support: Access to a dedicated team of actual human experts, not chatbots, for one-on-one support whenever you need it.  
  

In case you’re not familiar with Payroc, we’re one of the world’s leading payments companies. Backed by Payroc’s scale and support, Roc Giving gives small to mid-sized nonprofits a powerful edge in a digital-first world. 

We’re standing by to help you sort through digital giving platform features and differentiators. We’re here to offer a little help to the people who normally do all the helping. Visit https://payroc.com/solutions/roc-giving/ or contact us at rocgiving@payroc.com to get started. You can also schedule a demo here.