Digital fundraising strategy: how to elevate donations in 2026 and beyond

Digital fundraising for nonprofits: key benefits

You can benefit from digital fundraising in several ways. Most notably, digital fundraising improves scalability and delivers these "wish list" items for your nonprofit:

Greater reach

Digital fundraising helps you reach a lot more people — without needing a massive marketing team. Most digital fundraising platforms offer user-friendly automation that makes it easy for you to create digital ads that drive people to campaign pages, connect with new followers on social media, and build out email lists to strengthen ongoing engagement.

With greater reach and software that enables global currency support, you could connect with digital donors in other parts of the world.

Lower costs

The cost of an in-person fundraising event can eat up to 75 cents of every dollar raised, and direct-mail campaigns are costly too. With digital fundraising, you won't deal with banquet facility rentals, caterers, or printing costs.

Better engagement

Using digital channels for fundraising gives you an opportunity for real-time engagement. You can share content on your social channels, immediately respond to comments and mentions, and publicly acknowledge donors.

The 4 steps in a digital fundraising campaign

Your digital fundraising for nonprofits generally follows four steps:

1. Attract

This first step is all about creating, publishing, and promoting content — whether that's digital ads, social posts, or case studies. You don't need unique content for every channel. For example, you could turn an excerpt from a case study into a social post, or use a photo from a case study as the basis for a paid ad.

2. Nurture

At the nurture stage, you'll focus on growing new relationships with the goal of driving conversions. This is where data becomes critical — you need to track how people are interacting with your content and what seems to capture their attention. For some people, emails might spur them to donate, whereas other donors may be more moved by your social posts.

3. Convert

You can't afford to wait for people to organically convert, and that's why this third step is so important. At this point, you should actively ask for donations. With AI, you can customize ask amounts and even turn one-time contributions into recurring donations.

4. Retain

The "retain" stage is easier when your donors are on a recurring donation plan. With one-time donors, retention is a matter of knowing when to ask for a subsequent donation. (This is again another great use case for AI). Retention also relies heavily on you continuing to share your stories with donors and thanking them promptly for donations.

How do nonprofits master digital fundraising?

An example of how machine learning personalizes donation requests based on location, wireless provider, device, and a large dataset on the backend.

Let’s talk about how you can boost digital conversions.

Use audience segmentation

Treating all your donors as a single entity isn't the best way to get donations. Segmenting donors by specific characteristics is a better strategy for succeeding at digital fundraising.

You can start segmentation with a review of your existing and potential donors, digging into their similarities. There are a number of ways you might want to sort your donors and donations, such as:

• average annual donation amount
• private or corporate donors
• demographics
• location
• donation methods (debit card, cryptocurrency, etc.)
• preferred digital channels
• length of engagement (long-time donors vs. new donors)
• number of touchpoints in the donor nurturing phase

By segmenting your donors, you can develop highly targeted and relevant content that appeals to each audience.

The most sophisticated digital fundraising channels now use AI to automate audience segmentation, continuously analyzing your digital donor behavior to identify patterns and preferences. This allows you or your digital fundraising agency to deliver personalized messaging at scale without manually sorting through donor data. As you implement your digital strategy for non-profits, automated segmentation ensures that each digital donor receives communications tailored to their giving history, engagement level, and preferred digital giving practices.

Personalize donation requests

When your digital fundraising incorporates AI, you can take the guesswork out of knowing whom to ask for donations and when. Using personalized requests, you'll boost first-time donations, recurring donations, and average donation amounts.

Here's how it works: advanced digital fundraising platforms look at information about each visitor — things like where they're located, what device they're using, their internet provider, and how they've donated before. The system uses this information to show each person a donation amount that makes sense for them specifically.

The technology doesn't stop after someone makes their first gift. It also figures out the best time to ask your one-time donors if they'd like to become monthly supporters. Best of all, it happens automatically, so you're building a stronger recurring donor base without adding work for your team.

Display social proof

Social proof is a great way to nudge potential donors toward conversion, and it's another feature that's easy for you to implement with copy-and-paste code.

Animal Haven incorporated a social proof popup that shows recent donations and lets users click a "donate" button to quickly reach the donation form.

Harness the power of peer-to-peer fundraising

Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising is a powerful digital tool that lets donors create, share, and manage their own fundraisers. This initiative requires almost no admin time other than the initial copying and pasting of code to set up a P2P integration.

Enable global donations

If you serve international causes, you can build your donor base by offering responsive, multilingual website experiences and enabling global currencies.

Ethar Relief updated its website to accept donations in more than 135 currencies and offer donor experiences in 20 languages.

Choosing the right digital fundraising technology

Selecting the right digital fundraising solutions can make or break your success with the best digital fundraising campaigns. As you evaluate digital fundraising platforms, several key capabilities should guide your decision-making process.

Here are the essential features you'll want for modern digital fundraising for NGO and nonprofit organizations:

Cost-effective pricing models

The most innovative pricing structures in digital marketing for fundraising now include donor-covered transaction fees. Leading platforms report that 82-87% of donors cover processing costs when asked, reducing your effective platform fee to less than 1.6%. This approach transforms digital fundraising solutions from a cost center into a revenue optimizer for you.

Advanced payment flexibility

Today's digital donor expects convenience. When you run the best digital fundraising campaigns, you'll accept credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, bank transfers, and even cryptocurrency. If you're focused on digital fundraising for NGO work across borders, you'll need multi-currency support for 135+ currencies and country-specific payment methods to maximize your digital donor experience.

Enterprise-grade security and reliability

When you evaluate any digital fundraiser platform, confirm certifications including ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2, and PCI DSS Level 1 compliance. Your digital fundraising agency or internal team needs infrastructure that can handle 300+ transactions per second with 99.9% uptime, especially during peak giving seasons and emergency campaigns.

Seamless integration capabilities

Your digital fundraising channels should connect effortlessly with your existing CRM, such as Salesforce, Blackbaud, and Microsoft Dynamics. Real-time data syncing of 100+ data points ensures you have immediate access to donor information across all your digital giving practices.

Mobile-first design

With the majority of online traffic now coming from mobile devices, mobile-optimized checkout experiences are non-negotiable for you. One-click donation options and self-service donor portals represent table stakes for modern digital fundraising best practices.

Speed of deployment

The best platforms allow you to launch sophisticated campaigns in minutes, not months. Whether you're responding to emergencies or capitalizing on year-end giving momentum, rapid deployment capabilities separate leading digital fundraising solutions from legacy systems.

The fastest path to digital fundraising

Digital fundraising may seem like a complex initiative, but with the right software platform, you can put your digital campaigns into motion with minimal resources.

Fundraise Up is the user-friendly online fundraising solution for nonprofits. You can count on Fundraise Up for scalability, security, and transparent contract-free pricing.

Schedule a demo now.