Giving is engagement: getting the donation step right

The hardest part of digital campaigning is getting someone to take their first action. 

But once they’ve done something (signed a petition, sent an email to target, signed up to an online event) something shifts. They’re engaged. For a brief moment, you have their full attention. That’s why donation asks work so well as a follow-up action, not just as a standalone ask.

Engagement & donation feedback loop

The first thing you should remember: donating is activism. For some people, it’s the most radical way of showing their support to a campaign. For others, it’s the easiest way to feel good about doing good, or the only form of acting that’s accessible to them.

Fundraising isn’t separate from campaigning – it’s just another step on an engagement journey. Most individual, grassroots donors start by taking a smaller step, like signing a petition, or signing up to an event. With the right mix of opportunities and motivation, they can then help organisations fund their campaigns.

That’s why campaigning and fundraising should work together. Campaigns bring people in, and their donations help keep the work going.

Taking advantage of the moment of attention

We live in a busy world and our campaigns compete for airtime and attention with an endless stream of online content. And, let’s face it – much of that content comes from companies with more resources and time for testing.

So here’s a simple rule in digital campaigning to live by: when someone takes an action, offer them another one right away. People who just acted are far more likely to act again while you’ve got their attention.

A typical “daisy-chain” of actions might look like this:

1. A supporter signs a petition
2. They share the petition on Whatsapp with a friend
3. They’re asked to chip in to support the campaign

By that point they’ve already shown they care. A donation becomes a natural next step – and giving money to a cause makes them that much more likely to stay engaged longer term.

There are lots of reasons people give, but there’s always an emotional reason: fear, guilt, anger, or altruism. Fundraising often performs best during moments when people are already emotionally engaged with an issue.

Adding a donation step in Proca

All of Proca action tools can be smoothly integrated with a follow-up fundraising appeal. We have three simple options available to add a donation step to your campaign.

1. Redirecting to your fundraising page

If you have your own donation page or platform, all of our campaign tools can also integrate smoothly with your existing system, including those using SEPA, PayPal, Stripe and other payment methods and providers.

After someone completes an action – like signing a petition or sending an email – you can simply redirect them to your preferred donation page. You can set this up yourself in your widget editor by adding a link to your page. This will add a “donate” button on the post-action share step.

The setup is simple:

1. The supporter completes the main action
2. They’re redirected to the post-action share page and from there can click on the “donate” button which links to your page
3. The link includes tracking information so you know where the donor came from

This works with any donation platform and method payment, because all you do is provide a link to your existing fundraising pages that already include all of your configurations. Because the donation happens on another platform, Proca can’t see whether the payment was completed. Instead, we track how many people click through to the donation page and click on the donate button. The link includes UTM parameters, which allow your fundraising team to see where the traffic came from in tools like Google Analytics.

2. An advanced integration with your fundraising platform

For organisations that want deeper integration, Proca also supports more advanced options. We can work with you to integrate your donation platform directly into the campaign flow.

The journey is this:

1. The supporter completes the main action
2. They land on the next step and see the donation ask, where the donate form works directly with your own fundraising platform – we can even pre-select currency and suggested gift amounts
3. The form fields on your donation page are prefilled with the information we grab from the main action form – fewer forms to fill usually means more actions completed

This set up offers the smoothest and most seamless experience for the supporter, and the best workflow and tracking for your team. We’ve built a number of integrations with some of the most used fundraising platforms out there – and we’re always happy to do custom development to help you integrate fundraising into your campaign. Get in touch and our development team will work with you to build or switch on this custom integration.

3. Proca-managed donation step

For clients who don’t use another dedicated donation management platform, Proca offers a simple Donate action powered by Stripe or PayPal, which only allows credit card donations. 

It works like this:

1. The supporter completes the main action
2. They land on the next step and see the donation ask
3. They fill in their credit card information and the donation is processed by Stripe or PayPal

In this set up we can track not only clicks, but also completed donations and their amount, so you can easily see how people are engaging with the donate step in your campaign dashboard.