Online fundraising is a proven way to quickly reach alumni, no matter where they are. These online giving strategies will inspire support for your institution.
Liz Murphy
Updated:
April 1, 2026
Summary
• Audit your donation forms for user-friendliness: Even small points of friction can cause donors to abandon their gift, so test your forms with real users across different devices to ensure a smooth giving experience.
• Launch targeted SMS fundraising campaigns to cut through the digital noise: Text messages offer a direct and urgent way to solicit gifts, but make sure to keep them concise, timely, and always permission-based.
• Embrace omnichannel marketing to build deeper donor relationships: By coordinating your messages across email, social media, and your website, you can create a seamless journey that enhances alumni engagement and boosts campaign effectiveness.
• Spark enthusiasm and urgency with short, pop-up giving challenges: These mini-campaigns, often focused on specific affinity groups, can create friendly competition and drive quick participation for your fundraising goals.
• Ensure your marketing efforts are cohesive by integrating data with your CRM: Connecting your communication channels helps avoid fragmented data, providing a holistic view of alumni interactions for more impactful campaigns.
• Remember to personalize thank-you messages and highlight the impact of donations: Showing genuine appreciation and explaining where their money goes encourages long-term donor loyalty and continued support.
As fundraising grows and changes, so do the best methods to raise money for your higher education institution. Embracing digital fundraising helps you to reach your funding goals, engage your alumni community, make giving more convenient, and stay relevant among donors.
To be successful, these fundraising efforts must go hand in hand with digital marketing. By combining both, you’ll engage alumni through their preferred online channels, crafting a seamless experience from first contact to donation. In this post, we’ll explore high-impact strategies that will help your institution refine and effectively promote its digital giving programs.
The most successful and sustainable fundraising strategies are built on a solid foundation—for online giving, that’s a streamlined, user-friendly donation form. Completing your donation form is the last step alumni must complete to contribute to your school, but even minor points of friction at this stage could cause the gift to fall through.
To mitigate this, audit your donation forms to ensure they follow user experience (UX) design best practices. Find a few test subjects and conduct usability tests, during which you’ll:
These tests can pinpoint unnecessary or confusing questions you should adjust or remove altogether. Feedback can also spark ideas for behavioral nudges like progress bars and social proof ("Join 1,325 alumni who have already given") or additional UX features like suggested giving amounts and more ways to pay. Test the form with various devices, browsers, and demographics to get a deep understanding of its functionality.
Consider conducting similar tests or applying these insights to your other forms to enhance overall alumni experiences and satisfaction. For example, optimizing forms for your volunteer program can streamline and enhance your volunteer recruitment efforts.
Text message or SMS fundraising is an effective way to cut through digital noise, drive urgency, and solicit gifts in a personal, impactful way. While this strategy is similar to other digital fundraising channels like email marketing that offer a direct line of communication with donors, SMS campaigns have special best practices concerning:
Always ensure your SMS flows are permission-based (i.e., ask for the recipient’s consent) and offer clear opt-out paths. To collect more phone numbers for your database, you could consider adding an optional question to your donation form for alumni who want to receive updates.
As Allegiance Group + Pursuant’s guide to omni-channel marketing explains, an integrated marketing approach enhances digital fundraising by cultivating deeper relationships with donors, boosting responses and conversions, maximizing resources, and capturing more valuable opportunities. The guide breaks down the steps for launching an omni-channel campaign as follows:
Set up data tracking tools for each communication channel before launching the campaign (e.g., platforms for website traffic, social media engagement, email open and click-through rates, etc.). To avoid fragmented data, choose marketing solutions that integrate with your constituent relationship management (CRM) system.
Plan short, pop-up giving challenges that create a sense of competition and urgency among alumni. For example, your institution might run 24- or 48-hour mini-campaigns targeting specific affinity groups (e.g., class years, academic departments, or athletic teams). The group that raises the most in that time period wins recognition or even a special prize.
Promote the challenge across all channels, using SMS notifications as last-minute reminders to nudge participation. Make sure giving is as quick and easy as possible by linking directly to your donation form or simply allowing alumni to text a code and donate. Once the campaign wraps up, show your appreciation for donors by sending them personalized thank-you messages and explaining the impact of their donation.
Digital giving is central to advancing your higher education institution. For the best results, first review and refine the building blocks of your fundraising activities and then experiment with engaging, integrated marketing techniques. With these tactics, your team can generate sustainable giving growth while deepening alumni affinity.
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Liz Murphy
Giving Days are one of the most important fundraising events today for institutions and nonprofits alike. According to EAB, 12.7% of private institution alumni and 19.8% of public institution alumni make their first gift on a giving day. In turn, powerful Giving Day platforms have cropped up to help teams get the most out of these events.
With so many excellent giving platforms available today, we’d like to zoom out and let you know which features you should consider essential and how you can make the most of your eventual choice. Let’s get started:
A good giving platform should ideally be:
Test your dashboards, giving pages, forms, and all other touchpoints to make sure all the people involved in your Giving Day have a smooth and memorable experience across all devices.
For social media, your team should be looking for features such as:
💡 Consider which social media your donors and supporters are most active in. You’ll want a platform that integrates to the same level of depth on those specific platforms.
Giving Days, due to the nature of being a focused fundraiser within a short window, will naturally need a platform that can handle many transactions at the same time. You will have bursts of transactions, such as when the campaign launches and after a successful promotion. A good Giving Day platform also needs to incorporate SSL/PCI-compliant payment processing as well as any other compliance requirements depending on the national or state laws applicable to your fundraiser.
You need to be able to engage donors and potential donors before, during, and after your Giving Day. Automated and personalized engagement through email, text, and social media may be crucial, especially if communicating with a larger pool of donors.
💡 Depending on your overall engagement strategy, you may want a fundraising platform that has a few donor engagement features on top or a dedicated engagement platform that works in tandem with your fundraising tool.
With a relatively short burst of high activity, you should be looking for platforms that support:
💡 Keep the above features as well as your needs in mind as different might CRMs interact with different tools in varying capacities.
Engaging and enabling donations from mobile device users are no longer something novel. Today, you’ll want a giving platform that not only engages mobile users but also optimizes their experience so that they don’t end up with an inferior experience.
Some platforms provide an app-based approach, while others go for mobile-optimized browser experiences.
💡Surveys and donor device metrics should help you get a sense of how much of a priority mobile features are for you as well as which method your donors prefer.
The cornerstone of any modern-day Giving Day campaign is a well-designed, customizable fundraising page that captures your organization's unique brand and mission. Customization is especially important for peer-to-peer fundraisers, where you’ll want to find the right mix between flexible templates and recognizable branding.
If you are regularly hosting Giving Day fundraisers, chances are that you have a long-term fundraising plan. This is where you’ll want a giving platform that is viable for both long-term and short-term fundraising efforts. Depending on your needs, look for platforms that include:
to make sure that your Giving Days produce an effective ripple effect.
It’s easy to get lost in all the fancy and innovative features that fundraising platforms offer today. Instead of trying to use a feature simply for the sake of trying something new, keep your mission and the people involved at the heart of your Giving Day campaign by enabling your storytelling and vision through the features available.
Whether it’s connected to an existing CRM or comes with its own, you will most likely get a good amount of data about your supporters, donors, and prospects throughout your campaign. Make detailed segments to optimize your outreach and communication efforts and enrich these segments after your campaign to make your engagement better with each fundraiser.
Always test your forms, pages, and communication efforts on mobile devices to check how they would feel for a donor trying to donate. Your CTAs might be a couple of scrolls away and on the side of your giving page when it’s front and center on other devices.
Your recent first-time donor might just be your next superstar supporter. Make sure your donors feel good about their contribution by keeping them informed on goals reached throughout the day. Keep them looped in on how the funds are being used and inform them about future initiatives coming up.
Giving Days are so integral to your long-term fundraising plan that you might feel like the choice of platform might make or break your strategy entirely. However, a lot of work goes into making these platforms work optimally for a specific institution or organization.
If you’re looking for a platform that syncs effortlessly with CRMs with a team committed to ensuring your giving day success, get in touch with us, and we’d be glad to show you how we can help. 🫡
Giving Day Platforms: Essential Software Features
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Here are two main reasons why Online Giving is the best place to invest your time and talent.
1. It is the hottest form of giving right now – Online giving in Education sector has risen by a staggering 12.3 % and 15 % in last two years.
2. It has seen the largest adoption rates by the Millennials
62% of donors worldwide prefer to give online
Our experience with over hundred partner schools across the world had taught a few things about various friction points on Giving Pages. Some common examples include:
1. excessive steps or clicks in the giving process
2. multiple or conflicting calls-to-action, non-essential buttons, menus, or navigational elements.
Simple math tells us that:
1. Even under the assumption of a very conservative conversion rate of 1 % for every 1,000 visitors, you will have 10 donors.
2. For the same 1,000 visits to your online donation form, if 3% of them convert into donors, you’ll have 30 donors. That’s a 200% improvement! And depending on your average gift amount, this could equate to a significant increase for your organisation.
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7- Effective Online Giving Practices
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Online fundraising can be a deceptively tricky subject. While the term simply refers to the process of raising money online, making the most of this strategy requires a dynamic approach on the part of your school.
When it comes to engaging with alumni, in particular, it’s doubly important to have a robust online fundraising strategy in place.
For this reason, your team should take a look at how you fundraiser online right now and decide whether or not you’re getting all you can out of this strategy.In this article, we’ll help you begin this process by discussing:
1. How your alumni engagement strategy can benefit from online fundraising
2. Online fundraising trends you should be using
3. Ways to boost alumni giving through online fundraising
4. Fundraising software tools that can improve your alumni engagement.
Ready to master online fundraising and improve your alumni engagement tactics? Let’s dive in!
Making the most of your online fundraising capabilities should be your first priority when perfecting how you engage with alumni!
As a school, your institution's fundraising needs and limitations likely look very different from other nonprofit organizations. For one thing, your core donor base (your alumni) are often spread far and wide across the country.
This means that to connect with alumni supporters, you’ll have to go the extra mile to meet them where they are.
The best way to do this? By fundraising online, your team can easily reach geographically-diverse alumni. This starts with accepting donations online, but also allows your school to regularly interact with your supporters via email, social media and more!
When your school makes the effort to interact with supporters online, you avoid the trap of remaining “out of sight and out of mind” to these individuals.
Through frequent online interaction, alumni are more likely to donate on a regular basis, as well as more likely to encourage their friends and family to give to your institution.
In addition to strengthening ties between your school and your alumni, online fundraising has several other key benefits:
1. Low overhead cost: After your initial investment in online fundraising software, online fundraising proves to more than make up for its upfront cost. Since everything is virtual, your team can allocate less personnel to manage your online fundraising efforts, as well as save money on physical marketing materials.
2. Simple setup: Once you pick the right software, your team can easily set up your online fundraising tools with little stress. Many services offer consultation during the implementation process, or you might lean on your fundraising consultant during this time for their expertise.
3. Increased donor knowledge: Another reason why online fundraising tools are so effective is because they can provide unmatched insight into your supporters. With every interaction your school has with alumni online, you will collect important data that can inform your engagement tactics moving forward.
The bottom line: By investing time and energy into perfecting your school’s online fundraising strategy, you’ll have an easier time reaching alumni donors while saving money and effort. Even better, when you do connect with these donors, your interactions will be more streamlined and more informative than traditional methods allow.
With the right strategy, your school can benefit from powerful new trends in online fundraising that simply can’t be matched by traditional fundraising methods.
In this section, we’ll highlight tactics that make the most of online fundraising’s dynamic potential by going further than simply accepting donations.
First, we’ll go over social fundraising techniques like crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaigns, and then we’ll show you how online fundraising can be paired with on-site events to help your school make the donation more accessible to your alumni supporters.
1. Crowdfunding. With the right crowdfunding software, your school can grow your donor base while raising money. Look for tools that allow you to easily brand donation pages, share campaigns across social media and email, and ones with team crowdfunding capabilities.
2. Peer-to-peer: Tapping into your alumni’s social network, donors can help your school reach more eyes online. By associating campaigns with your alumni fundraisers, potential supporters are more inclined to give since they’ll more closely associate your school with their friend, family member, or colleague.
1. Kiosks and card swipers: By investing in an on-site donation kiosk or card swiper, your team can accept donations from those who prefer to pay with a credit or debit card. Gifts are then transferred online to your bank account, so you never have to worry about depositing checks or keeping track of cash donations. You might use a kiosk or card swiper at events like walkathons, talent shows, charity auctions etc.
2. Live event streaming: Another dynamic way to raise money for your cause is to stream fundraising events online. Alumni who can’t make it will be able to participate in the festivities from their computer or mobile device, and because of your online donation tools, giving will be as easy as the click of a button.
The bottom line: As part of your fundraising strategy, your school shouldn’t discount tactics that marry the best parts of in-person fundraising methods with the functionality and ease-of-use that online fundraising provides.
Looking to optimize your online giving channels to boost alumni donations?
What’s so unique about online fundraising is that your team can truly customize the giving experience to make donation as seamless as possible for your alumni donors.
Check out some of these online fundraising best practices to maximize your alumni’s donor potential:
1. Offer simple donation forms: You don’t want to lose out on potential alumni gifts because your online donation form was too lengthy, confusing, or required too much effort to complete. Be sure to make your online donation forms as streamlined as possible and don’t require givers to register for an account to make a donation.
2. Encourage recurring giving: The quickest way to make sure you’re able to get the most out of your fundraising efforts? Prompt alumni to opt-into recurring giving when they make a donation. Give them the freedom to set the gift amount and the donation schedule so that they’re able to tailor the process to their preferences.
3. Match alumni gifts: With the right software, your school can increase your fundraising potential by receiving matched gifts from alumni who work for corporations that have a matching gift program in place. One convenient way to do this is to direct alumni to a matching gift database tool on your school’s website or to implement an automated matching gift software to streamline the process for your school’s team.
The bottom line: Offering online donation channels to your alumni donors will boost giving, but only if your school is able to make the most of these dynamic giving tools.
One of the most important parts of perfecting your school’s online fundraising strategy is picking the right online fundraising software to help you get the job done.
With all the options out there, it can be tricky to know what software to invest in and what kind of functionality you’ll need to stay on top of your online fundraising game.
Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of all the tools you need to look out for when picking your software!
Donation pages are the bread and butter of your online fundraising efforts. To make sure you reach the maximum number of alumni donors, your team should be sure to invest in online fundraising software that provides you with dynamic tools to customize your pages.
Invest in a software solution that allows you to:
1. Brand pages to your school with colors, logos, pictures, video, etc.
2. Integrate donation pages with social media to make them easily shareable
3. Customize donation pages with suggested giving amounts, recurring giving opt-ins, and more.
Having a successful communications strategy in place is the first step to boosting your alumni fundraising online. If your team isn’t able to get the word out to your supporters, your online fundraising efforts will falter.
When choosing which online fundraising software to invest in, keep an eye out for a solution that enables :
1. Automated constituent email that can be customized to your different alumni donor segments
2. Engagement tracking and analytics to help you learn all you can about what strategies work for your supporters
3. Social share buttons that enable your donors to easily broadcast to their social networks once they give
The vast majority of your alumni use their mobile devices as their primary way to access the internet. Don’t miss out on all of these potential alumni donors!
As part of your online fundraising strategy, your school should be sure to have functional mobile giving tools in place. These can include:
1. Donation pages that are optimized for mobile devices
2. Embedded donation pages across your various social media platforms
3. Text giving tools that allow donors to give simply by sending you a customizable keyword.
The bottom line: When choosing online fundraising software, your team should select a platform that offers dynamic tools to meet your alumni engagement needs at every level.
When it comes to alumni engagement, having a next-level online fundraising strategy in place is crucial With these tips in mind, there’s nothing stopping your school from making connections with alumni and raising more than ever before!
Online Fundraising: What You Need to Know to Engage Alumni
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