“My what?” you ask. It’s your online Giving Completion Rate. It’s the percentage of visits to your online giving form that turn into gifts.
Why is this important? Because all of your efforts—from developing the greatest direct mail pieces to telling impact-of-gift stories on your website to engaging your community in conversations on social media sites—don’t matter if your form is cumbersome and hard to complete. By turning ease of use into a metric, you’ll have a data point when you’re negotiating for more resources in this area.
You want online giving to look like this: Not like this:
In addition to tracking your GCR, here are some questions that you should be asking yourself about your giving form.
1) Do you have a version of your form designed for mobile viewing?
This needs to be moved the top of your list of priorities. With half of Americans using smartphones (and this is on the rise), you can’t afford to skip this step. A mobile version of your website and giving form is no longer innovative; it’s the cost of doing business.
2) Are you asking for unnecessary information?
Believe me, I understand the inclination to ask for a bunch of additional information since you’ve “already got them.” The problem? You don’t have them until they complete the transaction. So, hold off on asking them about their favorite memory of campus; who their favorite professor was; and why they chose to make a gift until the transaction is complete. Consider including a link to a survey on the splash page once the gift is completed and in your confirmation email.
3) Is the experience seamless?
If you’ve got to send your donors to another site to enter credit card information or if the page refreshes every time you enter information, or any other such thing, chances are you’re losing people mid-gift. An important part of being seamless is ensuring that your form is fully functional on all web browsers too. This may seem like an easy one…but believe me, all of these things happen.
At the end of the day, your giving form needs to be one thing: Easy! So, track your GCR, ask yourself these questions, and make a plan for improving the donor experience at your organization.
For great ideas about how to boost your online giving, check out my colleague’s blog, The Social Side of Giving.
Annual Giving Insights 
Thank you for this! So what would you consider a “good” GCR? Conversely, what is a “problem” GCR that warrants immediate attention?
Hi Meredith,
This is a great question, and one that’s not easy to answer. By and large, universities are not tracking this metric at all, so the benchmarks aren’t there. It’s something that’s talked about quite a bit in the private sector but completion rates vary dramatically depending on the industry and the purpose of the form.
I recommend to start by tracking this, and I think anything under 20 percent is a serious problem and anything above 70 percent is less so. It’s not exactly empirical but given the lack of data in the field, I think it’s a good place to start.
Also, consider testing strategies for increasing completion rates as well. Set up two giving forms and track rates over time based on changes to elements like the length of the form, whether it’s on one page or multiple pages, etc.
Thanks for your comment!