We had our second brave solicitor take our ping pong challenge!
This fine couple strolled through the doors, a bit apprehensive at first, but quickly decided they were up for some fun!
The solicitor decided to challenge Aaron Will, our customer support all star. Aaron represented Webconnex well, beating the solicitor 5-4.
Webconnex: 2
Solicitors: 0
Click here to view our full Policy for Solicitations.
(Source: webconnex)
- webconnex
- givingfuel
- aaron will
- table tennis
- ping pong
- salesmen
- solicitors
Facebook Integration Update - Part I
Facebook Integration Phase 1
3 Ingenious Methods To Leverage
The Power of Facebook With Webconnex
We’re excited to release some new features to help you harness the power of Facebook, the world’s largest social network. With nearly a billion active members to potentially reach out to, these features will help you gain maximum exposure while encouraging sharing and interaction among your fans!
Feature 1: New Facebook “Like” Button
Responding to Facebook’s announcement of the share button phase-out, we’ve developed a fully integrated Facebook sharing feature that gives you and your visitors powerful tools to “Like”, comment and share your campaign throughout your Facebook social demographic.
The new “Like” button has greater functionality and provides users with an entirely new dimension of customization. Naturally we want you to be able to take advantage!
Click here for our guide to using the enhanced “Like” button
Feature 2: Live Facebook Comments
Turn your campaign into a live, socially interactive forum! Allow people to make comments, position comments at the top or bottom of your page, start topic threads and more!
Anytime someone registers a comment, a link to your campaign is broadcast to the commenter’s wall in view of their entire social network. Your campaign is potentially passed on to dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other users.
Click here for our guide to utilizing Facebook comments to spread word of your campaign
Feature 3: Prompt registrants to invite Facebook friends on the Confirmation Screen.
Encouraging social sharing and liking of your campaign after people signup or donate is a snap! See the confirmation tab? You’ll now notice a check box, which turns on a simple but powerful feature.
Once checked, your registrants or donors will receive a simple invitation to share your campaign on Facebook after successful completion of their transaction. The intuitive prompt displays the number of likes your campaign has, along with the profile photos of members already on board!
Click here for our guide to building your campaign pages fan base with page sharing
Coming soon: Facebook Integration Part II!
Webconnex is near completion on another essential Facebook tool that fuses your campaigns and Facebook together. This announcement is set to debut in just a few short weeks! We’re getting closer to letting this tiger out of the bag and when it’s time, you’ll be the first to know
- social media
- social networking
- integration
- like
- comment
- social media
- webconnex
- givingfuel
- Share
- Sharing
Feature Update: Create Ambassadors of Buzz
Social buzz is the name of the game.
Who better to promote your cause than your very own donors? Most of your donors have networks of hundreds, if not thousands in which they have a strong influence and rapport. When equipped with the proper tools, they can instantly become your Ambassadors of Buzz.
Make sharing your cause quick and easy by activating the new Facebook prompt on your confirmation page(s).
(Source: redpodium, via webconnex)
- social networking
- sharing
- social media
- confirmation
- donors
- givingfuel
- webconnex
- ambassadors of buzz
Your hands on your money
In an online world riddled with identity theft, extortion, money laundering and bankruptcy - making and accepting payments on the Internet can generate anxiety for both participant and event promoter.
With most online payment companies, unknown variables can create a climate of fear. Who can say they haven’t felt a fear of not receiving their product, service or even a refund? What about the uncertainty of knowing when you’ll be paid or not even being paid at all?
Unfortunately there have been companies in our industry who’ve aided in heightening anxiety from using online registration. Companies who have lied, cheated and manipulated their promoters and participants out of money, ultimately affecting the sport as a whole.
The reason participants and promoters have so much room for fear is that most all registration companies follow the same lengthy and dangerous model.
Step 1: Participants’ funds go to the registration company
Step 2: The registration company holds the funds for x amount of time
Step 3: The registration company writes a check and snail mails it to the event promoter
This process could take weeks or months or worse yet, never go full circle.
During this holding period, there is no way to know if the registration company is being a good steward of your funds. Are they using your money to pay off another event? Are they taking family trips to Bermuda? Is your check lost in the mail somewhere?
Recently, when a company in our industry announced it was closing it’s doors, unpaid promoters into a rage. Imagine waiting in line for hours for a $150 concert only to be told it’s cancelled…and your money isn’t being refunded.
Since “Company X” closed their doors, the rest of our industry has felt the backlash. Promoters didn’t want to revert to paper registration methods and needed a company who provided a risk-free system they could trust
Luckily, Webconnex was able to provide the business model and services which eased their apprehension. One of the primary principles that sets Webconnex apart from the market is we don’t hold ANY funds.
When participants pay, their funds funnel directly into the event promoter’s merchant account. This eliminates waiting periods, fear of when they’ll get paid and the ultimate fear of not getting paid.
We like to keep our hands out of people’s cookie jar. This protects us as well as the promoter. It also gives everyone a piece of mind that the funds are where they safely belong and with whom they rightly belong to.
- money
- anxiety
- fear
- funds
- online ticket sales
- online fundraising
- online registration
- webconnex
- Givingfuel
10 Online Giving Mistakes
If you’re a non-profit, you live and die by donations.Unfortunately, people make mistakes which end up costing them a lot of money because they don’t know the essentials for managing their online giving program.
1) The Paypal Standard.
Paypal is a fantastic solution when you are starting out because there is no monthly cost and you can get up and running in an hour. However, our stats show over 50% of people who click to ‘donate now’ and get redirected to Paypal never actually complete their donation.
This is primarily because many people falsely believe an account is required to donate with Paypal. We think Paypal Standard would be a more viable solution if it didn’t draw your donors away from your site. Try upgrading to one of Paypal’s other merchant services or research another vendor.
2) Forced Accounts.
Beware of online giving solutions requiring your donors to make an account BEFORE donating. Who wants another username and password? Most people are maxed out when it comes to creating yet ANOTHER website account. It’s like saying “Before you donate, juggle these balls for me.”
Accounts are not always bad as they can allow for donors to update information themselves. But often they can be seen as an unnecessary barrier, resulting in substantial amounts of people turning the other direction.
3) Hands Deep In Your Cookie Jar.
Have you ever looked at your credit card statement and found a random company mysteriously charging your card for months in a row? Many of your donors may feel the sting if you use a company that holds your funds for you.
These companies charge donor credit cards on your behalf and then send you the donation amount (less their fees) after 30 days. Can you say a lot of confusion and unnecessary difficulty?
When donors don’t recognize a charge, they often will simply charge back the fee not even considering it might be one of their favorite non-profits.
Wouldn’t you rather have your donations within 2-3 days and have donors see your organization’s name on their statement instead of some mysterious one?
4) Security and Compliance.
People are a lot more worried about security these days. If anything seems to be wrong with the donation page or some security warning pops up, you better anticipate that people will think twice about giving their precious information.
Processing credit cards requires a lot of technical compliance and security standards to be safe. Be ready to spend a good chunk of change on this or use a company that manages all the security for you.
5) No Cause Specificity.
Organizations don’t realize how emotionally tied people are with the images they see and the call to action when they donate. So why only have a single generic campaign that asks someone to write in where their donation should be applied within the organization?
The best non-profits and churches we’ve seen have dozens of online giving campaigns, one for every pet cause, niche, or need that they serve. Then they customize the donation page for each specific cause with images, text and great specificity to reason someone should donate.
People feel more compelled to offer their donations when the entire donation page is about a cause they feel passionate about instead offering up a generic form.
6) Add Your Donation To The Cart.
When donors to come to donate, they’re not typically associating a donation with a product they need to buy and add to their shopping cart. Add a $25 donation to cart just has something missing to it.
From an organization standpoint, issuing donations on a website as if they were products doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We believe it’s best to let the donor decide how much and how often they donate to you.
Why limit them to $25, $50, $100 when they want to donate $1300 or $2800? Perhaps that donation might be out of stock. Give them an amount box than give them several intervals to choose from if they want to make their donation reoccur on a cycle.
7) Branding Crimes.
We are often shocked at how poorly designed many organization’s donation pages are. Squished logos, vertigo-inducing background patterns, animated gifs running rampant…STOP THE MADNESS!
For churches and non-profits, you want your donation page to look good and reflect your organization. Remember, this is where it all counts. Trust us, it’s worth the effort to choose a visual solution allowing you to have your donation page look amazing and not scare people away with amateur hour when they are about to donate.
8) Recurring Donations.
If there is one cardinal sin when it comes to accepting donations online, it is not accepting recurring donations. Someone wants to give money to you every month, week or quarter and all you need to be able to retrieve their payment information.
Our top organizations are processing thousands of recurring donations every single month giving them incredible stability and access to amazing financial resources with minimal effort.
Recurring donations lets you leverage the power of the motivation for your cause cash in on it every month.
9) Too Many Clicks.
With multiple pages, steps, clicks, accounts, the donor doesn’t know if they have signed up or not once they’ve finished.
We always recommend keeping the click ratio down to 2. One click from your website link, and the other click on hitting submit to authorize the transaction. It’s that easy.
Stay away from multi-page processes for donations too. The easier and less confusing you make it, the higher the rate that donors will complete the transaction after getting to the page. Sites that make the donation process a one step process are far more effective because the donor knows exactly what to expect.
10) Leaving Money On The Table.
Ever been to a grocery store and have someone ask if you wanted to donate $2 to breast cancer? Millions of dollars are made from this simple question simply because people have their credit card out.
On your donation page, people have their credit card out and could be interested in a small increase. You could be missing out on a lot of money by not asking one very simple question. Just make a check box with an optional $2 or $5 donation to another area within your organization. You will be amazed at how much you will raise.
Best of luck with your online fundraising efforts!
- mistakes
- online giving
- paypal
- donations
- Givingfuel
- webconnex
The new GivingFuel Facebook app has landed!
GivingFuel is excited to announce the release of our new Facebook application which allows participants to donate directly from your Fan Page! With over 800,000 people already on Facebook, we figured why not have your donation forms there too?
Our new Facebook app helps drive social media traffic on your page and new registrations. The app installs a customizable tab on your event’s Fan Page with ease, allowing you to embed your donation form directly into Facebook.
Want to increase the buzz surrounding your event and bump the number of “likes” on your Fan Page? Our GivingFuel Facebook app delivers! Give people an incentive to keep coming back to your page and pass it along to their friends!
Concerned about formatting issues? Our app is fully compatible with Facebook, automatically adjusting forms to your pages height and width orientation. Whether someone is coming to you via mobile phone or laptop, we have you covered.
Use the GivingFuel Facebook app to offer “Insider Deals” allowing only those who have “liked” your Fan Page to view the form or just make it available to anyone. You can even embed a discount code so when someone “likes” your Fan Page, they’ll automatically receive a discount when donating through Facebook.
We think our new Facebook app is a great tool for driving traffic to your social media pages and giving your marketing efforts a shot in the arm.
- Facebook app
- GivingFuel
- app
- discount
- donation
- like
- register
- web traffic
The Death of Snail Mail
With the rise of E-commerce, a resultant casualty has come to pass.
Everyone, please, a moment of silence….for Snail Mail.
The pace we’ve adjusted our lives to the speed of the internet has impacted the amount of patience we have for traditional mail. Why stamp and mail a letter when you can simply click a button and have correspondence delivered instantaneously?
Many people can simply no longer afford to let the pace of traditional mail handle business they needed taken care of yesterday.
Check out these numbers we uncovered online:
In 2001, stamped mail volume was 53.6B pieces
In 2010, stamped mail volume was 28.6B
A difference in 46.6% in 9 years?!? Oh yeah, you’re reading it right.
Online contributions also offer a benefit over traditional snail mail since you’re not paying out ever increasing amounts on postage. Since 2001, the cost of a single stamp has risen from 34 to 44 cents.
Chump change you say? Over time, those nickles and dimes suddenly become fives, tens and twenty dollar bills. As the postal service becomes more of an archaic service, don’t expect them to lower prices.
The decline of snail mail means people are going to be less inclined to make their donations in the mail. Most people we know would opt to utilize a online platform like Givingfuel to donate immediately rather than wait for the mailman to brave sun, sleet and snow.
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