Are you interested in building your own fundraising website? Do you need robust software to get this job done for you? This article will explain how to create a fundraising website in 6 easy steps.
Keep in mind, this will be a general overview. There can be additional steps for the broad spectrum of different fundraising sites, and their motivations for running the site. Between the solutions and possibilities that are available for those that need to collect donations or want to offer rewards on their own fundraising website, we will explore a universal solution that gets the job done! Let’s jump right into the necessary steps to take to create a fundraising site.
1. Plan the user journey
You need to research the type of user that is going to be visiting the site. They will be the ones that want to create a fundraiser on your website. A good starting point is researching top existing fundraising websites to help you learn how to create your own fundraising website. Upon your research, you want to develop a user journey for the website. The user journey can be explained using mockups and wireframes, along with a set of requirements. This will help you with the development of the platform, and help consiptualize the website before getting started.
2. Choose the technology
Once you fully understand your user journey, you can use that information to choose the technology. To help you save time and further researching for the best solution to fit your needs when you create the fund raiser, we recommend looking at a white label solution called Atlas. This platform can be used by anyone with or without coding experience that want to learn how to create a website for fundraising purposes.
Although many people want to use free fundraising software, these types of solutions are very archaic and limited in functionality and support. When considering the different solutions, creating a simple fundraiser on Facebook, may not be a good enough solution for your charity organization or non-profit. It is best to stay away from Facebook fundraisers when looking to run multiple campaigns as it is more professional if you have a complete website developed. With the technology that will be presented in this artilce, you will have the capability to share the fundraising campaings on all social media platforms.
This video will show you how to create your own charity fundraiser using Atlas:
To ensure that you are making the right decision, you can try the 14-day free trial.
You can learn how to set up a fundraising page on your existing website by reading the following article. The Sedra widget is a great tool for those that want to understand how to add fundraising capabilities on to any page. You can add the capabilities to the website by copying and pasting a small snippet of HTML code on to a new or existing web page.
This technology allows you to quickly set up the fundraising website so you can focus, and spend the time and energy needed to get the backers/donations on to the platform.
3. Building the website
Building the website is quick and easy using the Administrator dashboard. No coding experience is required, as you can manipulate the look and feel of the site using toggles, in the administrator dashboard UI.
For those that want to manipulate the website even further, you have access to the front-end source code. This allows you to manipulate the code yourself, or use a hired developer of your own, or use Thrinacia’s in-house developers. You can develop the exact fundraising site needed by building on top of the Atlas platform.
All you have to do is fill out the sections in the following tabs as seen in the image above: Theme Settings, Website Settings, Campaign Settings, and Payment Settings. All settings are located within the Portal Settings area in the Administrator Dashboard.
4. Create the campaigns
You can begin with creating a test campaign, or campaigns to show that your platform has traction before launching. It is a great way to further explore the user’s experience.
It is also a good idea to try and get people aware of your site, and the capabilities it will offer before launching. This way, when you launch your site, you will gain traction easier.
5. Launch the site
Once you have the campaigns created, all of the content ready, and generated enough attention to the site, you can then launch the site. Many sites start with little to no visitors at the beginning. This is ok, after years of marketing, you can get a consistent amount of viewers to the website with little to no effort. You can learn how to market your fundraising website by reading the following article.
6. Collect the funds
Now that you have put forth the necessary work to generate an audience for your fundraising platform and the fundraising campaigns, you can collect the funds.