How good design work can help your charity raise more

Posted by Jordan Morris on 18 July 2017

Design is more than creating a few trivial images; in the grand scale of things, design can make or break a whole concept and indirectly communicate the ethos of your business, from the way you look, to the way you present your ideas. As a non-profit, design plays a big part not only in fundraising, but also in our everyday lives. We’ve become oblivious to good design as were constantly surrounded by amazing imagery and work. Great designs go unnoticed because frankly, that’s what makes them great!

Fixing the little things can dramatically help you present your non-profit in a professional way. Polishing your designs, choosing well-phrased banner headlines, and creating an appealing logo can, believe it or not, have a dramatic effect on the amount you raise.

So, in what ways does design help your charity exactly?

1. It makes you trustworthy

There’s a saying – Never judge a book by its cover. This saying exists for a reason, generally people judge by the cover. When visiting a website for the first time, an average user takes just three seconds to form an opinion of the website they are visiting. Make a bad first impression and you will lose potential donors.

Have you ever visited a website and just decided not to browse further because it doesn’t look trustworthy? Now think about how you want to portray your brand: good banners, well-structured text, a strong logo, logically organised navigation and easy to find information, will help your visitor and potential donor make an informed decision about your business and gain trust in your cause.

If you’re asking people to part with their hard-earned cash with the premise that you will make a huge difference with their money, your brand and design will play a huge part in helping you to build trust in potential donors.

Yes, other things might be more important from a content perspective, but if you lose a site visitor in the first three seconds when the visuals count, then you wont have the chance to convince them with your words. First impressions have never been so important.

2. Convey your message succinctly through visuals

What you do, how you do it and most importantly WHY you do it, is equally important to your donors. Having images, infographics, text and other creative material can help you convey important and complicated information in an easy to understand way. An infographic about how your earnings are distributed and invested, or a video that explains how your mission is beneficial, helps you to retain the potential donor for a bit longer by grabbing their attention. By revealing your intentions or aims, and making the information easy to digest, shows the person on the other side that you know what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Ask yourself what you would rather do; sit down and read a 3,000-word document outlining the specifics on a given subject, or a short infographic visually presenting that same information in an easy and entertaining way. If the user wants more detailed insight into your cause, they’ll read on, but an infographic will highlight the key points!

3. Well photographed auction items sell more

From giant e-commerce websites like Amazon to smaller online sellers like Givergy.com – we all know the importance of a good picture. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. A well shot image creates interest and desirability, visuals are much more appealing to the tech savvy generation which is why Instagram is so successful for brands.

Create a good, frontal, detailed image that shows the entirety of the item to entice the audience and give them a feel for the prize. This image will be the first thing that grabs and holds the attention and it will be one of the reasons a potential donor will want to read more. We process images 60,000 times faster than text. A good image that stands out will grab and hold the attention of a person.

To better understand what we mean you can take a look at our auction item perfection document that outlines some of the best practices when preparing a product for an auction or an event.

What other ways do you think that good design could help you? Why not share a story?

Jordan Morris

Givergy

Jordan joined Givergy after studying Politics with International Relations at the University of York. He has over two years experience within the charity sector working as a face-to-face fundraiser and as a constituency campaigner. After experiencing the sector from within and knowing first-hand the impact digital solutions can make to fundraising strategies, Jordan is now dedicated to innovating the way charities fundraise to ensure they maximise returns from every fundraising campaign.