Hey Reader,

Imagine it’s 7:40 on Tuesday, December 1.

Sandra, as usual, has her coffee in hand, looking at her phone, and her day is just getting started.

That Giving Tuesday email you wrote shows up in her inbox, and the story stops her mid-scroll.

She immediately clicks ‘donate.’

Immediately she lands on a page that feels like a website’s junk drawer. Two paragraphs on the history. A newsletter signup. A photo slideshow. The form is somewhere below it all.

She continues to scroll. Someone calls her from the other room, and she tells herself she’ll come back later.

She doesn’t.

An organization I’ve been working with this fall was about to lose a lot of Sandras.

Their Giving Tuesday email was in great shape. The story was specific enough, the ask was clear, and the team was proud of it. Before we scheduled anything, I asked whether we could make a gift together on my phone, right there in the meeting.

Their donate button directed people to the same general donation page they’d used all year. On my phone, the form sat below a long block of text. No one had updated the suggested gift amounts in years.

The monthly option? Tucked away in a dropdown menu. Before anyone could enter a card number, the form asked for a phone number, a title, and how they’d heard about the organization.

Halfway through, someone at the table laughed and said, “I’d have given up two screens ago.”

Nobody had done anything wrong. Built for a different time, no one had looked at that page from a donor’s perspective in a while. So, we built a dedicated landing page instead.

✅ One headline.

✅ One short story that picked up right where the email left off.

✅ One form, nothing else to click.

We trimmed the form to what the tax receipt needs, refreshed the gift amounts and tied each one to an outcome, and placed the monthly option right beside the one-time gift.

The next time we tested it on a phone, the whole gift took under a minute.

Remember: You don’t win Giving Tuesday in the inbox. It’s won on the page your email sends people to. Your email is the invitation. Your landing page is the front door, and it needs to open on the first try.

Think about Black Friday, four days earlier. The stores that win aren’t only the ones with the loudest ads. They’re the ones where you find what you came for and get through checkout without a lineup.

Those donors you hope will give carry the same expectations straight into Giving Tuesday.

The numbers say most nonprofits aren’t there yet. The latest M+R Benchmarks found that only about 11% of desktop visitors and 8% of mobile visitors who reach a nonprofit’s main donation page complete a gift.

Mobile now makes up more than half of nonprofit website traffic, but only 43% of donations and 28% of online revenue. Most donors will visit your page on their phones, in between other things, just like Sandra.

A Giving Tuesday-ready page does five things well. It matches the email, so donors know they’re in the right place. It has one job, so nothing distracts them. It asks only for what you truly need. It shows what each gift amount makes possible and makes monthly giving easy to find.

That last point matters more than you might think: Recurring giving research found that 58.6% of monthly donors started giving without being asked (Neon One, 2026). If someone arrives ready to give every month, never make them hunt for the option.

Here’s one action step for this week. Block 15 minutes, pull out your phone, open the most recent fundraising email you sent, and tap the donate link. Then give $5 to your own organization. As you go, jot down every moment you scroll, squint, or wonder where to go next. Each one is a point where a Sandra could leave. Fix the biggest one first.

If your page didn’t pass the mobile test or you don’t yet have a dedicated Giving Tuesday page, I can help. I’ll build a new Giving Tuesday landing page for you or review and improve the one you already have, so it’s ready well before December 1. Reply to this email with a link to your current donation page. I read every response and will get back to you with next steps.

Here’s to fewer prospective Sandras clicking away and more gifts that make a bigger impact.

Links 🔗

Check out this this year’s round up of donation page and monthly giving benchmarks. See where you're at with this four-point checklist and see where your page stands.

GivingTuesday and Canva teamed up to make it super easy for you to elevate your fundraising efforts and help you leave an impact this giving season.

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