Last Minute Year-End Giving Website Checklist

November 14, 2025

Your donors are ready to give. Is your website ready to receive?

Here’s the deal: Year-end giving isn’t just about your emails and mailers – it’s about what happens when someone lands on your website at 11pm on December 30th, credit card in hand, ready to make that tax-deductible donation before the clock strikes midnight.

We’ve seen it happen too many times. Nonprofits spend months planning the perfect year-end campaign. Compelling stories? Check. Beautiful graphics? Check. Email sequence that could make a grown person cry? Double check.

And then their donation form breaks.

Or loads so slowly that donors give up and go make a sandwich instead.

Or works perfectly fine on desktop but completely implodes on mobile phones (you know, where actual humans make donations these days).

Download The Year End Giving Checklist

Don’t let unexpected website badness mess up those critical year-end donations. 

This checklist covers everything from the absolutely-cannot-skip-this stuff to the nice-to-have improvements that’ll boost conversions. Takes about 30 minutes but could save you thousands in lost donations.

We’re breaking this down into 15 tasks organized into three bite-sized categories:

1. The Critical Stuff You Cannot Skip (5 must-dos) – Your donation form needs to work or nothing else matters
2. The “Fact Check” List (4 trust-builders) – Stuff that makes donors feel confident giving to you
3. The “Nice To Have” Improvements (6 conversion boosters) – Things that’ll help if you have time, or great goals for next year

Let’s be real though – you might not be able to do everything on this list before year-end giving hits. And that’s okay. Do the critical stuff (like, right now), then tackle the rest as time allows, maybe even just add it to your to-do list for next year’s campaign. A working donation form on a slightly outdated site beats a broken form on a beautiful one.

The Critical Stuff You Cannot Skip

Here’s what you need to test:

• Click through the entire process start to finish (no shortcuts)
• Test on your phone AND your computer AND your tablet if you have one
• Try it on different wifi networks (your office wifi isn’t the same as what donors have at home)
• Attempt different donation amounts
• Make sure confirmation emails actually send – and then open them in your actual email to see what they look like
• Check that recurring donation options work (don’t just assume they do)
• Double check that the donations record in your site and in the payment processing services (like Stripe, PayPal, Network For Good or Givebutter)
• Have someone else test it – your spouse, your teenager, your neighbor, your mom, whoever isn’t immersed in your nonprofit every single day

We always have my husband test things. It’s kind of annoying when he finds errors, not gonna lie, but I’d rather him find the problem than have a donor discover it.

Why this actually matters: If your form is too complicated, especially for older donors, they’re just going to leave. They’ll feel out of control or unsafe making a donation on a form that doesn’t make logical sense to them.

And here’s the thing – they’re often the ones with the money.

So… have your parents test it. Seriously. My mom is ridiculously good at figuring out how to break anything tech related. We actually figured out a major website behavior mystery by watching Stacy’s mom use a computer. Sometimes you just need that outside perspective from someone who doesn’t think like you do.

2. Get That Donation Link Above The Fold

The “fold” is an old newspaper term for where the paper folded in half. On your website, it means the stuff visible on the screen without scrolling. Your donate button needs to be right there when the page loads – on both desktop AND mobile.

Stop making people hunt for it.

Make it obvious. Make it big. Make it impossible to miss.

Look at your site on your phone right now. Can you see the donate button without scrolling? No? Fix it.

If people have to scroll down to see the donate button, or worse – if they have to click to open the navigation drawer just to find it – you’re losing donations. Take the video off the top of your homepage if you have to, but get that donate button visible.

This is one instance where a pop-up is completely fine. 

If you’re in the thick of a year-end campaign, a pop-up showing your donation button isn’t rude or annoying – it’s actually helpful. People are coming to your website at this time specifically to donate. The pop-up grays out everything else and puts the button front and center with no competing words or pictures. It’s a no-brainer.

And website visitors like a good no-brainer.

3. Link Directly to Your Year-End Campaign

Running a Giving Tuesday campaign? Holiday matching gift program? Special year-end appeal?

Don’t make people click through to your regular donate page and then click AGAIN to get to the actual campaign you’ve been promoting. That’s like making them solve a puzzle before they can give you money.

People just don’t want to hunt. 

Update every single donation button to link directly to your specific campaign. Add prominent banners on your homepage. Make the path stupid-simple. And then make an appointment on your calendar to change them all back the day after the campaign ends and set two alarms on your phone so you don’t forget. 

You want to make it as easy as possible for donors to give, so creating prominent links – above the fold, mobile and desktop, all the places – is critical.

4. Test Your Thank You Page

People need to know their donation was submitted successfully. This little moment of gratification is the first indicator that investing in your nonprofit’s mission was the right thing to do. 

First, it needs to work on the website.
Second, it needs to look like you actually care.

What not to do: Show a teeny tiny thank you message with the donation form still sitting there looking confused. Then people feel confused and that’s sad.

What to do instead: Redirect to a whole new page that feels like gratitude, not a robot having an identity crisis.

Your thank you page should:

• Actually thank people warmly by name (not with something obviously cranked out by ChatGPT)
• Show them the specific impact of their gift using their actual donation amount
• Suggest next steps – follow you on social, sign up for emails, share with friends
• Send them an email receipt with your Tax ID on it so they can file it come tax time

Get Personal

Most donation systems let you pull in donor information and use it on the page. So instead of “Thank you for your donation,” you can say “Thank you so much for your donation of $50, Sarah – you’re going to help feed 10 families this holiday season.”

See the difference? One sounds like an auto response. The other sounds like you actually noticed they gave.

Important note: Your success page and email receipt are not a replacement for your personalized handwritten thank-you note (you’re still doing those, right?). But it gives donors what they need immediately – confirmation that it worked and a sense of the impact they just made.

5. Check Your SSL Certificate

Go to your website right now. Look at the URL in your browser. Does it start with “https://”?

Notice that “s” on the end? That’s important.

If you don’t have that magic “s”? 

Call your web developer. Don’t spend six hours Googling “how to add SSL certificate” while you’re in campaign mode. This is absolutely a “call for help immediately” situation. You don’t need to know how to fix it – you just need to know who to call.

Warning: Google is Fickle.

Just because you don’t have an “s” and you don’t see a big error message doesn’t mean that other people aren’t seeing it. Sometimes Google blocks everyone from getting to your donation page. Sometimes it’ll only block some people. It’s fickle and inconsistent and we don’t like it, but it’s the reality we’re dealing with. Just get the SSL certificate and save yourself the headache.

The “Fact Check” List

AKA: The Stuff That Builds Trust Or Destroys It

These aren’t as mission-critical as a working donation form. Your site won’t actually break if you skip them. But they matter for building relationships beyond that one transaction – and isn’t that what we’re all trying to do here?

6. Make Sure Your Social Sharing Buttons Actually Work

Click on those social media icons at the bottom of your site. Do they go anywhere? Or do they just sit there looking pretty?

We’ve seen way too many of those buttons link to nothing. They’re like putting social media icons on a business card – decorative but completely useless. And nothing makes us madder than expensive business cards with icons that don’t actually link anywhere.

Test both types of sharing:

• The social icons in your footer (do they link to your actual profiles?)
• Any “share this” buttons on donation thank you pages or campaign pages

Bonus move: If your website lets you set a default sharing graphic, update it for the last month of the year to something donors would actually want to share. Maybe a compelling success story, or fun graphic, something that gets people buzzing about your work.

7. Update Your Staff and Board Bios

I know, I know – it’s always out of date. Don’t freak out. This is probably the most likely out-of-date information we see on any nonprofit website. Heck, sometimes we’re guilty of this ourselves!

But here’s the deal: updated bios with recent photos build trust. 

Donors might see someone they know on your board, which could give them the last little push they need to give. New staff members show your organization is growing. Fresh photos show you’re active and engaged.

Out-of-date information? Missing bios? Photos from 2015? That makes you look disorganized or like you’ve given up.

Make sure you update:

• Staff bios and current photos
• Board member information
• Contact information for key people
• Anyone who’s moved on (remove them – they’re not part of your story anymore)

8. Double-Check ALL Your Contact Information

Nothing – and we mean NOTHING – makes an organization feel less legitimate than wrong contact information.

Make sure this information is easy to find. 

It should be on your footer, on a contact page you can actually locate without a treasure map. Not buried at the bottom of your About page where nobody would ever think to look.

Because when someone’s trying to give you money and they can’t figure out how to reach you? That’s just sad. And also costly.

Feeling overwhelmed by this task? 

You can use ChatGPT to help find outdated information. Tell it to “identify and link to all instances of [phone number/email/address] on [site URL]”.

It will crawl your site and link to every page with an instance of an old email address or phone number. I just tried it and it totally works like freakin’ magic.

9. Update Your Impact Numbers For This Year

You do so much good work all year long. People need to see that.

Especially if you’re a younger nonprofit where your impact might double or triple in a year! These numbers show donors you’re a great steward of their money and that investing in you actually makes a difference.

Show donors things like:

• How many people you served this year
• How many meals you provided or families you housed
• How many programs you delivered
• What specifically changed because of donor support
• Testimonials from those your serve

Sprinkle this information throughout your site and make sure to use the data to tell your story in your Get Involved and Donate sections of your website.

Why this matters: Donors need to know their money is going toward the promise you made. There’s no faster way to show that than updated impact numbers. It’s proof you’re doing what you said you’d do.

The “Nice To Have” Improvements

Or: Your New Year’s Resolution List 🤷🏻‍♀️

These landed in the “nice to have” category, but they can seriously boost conversions. Can’t tackle them before your campaign? Put them on next year’s list. Future you will thank you.

10. Update Your Needs List

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: Not everybody can donate money. And some people actually prefer to donate physical items.

My kids would rather buy something with their money and give you that actual thing – it feels like they’ve done more good than just handing over cash. A lot of adults feel exactly the same way.

But here’s the catch: Your needs list can’t just say “clothing donations.” That’s about as helpful as saying “we need stuff.”

Be specific on your needs list:

• Not “clothing donations” – say “winter coats for kids ages 5-12” or “new boots, sizes 1-6”
• Not “school supplies” – list exactly what teachers need (24-count crayons, wide-ruled notebooks, #2 pencils)
• Not “food items” – specify what your pantry actually needs right now

Give people the easy button. Don’t make them guess what you need or assume you’ll take anything. Because then they show up with boxes of stuff you can’t use and everyone feels awkward.

11. Post Your Year-End Goal

If you have a specific fundraising goal, make it known. Put it on your homepage. Show a progress bar or goal thermometer that updates as donations come in.

Invite people to be part of something bigger.

Why this works: People who are really invested in you will push to get you there. They’ll share your campaign, make that extra gift, rally their friends – especially if you’re close to hitting the goal.

Picture this: you’re $2,000 away from your goal near the end of the campaign. That’s an incredibly easy thing to promote: “We’re so close! Just $2,000 more and we can serve 50 additional families this season.” 

That’s way more compelling than just asking for donations with no context.

Make sure to keep it updated throughout the campaign so people can see momentum building and show them they are part of a community supporting your mission. Nothing’s sadder than a goal thermometer that hasn’t moved in three weeks.

12. Add Matching Gift Information

If there’s a specific organization or person matching gifts during your campaign, make that information prominent. Put it in your messaging, on your home page, donation page, shout it from the rooftops!

Why this works: When donors know their $20 donation magically becomes $40, they feel like they’re doing something even bigger. Because even if they can only give a small amount, the match makes them feel like a major donor.

That’s powerful motivation to give right now instead of “later” (which often means never).

13. Freshen Up With Seasonal Photos

Nonprofit websites often feel summer-heavy. Lots of photos of outdoor activities, kids at camp, people in t-shirts and shorts. Which is great… in July. Less great when it’s snowing outside and you’re asking for winter coat donations.

If you can swap out that summer program photo for something current, do it. Show your work happening NOW, not six months ago. You don’t have to switch out EVERY photo, but you can switch up the home and donation page images that people are most likely to see.

Real photos of real impact beat stock photos every single time. 

We can tell when you grabbed something generic from a stock photo site. Donors can tell too.

Don’t have the photos now? Put this on next year’s list.

Make it a goal to capture more photos throughout the year so you always have fresh, seasonal content. You can even delegate this to a board member or junior board member – young people are usually thrilled to take pictures and feel like they’re contributing.

We actually did this at one of our MayeCreate retreats with my daughter Aveleen (she’s 11 now). We gave her a camera and told her to document the day. Some of the photos were really weird, but she also got some genuinely good ones. And she felt like she had an important job instead of just tagging along.

14. Highlight Recurring Donation Options

Time for some happy math: Someone who gives $10 a month is worth more than someone who gives $50 once a year.

$10 x 12 months = $120 (versus that one-time $50 gift)

Monthly Donors Are Gold

Make recurring donation options prominent on your main donation form, not hidden in some dropdown menu people have to hunt for. Explain the impact of monthly giving versus one-time donations.

Just make sure it actually works. 

We’ve seen some recurring donation forms that look so cobbled together and sketchy, they definitely don’t inspire confidence about putting in credit card information that’ll be charged “into the future.”

If your recurring donation setup makes YOU nervous, it’s making donors nervous too. Fix it or don’t offer it.

15. Speed Test Your Site

We talk about site speed constantly in our blog and on our podcast. Probably to the point where people are like “okay, we get it, speed matters.” But it really, really does – especially for donation forms.

Site speed impacts donations more than you think.

Here’s the reality: Your donation form needs to work on a mobile phone because that’s where a lot of people give these days.

Every year I give to nonprofits from my phone. You know why? Because I took the week off for the holidays. I’m not sitting at my computer. You would literally have to drag me there and chain me to it. Not happening.

A lot of people don’t even have home computers anymore – they’d have to dig out their laptop from wherever it’s been hibernating. It’s just easier to donate on a phone.

Okay, you get it. People donate from their phones. 

What does that have to do with site speed?

Things load way slower on phones. And donation forms? They require even more processing power than regular pages. So they load even slower than slow.

Picture this scenario: It’s Christmas Eve. I’m feeling generous. I want to make a gift to your organization. I pull up your website on my phone and tap the donate button. The form starts loading…

And I wait.

And wait.

And then suddenly dinner’s ready. Or a kid interrupts me. “Mom, can we open presents?” “Come look at this cool Lego creation I made!”

You know what just happened? You didn’t get your donation. Not because I didn’t want to give. But because I was waiting for your form to load and life happened.

Test it right now.

Use GT Metrics (which I lovingly call my “first work boyfriend”) for desktop performance, or get more specific with the mobile reports on Google PageSpeed Insights or Uptrends.  Just type in your URL and it’ll spit out a report showing you how slow everything is.

The mobile report will probably make you cry a little. That’s normal. We’ve all been there.

The Irony: Speed Fixes Aren’t Always Fast

Between now and your campaign kickoff probably isn’t the right time to tackle a bunch of load time issues. There are some small quick fixes you might be able to implement, like installing a caching plugin or resizing a few images. But major speed improvements often take more time.

And please, for the love of Pete, do not start optimizing your site the day before your first campaign email drops! That IS NOT THE TIME to tackle this task. A misconfigured optimization plugin could break your site or your donation form.

Just know if your pages load slowly and you don’t get as many online donations as you wanted this year, add “fix website speed” to next year’s improvement list. Learn from this year to make next year exponentially better.

If you can’t do everything on this list before year-end giving hits, that’s completely okay.

Pick the critical stuff first (like, today):

1. Test that donation form on every device you own
2. Get the donate button above the fold where humans can see it
3. Link directly to your specific campaigns
4. Test your thank you page and make it sound human
5. Check your SSL certificate situation

Then tackle the fact-checking list when you have time. Delegate what you can. Put the “nice to have” items on next year’s planning list.

Make a goal-setting list for January when you’re fresh and ready to improve. Because year-end giving happens every single year. You’ll have another shot at this. And another. Each time you can make it better, smoother, more effective.

A working donation form on a slightly outdated-looking site beats a broken form on a beautiful site every single time.

Focus on what actually moves the needle – people being able to complete their donation without wanting to throw their phone across the room.