Why Should You Add Additional Questions to Your Donation Form?

Your donation form offers a seamless donation checkout and helps you collect information about your donors to store safely in your database. This information can help you personalize communications, strengthen your donor relationships, and analyze your donations. In this article, we’ll look at some questions you can ask on your donation form and collect insights to apply in the future.

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Why Should You Add Additional Questions to Your Donation Form?

Your Donorbox donation form not only offers a seamless donation checkout but can also help you collect information about your donors (as well as donations) and store it safely into your database. This information helps you personalize communications, strengthen your donor relationships, analyze your donations, and more.

Every online donation form comes with some basic questions like donor name, address, phone number, employment information, donation designation, tribute information, comments, etc. These are your default options but nonprofits need to learn more.

Donorbox lets you add additional questions to collect useful information about your donor, the source the of donation, and why the donor is gifting. You can also use it to find potential volunteers and identify potential long-term donors and members.

In this article we will look at some of questions that you can ask on your Donorbox donation form and collect useful insights to apply in the future.


5 Types of Additional Questions Nonprofits Ask in Their Donation Form and Why [With Examples]


1. “How did you hear about us?”

This information helps nonprofits learn about their most effective marketing strategies and channels. The donor may have come to your donation page from the email you sent a week ago. Or maybe they attended one of your fundraising events. Or maybe it is from one of the peer-to-peer fundraiser campaigns that your supporters are running. They could also be from a Facebook ad or an Instagram story.

Whatever the source, you must know the information in order to strengthen your marketing strategy for that channel. And to let go of those that aren’t bringing any results.

Check out this example by The Alex House Project. They have added this question to their donation form with radio buttons reflecting the options.

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2. “Would you like to receive updates from us?”

This additional question is a great opportunity for you to easily take consent from donors to send email updates. Sometimes nonprofits send updates without getting approval. You can even give them the option to choose how they’d like to receive the updates: phone, email, by mail, or none.

Here’s an example from Peter McVerry Trust’s donation page that includes the below donation form. They ask their donors two consecutive questions on how they’d like to be contacted for updates.

add additional questions to donation form


3. Product selling or event-specific questions

If your nonprofit is selling t-shirts to raise money for a need or you’re hosting a golf tournament, competition, event, or game, you’d want to have some details from the donors. These details include questions like –

  • What is your t-shirt size?
  • What color shirt do you want?
  • Who will be your team captain?
  • What prize are you buying the raffle ticket for?
  • How would you like your name displayed on our auction page?
  • Please write the name of the student you’re donating for.

…and of course, more! The list is endless and these questions help your nonprofit better host the event or the campaign while ensuring you deliver a good experience to your donors. Here are some examples for inspiration –

T-shirt campaign donation form

custom questions you should add to donation form

Silent auction donation form

custom questions you should add to donation form

Raffle event donation form

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4. “Are you interested in volunteering?”

Nonprofits need volunteers, more often than not. Be it for a community project like cleaning parks or planting trees or helping organize a fundraising event, volunteers are essential. Many of your donors may be willing to help. All you need to do is ask.

Here’s an example from Help Finder, a UK-based organization.

custom questions you should add to donation form


5. “What inspired you to give today?”

The best way to personalize donor communication is to ask them a personal question that elicits positive emotions. This information can be used to better understand the donor’s psychology, their campaign or event preferences, the driving force behind their donations, etc.

You can then personalize a solicitation script to have a staff member call the donor, thank them personally, and let them know of a beneficiary story (or other impact details) that will move them. This will strengthen the relationship as well as inspire more donations from the donor.

Code for America has added this additional question to their donation form as a text field to give donors the freedom to write whatever comes to their minds upon reading the question.

custom questions you should add to donation form


How to Add Additional Questions to Your Donorbox Donation Form

Donorbox gives nonprofits the most powerful donation form builder with ample opportunities to customize. Let’s have a look at the four simple steps to add additional questions to your Donorbox donation form.


1. Go to your Donorbox dashboard

Open the Donorbox dashboard, click “Campaigns” and find the campaign you want to add the questions to, and click the “Edit Campaign” button as highlighted below.


2. Go into the Additional Questions section

Scroll down to the “Additional Questions” section. Here, you can click the link corresponding to the section you want to add additional questions to – either on the Amounts Screen or the Information Screen.


3. Add your questions

Amounts Screen

If you wish to add additional questions to the Amounts Screen, click that link. This will edit the first page of your donation form. 

Here, you can select your question type (textbox, checkbox, dropdown, or radio), edit the text, and include the answer options. You can add as many questions as you need, but remember to keep your donation form as streamlined as possible. 

Information Screen

Click the “Information Screen” link to add additional questions to that screen. 

Here, you have the same choice of question type (textbox, checkbox, dropdown, or radio) and you can edit the text of your questions and add answer options, if necessary. You can add as many additional questions as you need. 

You can also make your questions mandatory.

That’s all! Once you’re happy with your additional questions, click “Update.”


4. Your donation form is updated with additional questions

Once you’re finished, click “Preview Campaign” to check out how your questions look on your form. Be sure to remember which screen you made changes to find those additional questions. 

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Fundraise the Right Way

Fundraising the right way means not just raising money but also including enough means to connect with your donors and collect information. By adding additional questions to the Donorbox donation form, your nonprofit will be doing just that in the easiest way possible.

Along with helping you create and customize online campaigns, Donorbox also lets you fundraise in many other ways, manage donors, run membership campaigns, and sell event tickets. Learn more about our simple and powerful features here. You can get started for free in just fifteen minutes! This quick video guide will help you learn how.

Check out Donorbox Premium – a success package designed for nonprofits of all sizes and types. You get expert coaching services, responsive support and technical help, and premium tools. Pricing is personalized to fit every nonprofit’s needs and budget. Book a demo today!

Want to read more tips and resources on nonprofit fundraising? Explore the Donorbox Nonprofit Blog. Get loads of downloadable templates, insightful blogs, and guides. Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our best resources (blogs, webinars, podcast episodes, updates, etc.) in your inbox every month.

Chirasree Bose is the Content Editor at Donorbox. Apart from editing and writing, what holds her interest the most is reading books. Chirasree loves to explore the world of fiction and has authored some books herself. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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