Somewhere in late October, a longtime donor to a small faith-based nonprofit will sit down at their kitchen table and try to figure out how to make a gift from their donor-advised fund. They will visit your homepage. They will click "Give." They will land on a form that only asks for a credit card. Ten minutes later, they will close the tab and put your organization on a mental list to return to some other week. That week rarely comes.
We see this every year with the ministries we work with. Not because the donor lost interest, but because the website only knew how to handle one kind of gift. The check writer, the DAF holder, the stock giver, the person about to make a qualified charitable distribution from an IRA — each of them is quietly worth thousands to your work over the next three months. Each of them deserves a page that acknowledges they exist.
The fix is not a redesign. It is one page, honestly written, called "Ways to Give."
What a Ways to Give page actually does
A Ways to Give page is a menu, not a landing page. Its job is to name every path a donor can use to support your ministry, in plain language, in one place. Nothing more. Nothing less. If a donor knows what they want to do, they should be able to find their path in ten seconds. If they don't know yet, they should be able to read four sentences and decide.
We usually help ministries order the page from most common to least common, so a first-time visitor sees the familiar option first and a seasoned donor scrolls to the one they came for.
At a minimum, the page should cover nine paths.
One-time online gifts. A short paragraph, a single button that opens the giving form. No form embedded on this page. This page's job is to route, not to convert.
Recurring gifts. Named as such, not hidden inside the one-time form. Some donors are specifically looking for the monthly option, and burying it inside a toggle costs you every donor who does not think to look for a toggle.
Gifts by mail. The mailing address, spelled out, and the name a check should be made out to. This is not a legacy detail. It is a first-choice channel for a meaningful share of your donors, and leaving it off the page tells them you have moved on without them.
Donor-advised fund gifts. Your EIN, your legal name as it should appear on a DAF grant letter, and any lookup widget or short instructions for the largest DAF sponsors.
Stock and non-cash gifts. A one-line description and an email address to write to. Most gifts of appreciated stock start with a question, not a form.
IRA and qualified charitable distributions. A short paragraph for donors age 70½ and older, naming the ministry, the EIN, and where the distribution should be mailed by their custodian.
Employer matching gifts. A search widget if you have one, or two sentences telling donors how to check with their HR department and what to send you if a match is approved.
Legacy and planned giving. One paragraph, one link to the fuller planned giving page, and a real name and email of someone on staff who handles those conversations.
Tribute and memorial gifts. A note that gifts can be made in honor or memory of a loved one, and how the honoree or family will be notified.
That is the whole page. Nine short sections. No accordion tricks. No stock photography.
The tone that turns a menu into a welcome
The reason most Ways to Give pages fail is not that they miss an option. It is that they read like a bank pamphlet. Every path deserves the same warmth as your homepage.
Start each section with a real sentence in your voice, not a category heading. "Some of our steadiest support comes from families who mail a check every month with a handwritten note. Here is the address." is a different kind of writing than "Send checks to:" and it changes how the reader feels about your ministry, not just how they give.
We also recommend one short sentence at the top of the page that names your posture: "We are grateful for every path someone chooses to walk with us. Here are the ones our donors use most." That single line signals that no method is the small one. The retired teacher mailing a $40 check is on the same page as the family gifting $50,000 of stock, and the page treats them as equals.
The quiet methods deserve visibility
The most under-used giving methods among faith nonprofits are the ones that never appear on the site: donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions from IRAs, employer matches, and stock gifts. Each of these is often larger than the average online gift, and each is invisible to a donor who does not already know to ask.
Publishing them on a page does not obligate your team to become tax advisors. It simply removes the friction of a donor having to email you first, or worse, decide to give somewhere else that made the path obvious. Include a short line like "Our team can walk you through any of these — reach out at [email]" and you have opened the door without needing a policy binder.
One page, before the season starts
If your team is only going to build one new page before Q4, we would ask you to consider this one. It rarely takes more than a few hours. It compounds every year. And it quietly signals to the people who love your work most that you have thought about the shape of their generosity, not just the amount of it.
If you would like help drafting the page in your voice, with the right EIN and legal language in the right places, we would be glad to sit with your team for an hour and get it out the door before October.