Several years ago, I was on a zoom call with the fundraising committee of a board I served on. We were reviewing the details of a large annual luncheon—about 600 guests, a full room, a meaningful cause.
I had purchased a table, invited several friends, and was looking forward to the event, especially since many people who were impacted by our work would be in attendance. In fact, each table had 1-2 “beneficiaries” sitting at it. This was our annual fundraising event, we were all looking forward to it, hoping it would be a great success.
As our fundraising committee walked through the “run of show”, we got to the moment where the ask would be made from the stage. And then the head of the committee excitedly said, “and this is when everyone will pull out their checkbooks!”
I honestly thought I had misheard.
Checkbooks?
I spoke up and said, “I won’t have a checkbook. And no one I’ve invited will have one either.”
I was told—very confidently—that I was wrong.
So I tried again:
“Okay… will there be a way to pay by credit card at the tables?”
No was the answer. If the donor wanted to pay by credit card, they could go to the lobby and find someone to complete the transaction there. There would be one or two volunteers with iPads, and there might be a line.
Right. In the world of giving an organization a donation, this was friction personified.
And just last week, an organization I wanted to give to told me that if I wanted to pay via my Donor Advised Fund (DAF), I’d have to call or email them to work it out.
Another organization told me that the donor would have to ask for a link to that their DAF page, because their tech platform didn’t allow them to add any additional information to the site’s existing navigation.
Why in the world would we make it a challenge for a donor to give us money?
There doesn’t seem to be any recent, formal, data on the amount of charitable donations that are paid by check (or, in many instances, DAFs), but most non-academic studies show that more people make donations by checks than by any other method of payment. The closest approximation I could cobble together was $170 billion. But even if the amount is a tenth of that ($17 billion), or even a hundredth of it ($170 million), wouldn’t it be worth it for NPOs to facilitate giving via checks/DAFs, making the transaction effectively “frictionless”?
We know that donors check out our websites for information on our nonprofits. We now know that those websites are often the way donors learn about and communicate with nonprofits that they’re interested in — or even curious about. We also know that the quality of nonprofit organization’s websites are often a deciding factor in a donor giving or not.
Why, then wouldn’t an organization’s website be easy and intuitive to navigate? When the donor is ready to give, shouldn’t the experience be welcoming, gracious, professional and absolutely frictionless?
You might not use checks anymore. Maybe you never used a check. But we still commonly say, when we go on a successful donor call, “they’re going to send a check”. That often means they’ll pay online or via a DAF or some other way, but “check” is still our de facto term for payment.
This isn’t about checks.
It’s about friction.
If you make it even slightly difficult for someone to give, you are introducing a moment where they can hesitate… delay… or walk away entirely.
And you rarely get a second chance.
Think about your own behavior:
Have you ever abandoned a purchase — anywhere, for anything — because the checkout process was too slow?
Because you couldn’t find the payment option you wanted?
Because it just felt like too much effort?
Donors are no different.
We don’t always see it, but it shows up in lost revenue:
Someone intends to give—but doesn’t have the “right” payment method.
Someone clicks your website—but can’t easily find the donation link.
Someone attends your event—but can’t give in the moment.
Every one of those is a missed opportunity.
And those moments add up.
If we’re serious about growing philanthropy, we need to meet donors where they are—not where we wish they were. (Or even where we personally are.)
That means:
Accepting multiple forms of payment
Making donation links visible and immediate
Enabling mobile and on-the-spot giving
Removing every possible barrier between intent and action
Because when someone feels inspired to give, that moment matters.
And if you make them work for it, you risk losing it.
Fundraising isn’t just about the ask. It’s about the experience of giving. And today, donors expect that experience to be simple, fast, and frictionless.
If it’s not, they won’t tell you. They’ll just move on.
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