Mobile Donation Gap and Why It Matters
Nonprofits are seeing more than half of their web visitors coming from smartphones, yet mobile donations lag far behind desktop donations in both frequency and amount. This disparity – often called the mobile donation gap – is very real. According to industry benchmarks, mobile users now make up 53% of visits to nonprofit websites, but desktop users still account for the majority of online donation transactions and about 70% of online revenue.
In concrete terms, the average gift made on a desktop is around $145, whereas the average mobile gift is only about $76. Mobile donors give roughly half as much per donation, and there may be fewer of them completing the process in the first place. The result is a sizeable shortfall.
why you should care
What does this gap mean for your organization’s budget?
Let’s translate the statistics into a local nonprofit’s reality. Imagine your website gets 10,000 visits this month, and about 5,300 of those are from mobile devices (which is consistent with the 50%+ mobile traffic many nonprofits see).
Now, say around 1.5% of all visitors actually complete a donation – that would be roughly 150 donors. If most of your donations and revenue are coming from the desktop half of those visitors, you’re likely missing out on thousands of dollars. In fact, given the average donation values above, those 5,300 mobile visits might yield only a few thousand dollars, whereas the same number of desktop visits could net well over twice as much.
That gap – potentially several thousand dollars a month – is money left on the table simply because mobile visitors aren’t converting into donors at the same rate or value as their desktop counterparts. For a small local nonprofit, an extra $2,000–$5,000 every month can fund another program initiative or pay staff salaries. The mobile donation gap isn’t just a statistic; it’s a direct hit to your mission’s funding.
what is it about phones?
Why Mobile Donors Fall Behind (The “Mobile Mindset”)
It’s reasonable to ask why this gap exists. Are people just less generous on their phones? In a way, yes – and it’s rooted in human psychology. Emerging research indicates that people behave differently on smartphones than on PCs. When using a phone, we tend to be more self-focused and less attuned to others’ needs.
The smartphone is a very personal device that we carry everywhere, almost as an extension of ourselves. That mindset is great for personal entertainment or social media, but it works against empathy. Donating to charity requires thinking about others, yet on our phones we’re naturally pulled toward our own interests and distractions.
Professor Kristen Ferguson of Notre Dame, who studied this “mobile giving gap,” explains that people are literally less likely to donate on a phone than on a computer because of this shift in focus. In one experiment, over 52% of participants on a computer donated a small bonus to charity, but only 34% of those on smartphones did the same. That’s a striking difference attributable purely to the device used.
about user experience
Its Not Just Psychology
The user experience on many nonprofit mobile sites is simply not as good as it should be. Think about the last time you tried to fill out a form on a phone – pinching and zooming, typing on tiny touch keyboards, maybe the page took too long to load. Unfortunately, a lot of nonprofit donation pages still feel like “trying to button a shirt with mittens on” for mobile users (as one web design expert aptly put it). Friction that might be a minor annoyance on desktop – like a slow-loading page or a confusing layout – can completely derail a mobile donor.
Speed and simplicity matter. About a quarter of visitors will abandon any website that takes more than four seconds to load . Additionally, older donors (a key demographic for many charities) often feel less comfortable completing transactions on mobile devices due to security concerns or simply habit. They might browse on their phone but wait to donate on a desktop – or forget to follow up at all. All these factors contribute to fewer mobile conversions and smaller gifts. In short, many nonprofits have not fully adapted to how donors behave on phones. They’ve optimized for mobile in a technical sense (indeed, 90+% of nonprofits have mobile-friendly websites now), but not in terms of messaging and usability.
The gap is a result of that oversight, not an unchangeable rule of donor behavior.
don’t ignore mobile
Mobile Giving Is Growing – and Cannot Be Ignored
It’s important to realize that mobile giving isn’t a niche or future trend; it’s happening now, and growing fast. Online giving overall has been rising (up 42% since 2019 by one major report), with 28% of online donation dollars coming from mobile devices as of 2021. Those numbers have likely inched even higher by 2023. More and more donors will encounter your cause first on their phone – whether through social media, email, or web search. If more than half of your traffic is mobile but those visitors aren’t converting into donors, your fundraising growth will stall. Executives and board members might wonder why website traffic is high but online donations are flat; the mobile gap is a big part of the answer.
It’s essentially a conversion problem that drags down your overall fundraising efficiency. The encouraging news is that this under-performance is fixable. As smartphone use continues to dominate, even among older adults, closing the mobile giving gap is quickly becoming an essential competency for nonprofits – not just a technical task, but a strategic one.
closing the gap
A Mobile-First Donation Page Checklist
Improving mobile donations doesn’t require a complete website overhaul or expensive new tools. It does require a thoughtful, mobile-first approach. Below is a checklist of practical steps (each relatively low-cost) that your organization’s leadership can champion to start closing the mobile donation gap:
Streamline and Simplify the Donation Process
Ensure your donation page is as short and straightforward as possible on a phone. Remove any non-essential fields or steps. Every extra question or page increases the chance a mobile donor gives up. In user testing, nonprofit websites had donation flows averaging over 4 minutes to complete – longer than typical e-commerce checkouts – and that’s on desktop! Simplify it. Ideally, a donor on a smartphone should be able to tap a prominent “Donate” button and complete their gift in just a couple of minutes or less.
Try it yourself: pull out your own phone and go through your organization’s donation process. If you feel even a hint of frustration or confusion, assume a first-time donor will simply quit. Your mobile form should be a quick “one-and-done” experience, not a gauntlet.
Optimize for Speed and Clarity
Slow pages kill donations, especially on mobile. Work with your web team to make sure your site and donation page load fast on cellular connections. Compress images, eliminate unnecessary scripts, and test the page on a typical smartphone. Also, design with clarity – use large, legible text and buttons that are easy to tap with a thumb. Don’t assume people will rotate their screen or zoom; they won’t. If the call-to-action or donation amount buttons are buried or hard to click, you’re losing gifts. More than half of nonprofit web traffic is on mobile now, so every page (especially your homepage and donate page) must be designed first and foremost for a small screen. It’s not enough that it “technically works” on mobile – it should be comfortable and intuitive on mobile.
Offer Mobile-Friendly Payment Options
Typing out credit card numbers and mailing addresses on a phone is tedious. By introducing mobile payment methods, you can make giving almost frictionless. Consider enabling options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, or Venmo on your donation form. These digital wallets let donors give with a few taps, often without needing to manually enter billing info. They’re popular too – for example, in 2023 PayPal was the most-used mobile payment method for online donations, and Apple Pay usage is growing rapidly. Many donors (especially younger ones) now expect these convenient options. Offering them not only speeds up the process but also conveys that your nonprofit is keeping up with the times. A fast checkout means fewer opportunities for the donor’s attention to wander to another app or notification.
Emphasize Impact – Make It “Other-Focused”
To counter the natural self-focus of the mobile mindset, adapt your messaging. Review the language on your donation appeals and webpages, especially the content a donor sees during the donation process. Is it full of internal jargon about your campaign (“Help us reach our goal”)? Or does it speak to the outcome and people that the donation will benefit (“Your gift will feed a family tonight”)? Research shows that explicitly highlighting the needs of other people can snap mobile users out of their self-focus and significantly boost giving. In fact, a charity in Europe was able to virtually eliminate the mobile gap in a test by changing one line of copy to focus on victims in need rather than the organization’s effort. You can apply this immediately: make sure your donation ask on mobile isn’t buried in generic text. Use a concise, compassionate message about who needs help or what impact the donation will have. This kind of emotional clarity matters even more on a small screen.
Build Trust on Small Screens
Donors must trust your organization and feel secure giving on their phones. Simple trust-builders can go a long way. Prominently display your nonprofit’s credibility points on the donation page itself – for example, a Charity Navigator 4-star badge, a BBB accredited charity logo, or a short testimonial from a beneficiary or supporter. Mobile users don’t have the luxury of easily opening multiple tabs to vet you; bring the reassurance to them. Likewise, emphasize security: ensure your page has SSL (HTTPS) and let donors know their information is safe. If your donate page is hosted by a third-party platform, make sure it’s one that people recognize or that you introduce briefly (so the change in URL or appearance doesn’t spook them). Also, use a domain and email that align with your nonprofit (donors trust .org emails and sites the most for giving – far more than a random payment URL). The goal is to minimize doubt or hesitation for someone about to enter their payment info on a phone.
Test and Iterate
Finally, treat your mobile donation experience as an ongoing priority, not a set-and-forget project. After implementing improvements, monitor your metrics. Is the percentage of gifts coming from mobile increasing? Is the average mobile gift size going up? If your donation platform allows, look at abandonment rates on mobile. Solicit feedback occasionally – even asking a few regular donors or volunteers to try donating on their phones and tell you where it felt hard. The data and feedback will help you pinpoint remaining pain points. The good news is that unlike some fundraising initiatives, web improvements can often be done incrementally and affordably. Little tweaks – a shorter form here, a clearer message there – can yield meaningful upticks in conversion. Remember, even a modest bump in mobile giving (say, turning that 1% mobile conversion into 2%) could translate to dozens of additional donors each month.
Expanding Impact
From Mobile Gap to Mobile Growth
The underperformance of mobile giving is not a hopeless inevitability; it’s a call to action. As an executive director or nonprofit leader, you don’t need to become a web design guru, but you do need to ask the right questions of your team or vendors. Is our website truly mobile-first in practice? Where are we potentially losing smartphone donors, and how can we fix it? The data is clear that donors are on their phones. More of them will find you there, and they’ll give there – if you meet them halfway by providing a convenient, compelling mobile experience. In an era when online giving is rising year over year, closing the mobile donation gap is one of the most immediate opportunities to boost your nonprofit’s revenue.
It’s essentially unlocking funds you’re already attracting, but not yet capturing. A supportive yet skeptical look at your own site (as if you were a first-time visitor on a phone) can be revealing. You might discover that a few simple changes stand between you and a surge of new donations. By investing the effort to understand and improve the mobile donor experience, you’ll not only stop losing out on the gifts that are slipping away now – you’ll set your organization up to thrive as mobile giving becomes the norm. In the end, making it easy for people to support your cause where they are (on their phones) is just an extension of being donor-centric. It’s meeting your supporters with the same thoughtfulness and urgency that you bring to your mission every day. And it’s fixable – starting today, with the checklist above and a commitment to continuous improvement.