In this lesson we'll look at how donation platforms connect to Google Analytics and what transaction and revenue data they (ideally) send over. We'll also see how donations can be reported in Google Ads and Analytics, and how donation data is useful for decision-making.

Choose a donation platform for marketing

Each donation platform comes with different features, different instructions to connect to Google Analytics, and they don't all send the same data to Analytics.

Putting aside any other factors involved in choosing a donation platform (fees, functionality, usability etc), look for one that:

1. integrates well with Google Analytics;
2. attributes donations correctly to different channels;
3. and enables the separate reporting of one-off and monthly donations so you can calculate lifetime value.

Unfortunately many popular donation tools fail at one or more of these requirements. A few platforms don't offer even basic Google Analytics compatibility. If you ask them about these requirements, they might well not understand the question, or deflect by minimizing their importance. Not all of these companies fully understand the importance of conversion tracking for online marketing, or why it's so important to attribute donations to specific ad campaigns and channels.

I recommend Fundraise Up for its clever features and easy integration with Google Analytics, so throughout this lesson I'll use it as an example.

How to connect a donation platform to Google Analytics

Each platform does it differently. Some will have a single admin setting in the platform's back-end, in which you enter your Google Analytics measurement id. Some require you to add the id to each fundraising campaign you create. Some require you to use the Google Tag Manager tool to add code to your website to send data to Analytics. And some—unfortunately—don't enable Google Analytics integration at all.

The company should have documentation on their website about how to connect their platform to Analytics. If not, ask them directly.

But what if you use a custom-made donation form? That's beyond the scope of this course, and you'll need to liaise with the web developer to figure out how to integrate it with GA4.

How Fundraise Up connects to Analytics: it uses Google Tag Manager, see their instructions at fundraiseup.com/support/google-analytics-4.

Cross-domain tracking

If donations are being recorded in Google Analytics but most of them are attributed to the Direct channel then it's likely that you need to set up cross-domain tracking.

The problem is that whilst visitors are on your website when they make the donation, the donate form itself is likely to be embedded i.e. actually on a completely different domain. If you don't tell Google Analytics that the two domains are actually being visited in a single session, Google will assume the donation came from a direct visit rather than from an ad, a click from Facebook or an email, or an organic search.

If you configure a domain for cross-domain measurement then when someone clicks a link to that other domain(s), it will not be tracked as an outbound click.

How to set up cross-domain tracking for Fundraise Up: go to Google Analytics > Admin Data collection and modification > Data stream > Configure tag settings > Configure your domains. Then add your domains to the list. In the example below it shows the nonprofit's website domain, plus the domains of the two donation platforms they've used.

How to view donation data in Google Analytics

In Google Analytics navigate to the Monetization > E-commerce purchases screen and choose a sensible date range. The screenshot below shows what to expect: donations listed by item name. If you have multiple donation forms or different types of donation, your donation platform may name them differently, or all the same. You should see the number of items purchased plus the item revenue. The screenshot below shows an aid organization's revenue from online donations in the last 28 days.

Note that instead of viewing item name, you can instead choose item category or item variant or item brand from the drop-down. Depending on your donation platform, those might or might not display useful information.

You can add comparisons to display revenue data segmented by various options, for example to see how many donations of each type came via Google Ads, organic search, Microsoft Ads, Facebook, email etc.

Watch the video below to see a demonstration:

How Fundraise Up sends data to the monetization report: under Item name it tracks the campaign name and number of donations:

Under Item variant it shows the whether it's a one-off or monthly donation, and the revenue amount:

How to calculate Return On Spend (ROS)

For one-off donations it’s simple to calculate ROS: divide the money you generated from Google Ads by the amount you spent on ads e.g. if you spent $1 to get $3 that was a 3 X ROS.

When you report on monthly donations, consider how long your nonprofit retains a monthly donor on average: if that's four years, then multiply the value of monthly donations by 48 in your reports to get the lifetime value.

Let's use this example: a nonprofit that received spent $300 on ads and got 12 donations totaling $425.

The raw revenue = $425.

10 one-off donations totaled $400.

2 monthly donations totaled $15

Lifetime value of those monthly donations = 15 X 48 = $720.

Total lifetime revenue = $400 one-off + $720 monthly lifetime value = $1,120.

To calculate ROS divide the lifetime value by the ad spend i.e. $1,120 / 300 = a 3.7 return.

In an Ad Grant the spend is from a free budget, so ROS does not represent a real-life financial ratio. It's also very unlikely in an Ad Grant, unless your nonprofit is a big brand name charity, that you will achieve a positive ROS from ads. However, it can still be a useful metric to track your monthly success.

But if you run paid ads, ROS is essential to calculate. You really shouldn't run ads with a donation goal, unless you have the data to prove that your money is well spent.

You could if you wish, add the cost of your Google Ads management to the amount of the ad spend, to get a fuller picture of the financial return to your nonprofit. If the monthly account management cost is $400 then...

Lifetime value of revenue $1,120 / ($300 + $400) = a 1.6 return.

How to view donation data in Google Ads

In Google Ads in campaign, ad group, ad, or keyword view, you can segment by conversion action to see data for conversions. Watch the video below to find out how to view revenue data (which includes donation data sent to Analytics) by referring to the purchase conversion.

If there are minor discrepancies between conversions reported in Analytics and Ads, I defer to Analytics. If there are major discrepancies I try to figure out why.

Try this: create custom events in Google Analytics to show monthly and one-off donations separately in Google Ads

In Google Analytics, assuming your donation platform identifies one-off and monthly donations separately, it's easy to calculate lifetime value. But when you import the conversion called purchase to Google Ads, it's not so easy. The data arrives with no distinction between types of donation.

One possible solution is to create simple custom events like the ones shown below, using the parameters and data that the donation platform sends. Note that your own website's donation platform may not send this data at all, or might use the item_category parameter instead of item_variant, and is likely to use different wording to this. The screenshot below shows one solution on one account.

Once donations have happened, you can mark those custom events as key events; then import those conversions into Google Ads in the usual way.

This is only one method to achieve this. You could possibly create separate events using Google Tag Manager, but that's beyond the scope of this course.

Then you'd have separate conversion actions for one-off and monthly donations, and when segmenting for conversion action in Google Ads you'll see the data separated.

Which donation platform do you use?

Comment below to let me know which tool you use, and I'll try to find instructions on how to connect it to Google Analytics.

I'm a Fundraise Up partner

Fundraise Up is the donation platform I recommend for its smart features, ease of use, and straightforward Google Analytics integration, which makes it ideal when backed up with Google Ads donation campaigns. Read Fundraise Up case studies and see which nonprofits choose it to build their revenue.

If you would be interested in a demonstration of Fundraise Up's features, please contact me via marketplace.fundraiseup.com/partners/jason-king. I can also help with integration, reporting and Google Ads optimization for donations.

Published: May 2024