Mobile-first giving is no longer a design preference. It is how donors increasingly expect to give, and where most giving now happens. A donation form cannot just ‘work’ on a phone. It needs to feel quick, familiar and easy for someone ready to give in the moment, whether they are mid-scroll, mid-commute or responding to something that has moved them.
This is more important than ever in a challenging market. We know charities can’t control the wider economy, donor confidence or the volume of asks people see every day. But they can control the experience someone has when they are ready to give.
According to the Charities Aid Foundation UK charitable giving fell to £14bn in 2025, down from £15.4bn the year before, with six million fewer donors supporting causes than a decade ago. On paper, the data shows a sector that is shrinking. Inside organisations, the pressure for teams to do more with less is greater than ever. Every donor who reaches a donation journey is more valuable too.
Earlier this year, our own research set out to understand why and what charities could do about it. Our Mind the Engagement Gap report spoke to 2,000 supporters and 300 charity professionals. The research showed us that 44% of supporters don't typically engage again after their first donation, 61% of supporters say they disengage because charities ask too often or too forcefully and 40% say they disengage due to "too many messages and emails". Our conclusion was that experience is the single biggest lever available to close the gap between what supporters need and what they're getting.
When goDonate’s 2026 Insights Report launched, drawing on £30m of anonymised UK donation data from charities using the platform, it showed a far more encouraging pattern. Personal one-off online donation income grew 16% year on year and donation volume grew 18%. New regular giving also grew, with volume up 8% and income up 13%, while average gift values held broadly stable rather than falling. Same climate, same cost pressures, same donor fatigue as the rest of the sector. And yet charities on this one platform saw growth, not decline.
Our Mind the Engagement Gap report identified four needs that, met consistently, keep supporters engaged
- control and respect over how and when they're contacted
- visibility of the impact their gift made
- alignment with values they hold
- recognition of why they gave in the first place.
Miss these consistently, and supporters don't complain they just quietly disengage.
What goDonate’s data shows is what can happen when the donation moment itself feels faster, simpler and lower friction for the supporter, even when the wider sector data says otherwise.
So what are the key areas that the goDonate data shows us and how can organisations use this information to design better experiences for their audiences?
Optimising mobile and regular giving as a key driver for growth
The goDonate data makes the mobile point hard to ignore. In 2025, mobile accounted for 58% of one-off donations and 67% of regular gifts by volume. Regular giving, long considered a desktop-led behaviour, is now happening in the palm of the supporter's hand, as long as the journey feels simple, familiar and low-friction.
Digital wallets, including Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, grew to 49% of one-off donations, up from 45% the year before. This suggests more donors are choosing the lowest-friction path to complete a gift, just like they do for so much else online. They may be mid-scroll, mid-commute or mid-conversation when they do it, so the journey has to work quickly. The charities capturing that volume are those whose donation journeys were actually built for that moment, not a shrunk down version of a desktop form.
In 2025, card and digital wallet payments' share of recurring gifts grew to 45%, up from 40% the year before, while Direct Debit's share fell from 60% to 55%. New regular giving grew 8% in volume and 13% in income over the same period, meaning that this growth was driven by more people completing the sign up, not simply bigger donations.
There's a useful nuance in the data too, the gap between card and wallet average gift values, which is fairly wide in one off giving, narrows considerably in regular giving. Once a supporter has decided to commit long-term, the payment method they use to do it barely affects what they gave. That suggests wallets aren't bringing in less profitable donations but they're simply a more natural way for many supporters to give.
Reading through our research, we heard from supporters that they increasingly want a say in how and control over how they commit long term. Charities offering more flexible ways to become regular donors are likely bringing in donors who wouldn't have completed the old journey at all.
Interestingly, whilst mobile wins on volume, goDonates data showed that desktop still holds the larger share of income, because average gifts on mobile and via wallets trail those made by card on desktop, even despite the increase in volume here.
Turning this into practice: designing mobile optimised giving journeys
Design: mobile first, not mobile compatible
Mobile compatible means the desktop form still loads, just smaller. Mobile first means the form was designed assuming a thumb, a small screen, and a donor who may abandon at the first unnecessary field. The distinction matters because most of the friction in a mobile giving journey isn't just visual, it's structural. Too many fields, too many decision points, too much scrolling before the ask is even visible.
It’s also important from a search perspective, not just conversion, as since 2024 Google puts more weight on the mobile version of your website as a factor for ranking and will not rank it at all if it considers it not mobile friendly.
Things to review:
- Audit your current mobile donation form for fields that could be removed or deferred - address details after the gift, not before, for example.
- Audit your components - have you designed native mobile components, or are you only using shrunk down desktop ones.
- Has your content written for mobile or have you written too much so the user has to scroll.
- Audit your mobile experience from an accessibility perspective. Are touch targets big enough.
- Prioritise load speed on mobile specifically. A slow loading donation page is an immediate source of drop off that rarely shows up in a design review.
- Make native payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay the path of least resistance rather than a secondary option buried below a card form.
- Check whether wallet options genuinely speed up the process — auto filling contact and payment details — rather than just sitting as a final step at checkout. On goDonate, wallet options can reduce friction earlier in the donation journey, since donor and payment details are pulled through from the wallet rather than typed in manually before checkout.
Gift Aid is worth building into this same picture. In 2026 CAF estimated that around £560 million in Gift Aid goes unclaimed every year, against roughly £1.7 billion successfully claimed, meaning a meaningful share of eligible donors simply never tick the box. On mobile specifically, that's often a design problem as much as an awareness one, a small checkbox easy to miss on a cramped screen, or a Gift Aid question placed on a separate step after the main ask.
Accessibility should run across everything in this section, not sit as a separate step - tap target size, contrast, and screen reader compatibility all deserve the same attention as load speed and field count when thinking mobile first.
Case study examples:
- MND Association: 36% increase in conversion rate and 59% increase in income.
- Blue Cross: 40% uplift in online donation and 35% increase in digital income.
- Royal British Legion: Conversion rate average of 62%.
- NSPCC (A/B test): Increase in Regular Giving by 28% and single giving by 13%.
Charities that have invested in more optimised donation journeys with goDonate see average conversion rates of around 42%, with some reaching 60%+. Evidence that these aren’t marginal tweaks, but changes capable of meaningfully shifting fundraising performance
Conversion rate optimisation
Trying to overhaul the whole donation journey in one go makes it hard to know what actually worked, and risks breaking something that was already working. A more reliable approach is to treat this as a series of small, individual tests and measure performance. Each test builds a clearer picture of what your specific audience responds to, rather than assuming a best practice from elsewhere will translate directly to your donors. Starting with an identified testing backlog for mobile will mean you can easily move through tests and build on learnings quickly.
Things to review:
- If you use native payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay, is it clear to users at the landing page stage that there are speedier options available to them? A/B test the order and prominence of payment options on your highest traffic donation page. This taps into a simple behavioural principle that when the ability to act is made easier, more people follow through on an intention rather than backing out at the last minute.
- Treat "does this journey convert" and "does this journey preserve average gift value" as two separate metrics. Optimising for one at the expense of the other just shifts the problem.
- With the average one-off gift at £78.59 on desktop against £43.79 on mobile, consider A/B testing suggested gift amounts and framing specifically on mobile. The friction that suppresses average gifts on a small screen — typing a custom amount, scrolling to see impact messaging, coming in from paid ads quickly with potentially less context — is different from the friction on desktop.
- A/B test your multi step mobile forms. A single page removes navigation friction, but a short multi-step flow with a visible progress indicator can reduce the feeling of a long form on a small screen. Worth testing which wins for your specific audience rather than assuming either by default.
It’s important to remember on mobile to consider how you balance a frictionless, minimal mobile checkout with the necessary "trust signals", that allow audiences to feel confident in supporting you. For example, we’ve seen examples where removing the navigation works well across devices, but also examples where on mobile performed worse than the control - so it’s important to think about the trust elements you’re left with that still give a user confidence that they are safe to make their donation, with your audience needs in mind.
Remembering your specific audience needs
Whilst optimising around these areas is important, it’s also important to ensure that you are making these optimisations in line with your specific audience needs. Our own research shows how differently supporters actually want to be treated and how costly it is to get that wrong.
47% of supporters told us they want more control over how they give. Impact and trust follow the same pattern, with 31% of supporters saying they disengage if they don't know how their donation was used, and when we asked what would actually build trust, supporters prioritised proof over promises, 45% pointed to transparency about how their donation was used, and 38% wanted to see the specific difference a donation makes. That need is even clearer for older donors with 72% of those 65+ rating confidence in the effective use of their donation as their single top priority, above anything else a charity could offer them and their requirements for things like personalised experiences in much lower.
None of this argues for treating every donor identically, because how these needs translate and the types of information an individual needs will differ by audience. Instead it’s a reminder to build the basic discipline of getting to know your audience, asking who's actually on the other end of your donation journey and what their needs are, to ensure you are designing tests and redesigning experiences for them.
Practical checklist
- Design for mobile first, not mobile compatible: build for smaller screens and simpler layouts from the start, start by removing one unnecessary field or step from your current form.
- Offer the payment methods donors expect: treat wallet integration as core part of the experience, not a bolt on. Prioritise removing the friction points that matter most first.
- Reduce friction and keep testing: A/B test one high traffic journey, one form, or one CTA before making broader changes.
- Make regular giving as flexible as one off giving: offer card and wallet options for recurring gifts, not just Direct Debit.
- Design for your known audiences and their needs, as well as best practise: test whether personalisation and design choices help to improve donation volume and value.
- Treat mobile page speed and structure as just as important for conversion and search
For further research and practical advice on improving supporter experience and mobile giving:
Download Manifesto's full report: Mind the Engagement Gap Report
Read goDonate's latest data and benchmarks: goDonate 2026 Insights Report