SALVATORE SALPIETRO: Thanks for sticking around for the last session of the day and the last session of the conference. 

So I want to share something with you that might be surprising. There is a real problem in generosity that the ecommerce space, you all, are helping solve. It’s a problem that’s responsible for major generosity leakage by the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. 

Today we’re going to first look at the delta between the giving experience—when you donate to the causes that are important to you—and the buying experience, what consumers are used to, how they are used to spending their money. Then we’re going to look at how things like card abandonment recovery, personalization, conversion rate optimization—how all of these things port over from the ecommerce space to the nonprofit space. And then finally, we’re going to look at data from the Pulse of the donor report that we recently released in collaboration with Stripe, and we’re going to look at a local case study. So that’s our agenda for our 25 minutes or so here together. 

So first, the delta. To know the delta, you need comparables. You need the baseline. So we’re going to start with this. One example of this delta is mobile consumers, also donors. And we’re going to look at the ecommerce split here and the distribution between revenue and traffic. 

So, if we look at this, we see a 13 percentage-points difference between mobile revenue and traffic. So mobile converts less, and/or has a lower average transaction value than desktop. We know that, and it’s a small gap; it’s about 13 points there. Sixty-eight percent of web traffic is on mobile, 55% of revenue in ecommerce. This is kind of an average stat from a number of different reports—Statista and so on—that I’ve put together for these numbers. It’s a small gap, but it’s expected. This is the baseline. Right. On mobile devices, we tend to spend a little less and so on. 

Now, let’s look at that for nonprofits. The same exact data—your web traffic distribution compared to your revenue—and the gap almost doubles. The gap almost doubles between the traffic and revenue for nonprofits. We’ve got a massive difference there. There’s leakage. There is a generosity problem with something that’s happening in the nonprofit space that is causing them to lose out on, again, possibly billions of dollars to help the world’s causes. 

There’s many factors behind why this is: demographics, who they target, and so on. But it’s mostly due to a poor application and/or adoption of technology. The nonprofit space is typically 10, 15, 20 years behind what you all are doing. “But what do you mean?” you might ask. So let’s take a quick peek ahead. 

Here’s another stat. This is only nonprofits using AI-driven, modern, forward-thinking technologies where we see 53% of the traffic still on mobile devices. And that gap closes to something that’s more comparable to the ecommerce space at 42% of revenue distribution. So it’s cut in half. That gap is cut in half when nonprofits adopt better technologies. 

If you still haven’t quite grasped it yet, this might help lock it in and clarify the gap. Let’s look at this stat. About a quarter of nonprofits accept Apple Pay. About 85% of ecommerce accepts Apple Pay. That’s money on the table. Similarly, for PayPal, 45% in the nonprofit space, 72% in the ecommerce space. That’s a massive lag in adoption of technologies and basically just a lag in meeting consumer expectations in that experience. 

Still not there yet? This might help. These are common examples of donation checkouts, or what we call in the nonprofit technology space, donation forms. The first four screenshots from the left are all screenshots from 2025. This is not from the Wayback Machine. Right. This is now. This is today. The first one—sorry—the last one there is from 2019. There is almost zero evolution and progress in what that experience looks like for the donor, almost no difference. 

And these are not screenshots from small, local, animal shelters or regional nonprofits. These are screenshots from large, well-known organizations that are anonymized. And they’re doing, with these, tens and tens of millions of dollars in donations. Imagine what they could do if they leveled up to meet expectations of the modern—let’s call them just the modern human. Right. It’s not a consumer, it’s not a donor; this is just a person. 

So donors—again, consumers in disguise—are asked to complete those donation forms while every day they’re enjoying the experiences that you all are building that are like these seamless, smooth, fast, one-click checkout—Link, Apple Pay. This is what they expect. And nonprofits are not meeting the expectation. 

Expectations are set by the consumer experiences that everyone at this conference, that you all, that Stripe, are building. Statistically, 95% of dollars are spent buying, not giving. So our expectations of what that experience should be like are set by the ecommerce world. Buying is easy, much easier than giving. But nonprofits have to work harder. And they start from a baseline of poor conversion technologies. All the things that might be close to your heart. Maybe it’s cancer research, animal welfare, environmental causes, humanitarian aid. These things are suffering because of the technology gap that they have. 

They start from that low baseline of poor conversion technology, a poor user experience. And this isn’t a one-off. These aren’t case studies. This is as a sector. This is as a whole. But why do they have to work harder? Right. OK. It’s bad technology, bad experiences. It’s a poorly converting form and checkout experience. But why, on a human level, do they have to work harder? Because when I buy, I get a thing. That thing is a service. It’s a pair of shoes. It’s the new iPhone, whatever it might be. I’m getting a thing, so I will go through that checkout. 

But when I give, I get the thing when I click donate, not when I convert. And you might be thinking like, what is that thing? That thing is feeling good about oneself. When I click donate, I have confirmed to myself that I am generous. I am kind. I’m altruistic. And feeling good is an emotion. And emotions are much more fleeting than that new sneaker design or that new iPhone model, etc. And a poor user experience extinguishes that emotion. 

So they have to work harder because, if the conversion doesn’t happen, if you make it too difficult, that’s on you as an organization. That’s not on me. I did my part. I clicked donate. But you don’t take Apple Pay. I’m holding a baby in one arm. The dog is barking, whatever it might be. The subway is coming. I’m out. I can’t be bothered. 

So let’s look at ecommerce techniques, things that are very familiar to everyone here. And how do we fix that gap—that problem? The solutions are right in front of the nonprofit sector. Everyone that works in nonprofits knows this. They use these consumer-level buying experiences. Ecommerce platforms are doing the hard work and paving the way. They’re discovering what works, what doesn’t. They’re innovating. They’re strategizing. 

Nonprofits really only need to take cues from really the rest of the world. But sadly and overwhelmingly, a majority—the majority—still do not grasp this mindset. And personally, that’s a mission that I’m on, is to help bring that mindset to the forefront of the nonprofit sector. 

So let’s look at how some of these common techniques are applied to nonprofits. Let’s start with cart abandonment. Common, right? We have this as a baseline, many of us. You don’t finish your cart. You’re getting an email. It’s Friday. You’re getting free fries if you want them or not. We’re going to send you the email reminding you that you left those in your cart because—this happens to me. I’ll second-think that free Friday, french fry Friday, right? And I’ll get the email. So it’s reminding me. Or you leave something else in your cart there, cart abandonment. 

So when we translate this to a nonprofit context, we’re softer. It is a different play. We’re softer. We’re connecting differently. We’re pulling on different levers. Here, we see donation abandonment with Fundraise Up. I start my donation. And when I close that checkout, we’re going to ask them, “Hey—we’ll send you a gentle reminder later.” This language is tested ad nauseam. We’re going to be softer, gentler. We’re going to play on emotion and other things that connect with that donor in the context that they are experiencing it. 

That’s how we’ll get an email address. If you have not entered it in the flow previously, we’ll ask. If you had started and entered an email address, we’ll close out. We won’t ask you for it, and we’ll send you that reminder later. So that’s cart abandonment and how we collect that. And then you’ll get an email, something like this. Here’s an example from the San Francisco SPCA, who’s actually here. We have the VP of technology here in the front. 

And you see here, this is an email that they’ll receive after. We’re adding context, impact, emotion. It’s less urgency about, “Hey, the sale’s going to end,” or “the thing is selling out.” And it’s more about, “We need your help, or join others like you to make a difference.” We’re tapping into emotion, community, care, not inventory. It’s a different play. 

Let’s talk about the next thing that, again, very common: personalization. Some leading examples of personalized experiences are here on the screen. We know all of these. I very rarely go to McDonald’s, so don’t hold this against me. I just keep putting that logo up there. They’re always adjusting and responding to who we are as an individual. 

Airbnb might show the locations that you like and the kind of lodging you like to book. Your habits, your budget, your frequent pickup location. Every time I land in a certain place, Uber automatically says, “I think you’re heading home.” So this is a personalized experience. Languages, currencies, all these things are built in and personalized. Personalization is obviously much more than using your name. It’s about knowing who you are and what you’re looking for. 

In the nonprofit context, it’s similar. We’re going to show suggested amounts using AI and predictive models to see what you might be able to give. Quick side note, iPhone donors give, on average, 30% more than Android. No shade to the Android users. But if we detect that, we’re going to adjust our ask array based on that. We’re going to develop different personas and deliver experiences that are different for each donor. Again, consumer, human, currency, payment methods—all AI-driven to maximize conversion and make that experience more relevant to the person that is engaging. So that is personalization and how we apply that here. 

The final technique that we’ll cover here is conversion rate optimization. Again, seems this will be a given for most of us here. But the nonprofit sector, as a whole, does not have the bandwidth, the budgets to execute the way that you all do. And sadly, a lot of the legacy tech that serves the nonprofit space has largely fallen behind, pushing the onus of optimization and conversion rate optimization to the nonprofit to take care of, which really doesn’t align with—it doesn’t align everyone’s goals. 

Many of these nonprofits are spending tens, hundreds of thousands to optimize their flows on a per-case basis, on something that really an ecommerce store simply might just leave to Shopify, or Stripe Checkout, or whatever it might be. Right. Let me focus on what I do best. Let that technology focus on what it does best. The nonprofit space, until in the last few years, has not had that benefit. 

So, on this slide, I’m going to share how we do this at scale for the nonprofit sector. Fundraise Up, with over 3,000—almost 4,000 nonprofits that we’re working with as a sample size—we do this for them. We do that conversion rate optimization for them. In 2024, we ran over 50 experiments. And experiments, for us, are much more than an A/B test. It’s a deep study, donor psychology, and UI, and UX, and an amalgamation of those things. 

And we ran over 50 experiments—many of them concurrently—to measure impact dependency of one thing on the other. We analyzed behaviors and outcomes of these across 15 million transactions, donations, from 1.3 billion visitors. And we’re able to get to statistical significance for all of them very quickly. And that’s how we deliver conversion rate optimization to the nonprofit sector. 

Transaction cost coverage—one of the most impactful experiments that we have run is transaction cost coverage or, as we call it, adaptive cost coverage. And it’s a perfect example of how ecommerce and nonprofits differ. Our hunch was that donors giving larger amounts didn’t like this cover transaction cost field checked by default. So we built an experiment around it. 

And in ecommerce, you can’t opt out of fees—convenience fees, ticket fees, safety fees, safe-car fees, etc. You can’t opt out of that. It’s part of the package. We are all accustomed to these things as being part of doing business, and it’s part of the deal. But it’s not the same with giving, which further supports the earlier point that nonprofits have to work harder to get those fees covered. They have to really justify why. 

So let’s look at the results of that experiment. The experiment was, let’s see if preselecting the box upsets donors over a certain amount, enough so to result in abandonment. We factored visitor cell phone provider, internet providers, device, location, time of day, and, of course, donation amount; transaction amount. And the result? AI found that preselecting the box for donors giving on average below about $1,000 resulted in higher abandonment. And the threshold changed based on cause, global or local economic conditions. 

And the AI is constantly working now after we deployed this to know when to preselect the box or not to preselect the box. The result there is a 4% revenue increase and a 5% conversion improvement from that one checkbox, and applying AI to one single checkbox on that checkout experience for nonprofits—4% revenue increase, 5% conversion improvement. 

Without the numbers, none of this matters. So let’s look at some impact data here and dive into the stats. Fundraise Up with Stripe, as I mentioned earlier, released the Pulse of the donor report, which is benchmarks in digital fundraising for US, Canada, UK, Australia. And it only includes nonprofits that are using Fundraise Up and Stripe, i.e., modern tech that bridges the gap between ecommerce and legacy nonprofit technologies. 

So let’s look at the data that proves the impact of doing this. The industry average is based on the widely regarded M+R benchmarks for digital fundraising. You can check out those reports at mrbenchmarks.com. And we see here the industry average—industry being nonprofits—one-time donation is $126. And those using this modern tech stack, this modern experience, are at $206. That’s a 63% increase in average transaction by applying these techniques. That’s not insignificant by any means. These aren’t marginal improvements. These are massive. 

Similarly, with monthly giving or what you all refer to as subscription economy and subscription business—the average in the nonprofit space? About $24 for a monthly donation to a nonprofit. And in our ecosystem, we’re at $45. We’re letting technology take the work away from the nonprofit of figuring out the value proposition and how much to ask for and what is it worth, and really leveraging that to increase the generosity, really, of those that visit. So it’s an 87% lift in the monthly giving amount. Incredible. When I said billions, I meant it. There’s billions of dollars that can help the world improve left on the table. 

Finally, the conversion rate. The Fundraise Up and Stripe average conversion rate is 172% higher than the industry average at 11%. If it weren’t tragic, it’d be laughable and vice versa. There’s loads of other data in the report. You can grab it at pulseofthedonor.com, or you can text one of my text autoresponders, SAL, to 83100. And I’ll get you the link to my LinkedIn, and we can continue the conversation—you’ll get a link to this report, and so on. 

There’s loads of other data in there, such as likelihood to give by time of day, payment method preferences, subscription giving data, as well as other markets like Canada, UK, Australia. I’d like to go through any questions you might have. So, if you want to scan the QR code, you can enter a question before we jump into a local case study. So, if you have any questions that are popping up that might have been in your mind as we’ve been talking here, go ahead and scan that. And we will address those in the last five minutes of our session here. 

Next, I want to talk about a local case study. So we’re going to bring it home—literally bring it home—right here to San Francisco. The San Francisco SPCA was founded in 1868. It is the fourth humane society in the nation, and it is 100% donation funded. No grants, no federal, no city, all donations, all out of generosity. I went and visited yesterday. I had a tour of the facility. It’s incredible what’s happening there and the work they’re doing. 

Before the San Francisco SPCA moved to Fundraise Up, this was their donation form. This is from the Wayback Machine. This is what the animals, the cats, the dogs, the organization were literally depending on for their existence—for a lifeline—this sort of donation form, this sort of technology and checkout experience. 

This is what they moved to, a mobile-specific experience for mobile donors, express wallets—all of this powered by Stripe. A smooth desktop experience, WCAG accessibility, etc., etc., etc. Really leveling up to what someone expects. When they moved to Fundraise Up, they had 400 monthly donors in total for a city the size of San Francisco. Now they’re in the thousands of monthly donors. Could be better. All of you that are local, remember that. It’s in the thousands now. 

Forty-two percent of their revenue comes on mobile devices. Thirteen percent of their donors are using Apple Pay. Four percent are using Google Pay. Eighty-four percent of donors are covering all of their transaction costs. About 15% of their donors are dedicating their gift to a loved one or a pet. They’ve accepted donations from over 50 countries. None of this would have been possible with what we saw before. 

Technology used by nonprofits can reverse the negative trends and amplify positive trends. Leveling up and removing friction is critical. It is existential for them. Ecommerce innovators—you, and leaders, are paving the way for nonprofits and performance-driven strategies. What you all do is informing what the nonprofit should do. It’s now up to the nonprofits themselves to understand the importance of meeting expectations and leveling up. 

The solutions exist, and they are within reach. And I want you to experience what that looks like. Scan this code. It’ll pull up the donation form for the San Francisco SPCA. If you’ve got a couple bucks in your Apple Cash wallet or whatever you’re using, make a donation. They need it. Experience what it’s like to give when you level up the experience to a buying experience. I’m going to give a couple more seconds on that. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Well, we have some time for a little Q&A if we have some questions. So we do have a couple of questions here. Some of you scanned that. 

The first question we have here is, “What is the benefit of recurring donation amounts versus one-time donations? What yields the greatest funding?” We see that when we’re able to convert and we use AI to essentially upsell—let’s call it an Amazon equivalent of Subscribe & Save—if someone’s making a $100 gift, AI will propose, how about a $25 monthly gift instead? 

We see about a 300% increase in revenue from that donor in a single year when we move them from one time to monthly. Another question here, “How do you see better payment method options potentially impacting giving from donor-advised funds?” Donor-advised funds—that is a financial vehicle. That’s a subset of obviously the larger giving economy. Billions and billions are in donor-advised funds. They’re historically difficult to extract money from, but there are new companies like Chariot and so on that are making that easier—that are trying to streamline that process. So that is an opportunity for the nonprofit space to improve that. 

Let’s look at some more questions here. One is repeated there. “What are the biggest hurdles of starting a nonprofit?” I think you don’t realize how much work it takes. A lot of people will say, “I’m just going to start a nonprofit,” and they’ll do that. You might as well say, “I’m going to start a business that has no revenue stream guaranteed. It has nothing to sell.” So know what you’re getting into. Consider giving to an organization that needs it before starting your own. There’s way too many, in my opinion, that are very small. We have a hand raised. I’m going to take a risk here. Go for it.

AUDIENCE: Now that you are going to integrate [free] on the Stripe products, are you considering making workflows to accept stablecoins in other countries outside of the US for nonprofits? 

SALVATORE SALPIETRO: So that, too, is on the roadmap to see how that works in the giving context. There are companies that are specializing in crypto giving. That’s not something that we at Fundraise Up are focusing on directly. But, sorry—the question was stablecoin for giving and looking at that as an option. So that’s something that we’ll be looking at. But again, we value our partnership with Stripe so much because they give us some room to explore the differences between consumer behavior and donor behavior. While it is the same person, the expectations are the same, the psychology is different. There’s a lot of questions here, and I’m out of time. But I’ll be here. And I’ll be over on the side, so we can chat. Appreciate it. Thank you.