4 Fundraising Thermometer Tips to Drive Donations

Fundraising thermometers are more than a visual tool for tracking progress toward your goal. They create a sense of urgency, provide social proof, and allow donors to see their impact in real time. By joining a community movement and contributing to a cause others have already endorsed, donors feel their support is valuable and impactful.

Ready to put a fundraising thermometer to its full potential for your next campaign? Below, we highlight several ways to use fundraising thermometers and the benefits of various fundraising ideas. You’ll also find four tips to maximize donations with the support of this dynamic tool.

What is a fundraising thermometer?

Fundraising thermometers—also referred to as donation thermometers, thermometer charts, progress bars, or goal charts—are graphics that help donors visualize progress toward your goal. There are many ways to incorporate fundraising thermometers to encourage donations. A nonprofit can:

• Include a large printout at an in-person event where staff draw the audience’s attention each time they fill in another level of the thermometer with a marker.
• Project a digital thermometer at fundraising events to reflect real-time donations, auction bids, text-to-donate contributions, paddle raises, merchandise purchases, and more. 
• Display a fundraising thermometer widget during a live webinar to remind potential donors they can take meaningful action as they watch. 
• Use nonprofit fundraising software to embed a fundraising progress bar on a crowdfunding or other time-bound campaign page—like Giving Tuesday or a supply drive—to showcase the total raised toward overall benchmarks.
• Incorporate individual and overall thermometers on peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns as personal and organizational goal trackers.

Fundraising thermometers don’t require a team of graphic designers with knowledge of HTML codes to be effective. Nonprofits can get creative with tools like Canva or find a free fundraising thermometer template. Classy Studio also offers easy options for turning your goal-setting into powerful campaign visuals that drive donations.

What are the benefits of using a fundraising thermometer?

Since 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, a fundraising thermometer provides a powerful cue for supporters to understand and relate to your goal. In addition to driving momentum for your campaign, you can personalize a fundraising thermometer to creatively showcase your brand, supporters, and cause.

Studio offers easy-to-use features to enhance this visual storytelling element on campaign pages and donation forms. Nonprofits can adjust the colors of their thermometers to match their brand guidelines with built-in accessibility controls. They can also pair the progress bar with an activity feed that shows real-time donations, matches, and interactions from supporters—such as liking new activity on the feed, which might inspire others to join.

4 ways to raise more with a fundraising thermometer

Now that you understand the purpose and potential of a fundraising thermometer, we’ll show you how to make the most of this tool at each stage of your campaign.

1. Create a sense of urgency around your campaign

Greet campaign page visitors immediately with a fundraising progress bar at the top or close to where they take action (for example, a Donate Now button). This shows supporters how their contributions impact the larger goal. People like to be part of a winning team, so seeing your progress can entice donors to return to your campaign page to give—and potentially give again.

You can also frame your campaign as time-limited, such as the final 24 hours of your Giving Tuesday campaign or an emergency-response campaign. Pair your fundraising thermometer with a countdown to the end of the effort to encourage donors to take quick action. Studio makes it easy for nonprofits to add time-bound metrics to any campaign.

Finally, incorporate your fundraising thermometer updates in related email marketing, social media posts, and other messaging. When supporters know exactly how much you have left to raise, you can harness a sense of urgency to inspire donations.

2. Engage supporters in real time

Use your fundraising thermometer to keep donors engaged in your success, whether at an event or on a digital crowdfunding campaign. Studio offers many ways nonprofits can encourage continued investment in time-bound campaigns, such as:

• Customizable thank-you pages that inspire supporters to share their involvement with your campaign with their network to encourage others to give
• Real-time recognition and social proof of a campaign’s donors on an activity feed you can pair with your progress bar
• Fun ways for supporters to connect with one another in the activity feed through comments, replies, and likes 

During in-person gala events, auctions, and other fundraising efforts, nonprofits can project a digital fundraising thermometer in a central location as a constant reminder of what brought everyone together and what they can accomplish as a result. Virtual or hybrid events can include a similar progress bar at the bottom of the livestream.

As your thermometer reaches specific milestones during your event, such as one-quarter of your goal, offer moments of engagement with your guests. Consider a text-to-donate prompt, a donation match announcement, or another creative way to get them excited to reach the next progress point.

To customize your fundraising thermometer on Classy Live:

• Choose your view: Select a thermometer view in Classy to showcase progress toward your overall goal or how much you’ve raised within a specific time frame. 
• Create your display: Add a background image, display name, and goal amount to thoughtfully tap into human emotion and get people excited to watch the thermometer.
• Craft a thank-you message: Choose the text that appears above the donation total, such as “Thank You for Donating” or “You Made the Difference.”

3. Build momentum by highlighting a matching donation

Remember that 84% of donors are more likely to give if they know they’ll get a contribution match. You can leverage the power of a matching donation even more by reflecting its impact in real time on your fundraising thermometer. When supporters give, they’ll see your progress bar grow twice the size of their donation.

In Studio, nonprofits can add, track, and promote sponsors with customizable drag-and-drop widgets and create a sense of urgency with time-limited matching opportunities showcased on any campaign page. Additionally, supporters will see the power of their matched donation in the fundraising thermometer and connected activity feed, with sponsor matches listed in real time below theirs.

4. Use data to inform future fundraising strategies

Track key data related to your fundraising thermometer to demonstrate donors’ impact and inform future campaign strategies. To help set goals for future initiatives, consider reviewing data points like:

• Likelihood of donors giving at the beginning or end of a campaign
• Time it took to reach the quarter, halfway, and three-quarter marks of your campaign goal
• Donors who gave repeat donations and any related drivers for doing so
• Individual fundraising pages that brought in the most donations
• Average donation amount of individual fundraising pages
• Percentage you exceeded or missed your campaign goal

Get proactive in collecting these data points throughout your campaign, then regroup afterward to set informed and realistic benchmarks for the future.

Use fundraising thermometers to unlock donations

An online fundraising tracker prompts your target audience to take immediate action. Using Classy Studio keeps the donor connection the top priority in your fundraising campaigns with real-time acknowledgment of donation matches, opportunities for supporters to share their involvement, and time-bound metrics to drive action.

If you want to learn more about how progress metrics can help improve your campaigns, check out our on-demand progress metrics training through Classy Academy and find answers to frequently asked questions about Classy’s progress bars in our support article. Our coaching team is also here to help your nonprofit succeed with weekly workshops on how to build your giving season campaigns on Classy Studio.

Copy Editor: Ayanna Julien