In dealing with other non-profit fund raising efforts, I’m used to seeing a donations thermometer on the home page as well as the donations page. This does three things, first, it defines what you need the money for, it graphically shows how much you need, and it shows how far along you are towards your goal. So let’s say you have a capital drive to replace your vacuum chamber with one made completely from non-ferrous materials, and you have budgeted $15,000 for this. If you put a hollow icon of the chamber on your donations page and had a application fill it up as donations came in the users of the web site would have a visceral feeling for how the fund-raising campaign was going. A good example of how effective this sort of thing can be came out of Trippi’s efforts with the Democrats over the last two election cycles in the US. If you need any help implementing this sort of thing, I might have some time available.
An example of such thermometers can be found here.
