How to Optimize Your CanadaHelps Charity Profile
Learn how to make the most of your CanadaHelps Profile. Did you know that all 86,000+ registered Canadian Charities already have a profile on CanadaHelps? You just need to claim it to start maximizing its impact.
Over 3.8 million Canadians have donated on the CanadaHelps website - make sure your charity is front and center. Charities with completed profiles show higher on the search results page and receive 5x more in donation revenue.
With a CanadaHelps profile you can:
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What is a Charity Profile Page?
A Charity Profile Page is how charities are listed on CanadaHelps.org. You can see a live example of a profile page here. Using CanadaHelps, Canadians can quickly find, learn about your charity and make a donation through your charity profile page.
All charities that have registered with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will automatically have a charity profile on the CanadaHelps site - yes, that means you likely already have one! However, by default, these are unbranded profile pages that only include your charity’s name, registration status, address and a basic form for donors to donate to your charity.
Canadian charities that want to elevate their fundraising efforts can claim their charity profile to customize it to their branding and add as much information as they wish. Once you claim your charity profile page, you will be able to add information about your charity’s mission, any specific campaigns and your impact.
How can a Charity Profile Page help you increase donations?
CanadaHelps is a trusted destination for Canadians searching for charities and causes to donate to. With CanadaHelps receiving over 650,000 visits each month (equivalent to the entire population of Vancouver), and converting over 1 in 10 to donors, it’s well worth making sure your charity profile is maximized.
Claiming your Charity Profile Page can help you reach new donors online and provide prospective donors with a short and impactful introduction to the work that you do. A profile page can be particularly useful for those charities that don’t have another method for receiving donations online.
In addition, by signing up for a free CanadaHelps charity account and claiming your organization’s profile page, you will be able to:
- Receive instant details about donations you have received
- Reach out and communicate to donors
- Set up an Electronic Fund Transfer to receive donations weekly
- Claim and customize your profile page
- Set up searchable campaigns
Claiming Your Charity Profile
If you’re signing up for the first time. You will need a few pieces of information to get started:
- Your charity registration number (it usually looks like the image below)
- Your email address
- Your contact details
Once you’re signed up, you will receive an email with the next steps.
If you’d like to receive your donations more quickly and easily through electronic funds transfer (EFT) we will need your Banking Information in addition to a third party document verifying that the bank account is in your charities name.(e.g. a void cheque, any official bank document)
Using Your Charity Profile
If you haven’t already, login to your Charity Account and follow along the next steps.
There are four main parts to the Charity Profile, the main profile, impact, campaign page and discovery settings. Sometimes there are multiple ways to access the same sections so you can jump to updating your campaigns or discovery settings more easily. You can edit everything from the “Main Profile Page” editor other than the “Impact Page”.
The Main Profile Page (Getting the Basics Right)
Add general information about your charity by logging into your account and clicking on Profile tab > Main Profile Page. Under the Profile tab, you can fill out details such as:
- Popular name
- Website URL
- Contact Details
- Logo
Most importantly, you can craft an “About” paragraph, outlining your organization's mission and the work your charity does.
Make Your Profile Page Stand Out (Visuals & Quotes)
Upload images and videos on the Media Library tab. Adding media can make your profile instantly more eye-catching and ensures you have a page . You can try to use media that is unique to your organization rather than stock images, and make sure you choose ones that showcase your programs or impact.
- You can add images in PNG, JPG and GIF format
- You can add videos by their URL.
Once added to your media library, you can arrange how the images and videos appear on the Page Visuals tab.
Apart from engaging media, you can stand out by adding quotes. Gather some testimonials from your clients, supporters, partners or staff and add them to the quotes tab.
Maximizing Conversions (Donation Presets)
In addition to customizing how your profile page looks, you also have control over how people support your charity.
Set up donation preset values and associate them to the impact that they will have on your organization. You may add up to 4 suggested donation amounts.
Donors will always have the ability to manually enter a specific donation amount but donation presets can encourage donors to give larger gifts and you can add notes to each suggested amount to help donors understand the tangible impact of their donation.
The Campaign Page
Guide people to specific campaigns to fund certain projects, events or aspects of your mission. For example, you may set up a Giving Tuesday Campaign and put in a Goal Amount and End Date (both optional) in order to drive urgency.
You can set these up from the Main Profile Page - Campaign tab or jump straight into campaigns by going to “Campaign Pages”.
Just like on your Main profile page, you can add visuals to the campaign under the Page Visuals tab. Once you’ve gone through one section of this, everything else should start feeling familiar.
The Impact Page
Go the extra mile and tell people about your impact. On the impact page you can go beyond overhead and admin figures to tell people the effects of your work. There are 6 tabs that you can use to go into as much detail as you would like:
- Overview
- Results
- Supporting
- Testimonials
- Programs
- Education
Discovery Settings
One of the profile’s biggest benefits is its ability to help you reach new donors. You can choose the scope of your mission and the categories and subcategories that your organization falls in to help donors interested in various causes find your organization more easily.
Animal charities, Arts & Culture, Education, Environment, Health, Indigenous People, International, Public Benefit, Religion, Social Services
These are the categories that Canadians will be able to choose from on the CanadaHelps website.
Your “Emotive Image” displays as a thumbnail when your profile shows up in search results.
Keywords used in your “short intro text” become searchable terms for your charity. This short intro text also displays below the emotive image on your profile thumbnail
Tips & Tricks
Tip #1 Collecting All The Free Promotional Opportunities
The Charity Profile is a free promotional opportunity for your charity. If you followed the steps above in “Using Your Charity Profile” you should have completed them all, but here is a checklist of 6 opportunities to double check:
- Logo uploaded showcasing your brand
- Main image uploaded connecting donors to your work
- Discovery image to attract visitors when we suggest your charity
- Scope of mission set to help donors find your charity
- Campaign launched for promoting your fundraising needs
- Impact page sharing your impact story and results
Our data shows that the more of these opportunities you claim, the more donations your charity is likely to receive. By completing 5 or more of this checklist you could multiply your donations 12 times!
Tip #2 Update Your Charity Profile from time to time
With the Charity Profile, don’t just set it and forget it. We all know how off-putting an outdated site or information can be - the same goes for your Charity Profile. Set a recurring reminder in your calendar and make it a habit to refresh your profile on an annual basis.
We suggest doing this at the beginning of each year or whenever you draw up your annual report. You can repurpose parts of your Annual Report and update people on the campaigns, successes and challenges of the last year.
Tip #3 More Opportunities to Get Featured on CanadaHelps
At CanadaHelps, our mission is to inform, inspire, and connect donors and charities. Aside from hosting Charity Profiles for Canada’s 86,000 registered charities, we also look for other opportunities to raise charities up.
Under the “Discover” tab of our site, donors can discover popular causes, charity campaigns and personalized recommendations. By selecting your charitable category and scope of your mission, you will automatically be recommended to donors that have shown interest in similar charities.
CanadaHelps also curates various “Gift Guides” according to cause areas such as “Health” or “Environment.” During various holidays such as Mother’s Day or the Giving Season, we have timely “Gift Guides”. To be listed, add a tag to your campaigns (e.g. Gifts $26 to $100) so it will appear in the Charitable Gift Guide search on CanadaHelps.org.
On occasion we also do a theme based email. We look to charities impact pages to find new ways to talk about causes and charities and always feature different charities. There is no silver bullet to get into the email, but having a robust and full profile is the best approach. You can always reach out if you think you should be included on a landing page!
Additional Resources
If you haven’t already, login to your Charity Account and follow along the next steps.
Why Charities Love CanadaHelps
"The charity profile is easy to set up and manipulate. We have received a significant increase in the number of donors who use the platform; donors appreciate that they can also give to their other favourite charities using one simple login."
"When there is a question, the CanadaHelps team is quick to respond with helpful answers. I’m very impressed and feel confident that using the CanadaHelps Charity Profile platform to represent St. Michael’s Foundation is the right choice. The platform is easy to use and navigate for donors to donate to charities. As a long-time client, I see a long journey ahead, as we look to CanadaHelps to spread the word and continue our partnership in the mission to raise funds to help the hospital provide the best patient care experience."
"We wanted our supporters to have the ability to donate to Lifewater Canada 24/7, but developing a front-end and back-end solution was prohibitively expensive. We were impressed by the wide range of Canadian charities already making use of the CanadaHelps giving platform. We were also impressed with the CanadaHelps search functionality that would enable us to introduce Lifewater Canada to millions of potential Canadian donors. The ability to offer those potential donors a detailed profile of Lifewater was essential.
We've experienced steady and sometimes very dramatic growth in our online giving, thanks to the 24/7 lifeline that CanadaHelps offers between us and our donors. We've been very impressed with the customer support CanadaHelps offers, whether it's by email or a phone call, there is always someone to help! We can't imagine fundraising without CanadaHelps as an essential partner."
