Widgets give nonprofits the power to embed high-impact fundraising and engagement components anywhere on their website—without developers, redesigns, or complex tools. Unlike Forms where donors submit Gifts, Widgets are engaging components meant to grab donors’ attention, create urgency, demonstrate social proof, or link to a Giving Form to encourage donations. This article details the different types and use cases for each Widget and the process for building them.
Table of Contents
Widget Types
There are many different Widgets depending on your purpose. Some Widgets link to Giving Forms while others are visual elements. The Widgets are broken down by types and include Call to Action Widgets, Campaign Tracking Widgets, Social Proof Widgets, and an Urgency Widget.
Call-to-Action Widgets
Call-to-Action Widgets are prompts that appear on your webpage exactly where donors take action. They are ideal for initiatives like Giving Tuesday, disaster response, pop-up Campaigns, or evergreen giving.
Floating Button: floating button that dynamically loads an embedded form on your webpage. This is helpful for directing supporters to your Giving Form from another page of your website. Use the Widget editor to select a pre-existing embed Form or create a new one on-the-fly. The Floating Button can be customized based on button style (circle, card, or hideaway), icon, position, entrance animation, and color.
Website Banner: displays announcements and calls-to-action with a banner of text. This Widget is helpful for announcing time-sensitive messages, special giving opportunities, or promoting upcoming Events across all pages of your website. The Website Banner can be customized based on position on page, dismiss option, optional button to link to a Giving Form, and color.
Campaign Tracking Widgets
Campaign Tracking Widgets show real-time progress toward fundraising goals to inspire more donations and maintain momentum. They are automatically updated, so they don’t require editing graphics with donation progress. (Note: these Widgets require a Campaign with a set fundraising goal.)
Progress Bar: displays Campaign progress with visual progress bar showing fundraising goal. This Widget is helpful for initiatives like year-end Campaigns, capital projects, or any initiative where showing visible progress can motivate giving. The Progress Bar can be customized based on color, bar size, and the container styling.
Thermometer: displays Campaign progress with visual thermometer. This Widget is helpful for visual storytelling around goals, effective for matching gift challenges or milestone-based fundraising where donors can see their impact. The Thermometer can be customized for progress labels, tick marks, and colors.
Project Widgets
Project Widgets inspire more donations by demonstrating real-world impact and including images based on your mission. These Widgets require a Project.
Project Impact: add an interactive slider or cards showing the granular impact at different donation amounts based on a specific Project. The Project Impact Widget can be customized to display a slider between the different initiative amounts or cards (as shown below). Additionally, the Project Impact Widget can include a call-to-action, which links to a Giving Form. Note: This Widget requires initiatives to be created in advance. Initiatives are created on the Project in Raise with the amount and the description.
Project Card: adds a Project-specific card with an image and description that directs to a donation form. The Project Card Widget can be customized with different layout types, which modify how the card displays and size. Additionally, you can set a default donation amount, set the linked Giving Form ( generate a new Giving Forms or select a previously created embedded Giving Form,) and customize the design.
Social Proof Widgets
Social Proof Widgets encourage generosity with leaderboards and recent donor activity. They reinforce trust and credibility by displaying real-time supporter activity.
Shared Impact: shows recent donations to encourage social proof and giving momentum. This is helpful for building giving momentum during live Events or where real-time donor activity encourages others to participate. The Shared Impact can be customized to optionally include a button linked to a Donation Form and to show previous donor’s amount, Project, location, and last name initial.
Donor Wall: shows community support with a rotating grid of donor names. This is helpful for recognizing supporters on Campaign or event pages, or donation landing pages to build community and show appreciation for donors. The Donor Wall can be customized to filter by specific Campaign, frequency to rotate donor names, wall stylizing, and colors.
Donor Leaderboard: celebrates top supporters with a leaderboard featuring multiple display styles. This is helpful for competitive fundraising challenges or any time highlighting top supporters may motivate increased participation. The Donor Leaderboard can be customized to filter by specific Campaign, include set amount of donors, show rankings and Gift amounts, name stylizing, and colors.
Urgency Widgets
Urgency Widgets add time-based urgency to increase conversions during matches, end-of-year pushes, or limited-time appeals.
Countdown Timer: creates urgency with a countdown to Campaign deadlines or events. This is helpful for initiatives like Giving Tuesday, year-end appeals, matching gift deadlines, or any time-bound Campaign where urgency drives action. The Countdown Timer can be customized by target date and time, time zone, time units, behavior when countdown is complete, color, and stylizing of units.
Build and Customize
After you’ve chosen your Widget Type, the Builder provides a preview of how the Widget will function once embedded by displaying it on an example webpage, as Widgets need to be embedded on your web pages.
Click on the Widget in the builder to customize the Style and Design to match your brand, select an associated Form or Campaign (if applicable) and configure any Settings.
Each Widget type offers layout variations specific to its function. For example, the Floating Button can appear as a circular icon, standard button, or expandable edge tab. Customization options vary by widget type to provide relevant flexibility for each use case.
Setup Mode
For Widgets with donate buttons (Floating Button, Website Banner, Project Impact, Project Card, and Shared Impact), you have the option to leverage Quick Setup which creates a new donation form on-the-fly within the Widget creation flow or use Custom Form to select a pre-existing donation form.
If Quick Setup is selected, a series of fields and toggles appears below to quickly spin up a functional form including:
- Payment Gateway selection
- PayPal Gateway (optional)
- Enable Multi-Step Form: choose between multi-step or single-step form
- Enable Recurring Donations
- Enable Cover Cost: Allow donor to cover transaction costs
- Allow Anonymous Donations
- Enable Comments
- Enable Dedicate Gift: allow Tributes on Gifts
- Collect Phone Number
- Collect Phone Number
- Collect Billing Address
Publish
After customizing the Widget, select Save and Publish under the caret icon in the top right corner.
Then, Raise will provide an embed code for you to copy and insert into your organization’s webpage where the Widget will appear.