Glossary

Data Governance refers to the framework and practices an organization establishes to manage, protect, and ensure the quality of its data. It encompasses policies, standards, and responsibilities that guide how data is collected, stored, accessed, and used. For charities, especially in the context of online donations, a clear data governance framework is crucial for protecting donor data, ensuring long-term independence from software providers, and enhancing donor relationship management.

A Data Processing Agreement (DPA) governs the relationship between an organization (the controller) and a service provider (the processor) concerning the processing of personal data. The DPA ensures that data processing complies with applicable data protection laws and includes provisions on data security, purpose limitation, and data deletion. A DPA should therefore be established between charities and fundraising agencies when exchanging and processing sensitive data.

Dead Links, also called broken links, are hyperlinks on a website that no longer lead to an active page. Dead links can be both internal (linking to 404 pages on your own website) and external (linking to third-party pages that no longer exist). Dead links may negatively impact SEO rankings and reduce conversions, particularly on critical pages like donation campaign pages. Monitoring and fixing dead links is essential for maintaining strong search engine visibility.

Designated Giving refers to a donation earmarked for a specific purpose or project in Fundraising. The alternative concept is unrestricted donations, which can be used for any projects and funding needs the charity may have. When donors contribute designated funds, however, they expect these resources to be used exclusively for the predefined purpose. This form of giving allows donors to specifically support a particular area or a special project. Particularly with small donations, designated giving can be counterproductive, as it may exponentially increase administrative overhead.

A Design System includes the standards, guidelines, and components for designing and developing user interfaces (UI). It encompasses elements like grid systems, gutters, and spacers, which ensure consistency and scalability on a website. A design system is an integral part of any major web project, especially when charities develop digital products.

Benefits of a design system:

• Efficiency: Reusable components accelerate design and development procedures.

• Consistency: A standardized design ensures a professional appearance and enhances the user experience.

• Scalability: New features and pages can be efficiently designed, tested, developed, and integrated.

A well-built design system lays the foundation for high-quality, scalable websites and impactful fundraising platforms in the nonprofit sector.

A Digital Audit examines an organization's digital landscape, including the tools, channels, and touchpoints in use. For nonprofits, this typically includes the website, donation platform, social media channels, newsletters, and CRM systems, which are assessed for their strengths and weaknesses.

The Digital Collection is the modern form of traditional donation gathering that typically takes place during a church service with a collection plate. It enables online and mobile giving through websites, apps, or QR codes. The QR code is especially convenient: when scanned on-site in the church, it directs donors straight to a secure digital payment page.

In religious fundraising, collections play a central role in funding projects and covering the ongoing costs of the church community. Hybrid formats, such as livestreams, can combine both analog and digital donation options. Soulclick offers customized digital donation solutions and fundraising tools for religious organizations, meeting the growing need among congregants for flexible giving options.

Digital Fundraising is a broad term encompassing resources, processes, tools, and structures aimed at raising donations online. It includes platforms like Soulclick, social fundraising, digital campaigns, as well as email and newsletter marketing. Digital fundraising enables charities to reach a wider, often younger audience while making their fundraising efforts more efficient through the use of new technologies.

A Digital Fundraising Strategy sets out the strategic vision and plan for expanding online donations. At its core, it focuses on building a digital fundraising architecture that enables charities to deliver their message effectively and efficiently across various touchpoints (both online and offline), integrating them into a seamless donor journey. The website plays a central role, as all other channels and tools—such as social media fundraising, digital campaigns, or email automations—consistently drive traffic back to this key touchpoint. At Soulclick, we design the website with fundraising in mind, centering it around a powerful donation shop within our e-commerce platform.

A Digital Product is a web-based software solution specifically designed and developed to meet the needs of its users. Unlike a traditional website, a digital product is built for long-term use and is continuously further developed to meet evolving demands and needs of users.

Soulclick offers nonprofits a ready-to-use toolkit that allows them to create professional digital products without any programming effort. The product is continuously optimized and new features are developed, to eliminate the need for a complete relaunch every few years.

A Digital Strategy extends across the entire organization and sets the direction for a successful digital transformation of a charity. At its core, it’s about holistic organizational development, not just about advancing technology and tools. It also includes developing new skills and adopting agile working methods within the organization. A digital strategy is built on a thorough analysis and outlines a clear digital vision, strategic goals, and a mid-term plan with cost and revenue projections for the next 3 to 5 years. A key element is the digital fundraising strategy, which focuses on securing the organization’s funding through digital donations.

The term Digital Transformation describes an organization’s evolution into the digital age to meet the changing needs and behaviors of its target audiences.

For nonprofits, digital transformation means preparing for online fundraising by developing internal skills, leveraging new tools and approaches such as crowd donations and peer-to-peer fundraising, and building an integrated system architecture.

A Digital Wallet is a software application that securely stores users' payment information and passwords for various payment methods and websites. This allows users and donors alike to make electronic transactions safely and conveniently. Digital wallets can also store other important information such as loyalty cards, tickets, and digital identification. Commonly known digital payment wallets include PayPal and Apple Pay, the latter being a mobile wallet that allows contactless payments via cellphone. Digital wallets are also widely used in the cryptocurrency sector, with examples such as Ledger Nano S and Trezor.

DKIM stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail and is a method of email authentication which provides emails with a signature that is assigned to the domain of your organization. This authenticates emails and makes it more difficult to forge the sender. The DKIM entry can be made with the support of our team. In this way, we ensure that appeals for donations, acknowledgements, etc. from our platform contain a trustworthy and traceable sender. This has a positive effect on the performance of your email automations.

A Domain is a unique, unambiguous name on the Internet under which websites can be accessed. The name, which can be freely chosen according to certain rules, is made up of different elements in a hierarchy. The entire name (e.g. https://www.soulclick.ch) is referred to as a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), while the ending is called a top-level domain.

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by the SEO provider Moz, which indicates the relevance of a website or domain for search engine rankings. The DA score ranges from 1 to 100 – the higher the score, the more likely the website is to rank well in search results on Google and other search engines. While it is not a direct ranking factor, it serves as an indicator. Domain Authority is determined by various factors, such as the number and quality of backlinks, the ratio of backlinks to outbound links, the SEO relevance of the content, as well as the structure and usability of the website.

DNS stands for Domain Name System and is a protocol for resolving names. Websites are generally accessed by calling up IP addresses. However, as letters are easier to remember than cryptic combinations of numbers, domains have become established. The IP and domain are uniquely matched by the DNS entry. When setting up a Soulclick donation portal (subdomain setup) a DNS entry is also made.

Domain Reputation (DR) is a metric that measures the trustworthiness and credibility of a domain, and it is particularly relevant in email marketing. The DR score influences how likely it is that emails from a domain will be successfully delivered or end up in the spam folder. Domain Reputation depends on several factors: the frequency of email sends, spam reports, authentication through protocols such as SPF and DKIM, as well as the general behavior of users interacting with the domain. It is assessed by various organizations, including email providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo), security services, and other internet service providers (ISPs).

Donation Forms are simple checkouts with integrated payment processing that are commonly embedded on websites as I-frames or widgets. Due to their simplicity and ease of integration, they are a popular way for nonprofits to collect online donations. However, compared to more advanced tools and technologies like donation shops, the customization and automation capabilities of donation forms are quite limited. Thus, they are better suited as an entry-level solution, particularly for smaller charities.

Donation Matching or matching donation refers to a fundraising practice where a foundation, company, or other institution agrees to double (or match) the amount of private donations made within a specific timeframe. These campaigns are often tied to a specific cause and capped by a maximum donation amount. Donation matching is a hybrid instrument, combining elements of both institutional and public fundraising, and is frequently used by companies as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, as it publicly highlights the connection between the donating organization and the company.

A Donation Platform is generally understood to be a website operated by third parties on which NPOs can publish their own fundraising campaigns. GoFundMe is one of the best-known donation platform internationally, although there are many other platforms. The providers charge different fees and generally act as financial intermediaries. In concrete terms, this means that they accept donations and pass them on. This means that they are obliged to comply with the legal and, in particular, accounting requirements of the respective country. Although Soulclick allows you to build your own donation platform (see donation store), it is purely a software operator with its own payment gateway solution.

Donation Shops help your organization to present various fundraising activities and campaigns in one place on the website. This creates clarity and transparency and ensures that more donations are made online. With its Form and Shop products, Soulclick provides an innovative store construction kit including CMS, automation, analytics and payment gateway. This allows you to build your own donation portal without any programming knowledge.

A Donation Widget is an embedded mini-tool on an charity’s website or landing page. It allows users to donate directly on the page without being directed to a third-page.

Widget-based donation forms are often used for campaigns, blogs, or partner pages – they simplify the donation process and build trust by keeping donors on the site. They are also highly customizable (e.g., donation amounts, colors, or payment methods) and can be easily integrated into existing websites.

In a Donor Base Analysis, data from donors within the CRM database is analyzed to gain crucial insights for marketing and fundraising. The data set is often enriched beforehand to help shape specific target groups using additional segmentation attributes, such as demographics, psychographics, or behavior.

Once these target groups have been established, media analyses can offer further insights into the most effective channels for reaching them.

Donor-Centered Fundraising (DCF) is an approach that places the wishes of donors at its core. The goal is to build strong personal relationships with supporters by tailoring fundraising activities to meet their specific needs. Key elements of this approach include personalized communication, gratitude, and transparency about the impact of donations. A well-functioning Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is essential for its successful implementation.

In contrast to Community-Centered Fundraising (CCF), which focuses on the needs of the supported community, DCF emphasizes strengthening donor engagement and loyalty.

The Donor Experience (DX) covers all interactions donors have with an organization. It starts with the initial visit to the website and continues through post-donation communication. A successful DX depends on a donor-focused approach within the organization. In online fundraising, Donor Experience is closely tied to User Experience (UX), which ensures an intuitive and satisfying donation journey.

The Donor Journey describes the path a donor takes across all touchpoints with a nonprofit organization – from the first interaction to long-term engagement. It reflects a holistic approach to fundraising – not just through individual campaigns or donation appeals, but as a consistent and meaningful overall experience (see also Donor Experience).

Typical stages of a donor journey include:

1. Awareness: The person becomes aware of the organization or a specific cause.

2. Interest: She or he develops interest in the organization’s work or a particular project.

3. Consideration: Potential donor considers whether and how he or she would like to support.

4. Action: They make their first donation or get involved in another way (e.g., volunteering).

5. Retention: The relationship is nurtured and strengthened over time.

Effectively managing the donor journey helps organizations better understand their supporters, engage them more strategically, and build lasting loyalty – both online and offline. Digital tools like donation platforms, automations, and content hubs are key to designing modern, impactful donor journeys.

The term Downtime describes the time during which a digital service or software is not available to users due to problems or malfunctions. The opposite term is Uptime. Early detection software (downtime alerts) can help to identify and inform about downtimes. SLAs (service level agreements) are used to regulate service availability on the part of service providers for troubleshooting. At Soulclick, we also determine your accounts availability and response time, depending upon the chosen SLA package.

Duplicate Content involves substantial blocks of identical or very similar content appearing on multiple webpages within or across different domains. This issue can arise from technical problems, such as multiple URLs pointing to the same page, or from intentional copying (compare black hat SEO). Duplicate content may negatively impact a website's ranking on search engines, as Google and other search engines may struggle to determine which version is the original or most relevant. Avoiding duplicate content involves using canonical tags, setting up proper redirects, and ensuring unique and valuable content across all pages.