Use a fundraising thermometer to measure and motivate

Learn how to turn up the heat on your digital campaign with a fundraising thermometer to track your goals and inspire donors.

Picture an easel with a giant thermometer image drawn on it in permanent marker at a classic telethon fundraiser, back before phones went cordless.

As the calls start coming in and donations add up, someone fills in the thermometer with a red marker to track fundraising progress. The red space increases, and the donation amounts get larger too.

The energy in the room reaches a fever pitch. When the last bit of white space is filled in at the end of the night, everyone in the room cheers!

Some schools, offices, and nonprofits still draw this familiar symbol on a big sheet of paper or a whiteboard to track campaign progress. The fundraising thermometer is still a useful tool today, but it’s seen a few upgrades that make it even more effective for both in-person events and virtual fundraising campaigns.

There’s no need to throw it back to 1999 — we’re here to explain the benefits of using a modern fundraising thermometer or its younger sibling, the progress bar, and give you some tips on how to make it effective for your campaign.

What Is a Fundraising Thermometer?

A fundraising thermometer is a kind of chart that shows progress toward your fundraising goal for a specific campaign or initiative.

Our brains process images much faster than text, so when you present data visually with a goal thermometer, your audience gets a better sense of the situation. They can instantly see where you are in your fundraising efforts and it creates a sense of urgency and community. It’s proof that every little bit counts!

Donation thermometers are best for fundraising events or short-term campaigns with a specific goal and timeframe. Maybe you’ve seen them used to measure the number of clothing items or pounds of food donated, in addition to tracking cash donations.

Thanks to online fundraisers, this tool has moved beyond the old-school pen-and-paper model to editable digital graphics and progress bars that update in real-time as donations come in. Most modern peer-to-peer campaigns feature a progress bar on the main fundraising page as a simple, intuitive way to track progress toward the goal amount.

Benefits of Using a Fundraising Thermometer

Nothing beats the fundraising thermometer at communicating a lot of information in an instant. This visual representation of progress toward your fundraising goal is more concrete and easier to understand than spelling it out in words, numbers, or dollars and cents.

There are a few more reasons goal thermometers work really well to boost motivation for your team and potential donors:

🌡 It creates one central source of inspiration for your fundraising team of staff and volunteers to focus on.

🌡 It gives donors the instant gratification of seeing their contribution move your fundraising effort forward.

🌡 It provides social proof that others believe in your cause and are invested in helping you reach your goal.

🌡 It creates a sense of urgency for donors to give a larger amount or even give more than once. People are more likely to give when you’re *this* close to achieving your goal.

Fundraising Thermometer Tips and Tricks

The progress bar is a powerful fundraising tool if you use it wisely. Start by identifying your ultimate campaign goal and the progress milestones you want to celebrate ahead of time.

You might decide to share your thermometer image at specific times during the campaign like a weekly check-in email, at key moments when you’ve reached specific amounts, or when there’s a spike in donation activity. Don’t forget to display it when you shout out large donations and thank the donors on social media!

These tips can help you make the best use of your fundraising thermometer or progress bar:

💰 Don’t start with an empty thermometer! Fill it in with early donations from campaign sponsors. Seeing that others have already donated will make other potential donors more likely to give.

📆 Design the page so your campaign cutoff date and a donate button are near the thermometer or progress bar. Remember, you’re creating urgency for your audience and giving them an opportunity to act.

📈 Make sure your audience is always seeing an updated version of the thermometer or progress bar. More on this in the next two sections.

📢 Talk about the impact of donations from your fundraising thermometer. What will your organisation accomplish with the donations received so far? What will you be able to do when the thermometer is completely filled and your goals are achieved?

🏆 Think about what your “stretch goal” might be if you reach your original goal earlier than expected. You can always make the thermometer bigger, which is a really exciting thing to announce!

Building Your Fundraising Thermometer

Digital progress bars or thermometers work a bit differently depending on when and where you want to show your progress.

Raisely’s automated progress bar is one of the easiest-to-use options because it does all the math for you right from the main fundraiser landing page. It’ll count matched gifts as you go, and you can manually log offline donations to keep an accurate total. You can also add an icon and custom metrics. See what else you can do with your donation pages and appeals on Raisely.

Outside of Raisely, there are also free fundraising thermometer templates available online that generate a high-quality image or HTML code to embed on your website. If you work with a graphic designer, ask them to get creative and change the shape of your fundraising thermometer for the updates you send out on social media and in emails.

Use a fun, simple shape that represents your cause or your nonprofit. For a campaign raising money for a food bank, your thermometer might look like a black and white grocery cart that gets filled with colourful produce, meats, and dry goods.

Where to Put Your Fundraising Thermometer

Your campaign should have one main progress bar on your fundraising page that’s updated in real-time, or at least two to three times per week.

If you’re creating your campaign on Raisely, you can enable a Progress Bar block for specific campaigns (think community fundraising or peer-to-peer) and pages that updates automatically with each donation that comes in. If you’re running a peer-to-peer campaign, encourage individual fundraisers to include a progress bar on their Raisely fundraising page as well.

Share snapshots of the main fundraising thermometer widget in marketing materials like emails and social media posts when you reach the campaign milestones you outlined in the beginning. (This is where you can get really creative.) Display the thermometer during livestreams or webinars using your screen-sharing function, and of course, show it on TVs or projectors during in-person events. Just make sure your technology allows you to update progress in real-time!

Build Beautiful Campaign Pages With Built-In Progress Bars and More

We built Raisely for ambitious organisations that want to do a lot with a little. Our free plan includes everything you need to heat up your first campaign, including a progress bar block that acts as a thermometer for individual fundraisers or across your entire campaign. Take a look at our templates for more online fundraising ideas that will help you brand and build your campaign. Ready to give it a try?