Fixing Broken Forms: Stop Losing Leads on Your Nonprofit Site

Your nonprofit site has a contact form, a donate button, or a volunteer sign-up. People fill it out. Then nothing happens. No email. No lead in your CRM. You never know they tried. Broken forms are one of the quietest ways nonprofits lose support. Here's how to find and fix them.

Why Forms Break (and Why You Might Not Know)

Forms break for lots of reasons. A plugin update can change how submissions are sent. Your host might block outgoing mail. A captcha or validation rule can block real people. Sometimes the form just sends to an old or typo'd email address. The worst part: the person on your site usually sees a generic success message. They think it worked. You never get the data.

Treat form testing like a monthly chore. It takes a few minutes and can save dozens of leads a year.

Test Like a Real Visitor

Open your site in a private or incognito window. Use a real email address you can check. Fill out the contact form, the donation form, and the volunteer form. Submit each one. Check that inbox. Did the email arrive? Did it land in spam? If you use a CRM or spreadsheet, did the lead show up there? Next, try from your phone. Mobile submissions often fail when desktop works because of different scripts or layout.

Note what the visitor sees after clicking submit. Is there a clear success message? Do they get an automatic reply? If something fails, what error do they see? Vague errors like "Something went wrong" are not helpful. You want to know exactly where it broke.

Where to Look When Something's Wrong

If submissions never arrive, check a few places. First, the spam and junk folders of the address the form sends to. Many form emails get filtered. Add that address to your contacts and mark one message as Not Spam to train the filter. Second, look at your form plugin or tool. WordPress, Squarespace, and others use different form handlers. See if there's a log of submissions or failed sends. Third, ask your host if they block outgoing mail from forms. Some shared hosts do. You may need to use SMTP or a third-party service like SendGrid or Mailgun so form mail gets delivered.

If submissions arrive but don't reach your CRM, the issue is the connection between the form and the CRM. Check the form's integration settings. Reconnect or re-authorize if the token expired. Test again after any change.

Common Fixes That Actually Work

Update the form plugin and your CMS. Old versions often have security or compatibility issues that break submissions. Switch form mail to a dedicated SMTP or delivery service instead of the default server mail. That usually improves deliverability. Add or fix a clear success message and, if possible, an automatic reply so submitters know they were heard. Fix validation so real people aren't blocked. For example, some forms reject valid phone numbers or addresses. Loosen rules where it makes sense and add specific error text so users know how to correct the field.

Prevent Future Breaks

Put a monthly reminder to test all forms. After any site or plugin update, test again. Keep a single document that lists every form, where submissions go, and when you last tested. If you change email addresses or CRM tools, update the form settings and test the same day. Small habits like these stop small problems from turning into months of lost leads.

Next Steps

Broken forms are fixable. Most of the time it's a setting, a filter, or a missed connection. If you're not sure where to start or you've tried and still see failures, get a second set of eyes. We help nonprofits with exactly this kind of thing. Nominate your org for free help or book a short chat at ayni.io. We'll point you in the right direction.