Get Started With Donation Forms

This tutorial prepares you to use Raiser’s Edge NXT donation forms. It includes what you need to know before creating your first form and how to edit, preview, and test your forms.

Prepare

Before you create your first donation form, you may want to know:

Set Mappings

Mappings help you identify data on constituent records — such as Home or Work emails and phone numbers — collected from donation forms. Before you can create donation forms, you will configure mappings in the database view and complete their set up in the web view.

  1. In the database view, under Configuration, select Tables to set:

    • Both email and phone types from the Phone Type category.

      Note: Set a phone type with a number format that following the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) and one without a number format for all other countries that don't follow the NANP.

    • Address types from the Address Type category.

    • Constituent codes from the Constituent Code category.

  2. In the web view, from Tools, Settings, under a mapping select Update to choose the type and save.

Create and Preview a Form

To begin, from Tools, Donation form designer, select New form. Under Get started select a payment configuration and at least one designation. To view your form, select Preview.

Edit a Form

You can add, edit, remove, and style components, such as headers and gift options, under Form.

Add Branding

Style your forms to match your organization's branding and color scheme.

Select Content in the Form designer, then select and drag Image to a location on the form. Choose an image less than 2 MB.

Select Style in the Form designer, and choose where you want to make changes.

Add Other Components

When editing your form, you can select and drag different components from the Form designer to the form. These include enabling donors to:

  • Make anonymous gifts.

  • Enter gift comments.

  • Give gifts from their businesses.

  • Give in honor or memory of someone.

  • Choose the communications they want to receive.

Review Thank You Email

After making their donations, donors should receive an email informing them that their gifts were successful. You should review the email defaults and make changes, under Confirmations.

Note: Thank you emails shouldn't be used as receipts. Use Receipt Manager to issue receipts.

  • You can review the email's subject, sender, and reply information, under Thank you email.

  • To preview the body of the email, under Email message body, select Open email designer.

    Tip: Be careful when copying and pasting content into the email message body. The default content includes merge fields that personalize the message to the donor, such as their name and transaction information.

Review Thank You Message

Donation forms are set to use a default thank you page, under Confirmations. The default content includes transaction details such as contact, billing, and gift information. You can choose to redirect donors to a page on your organization's website instead.

Notify Staff of Gifts

To send automatic emails notifying your staff of gifts coming in through a specific form, enter up to 10 email addresses under Donation notification on Confirmations. In addition, you can choose to only send the notifications for gifts of a minimum value, by entering an amount in the minimum gift amount field.

Send Receipts for Gifts

You can enable the form to send receipts to donors after the donations are approved in a batch in Gift management.

  1. To enable receipts, under Receipt, select which gift type(s) you want to enable receipts for.

  2. Select an email receipt template for each gift type. For more information, see Email receipt templates.

  3. Select a receipt series for the receipts. For more information, see Receipt series.

Test the Form

You should test your donation forms to make sure they are easy to use and not confusing to donors.

  1. To test a donation form, under Get started select a payment configuration in test mode.

    Note: If you don't have a payment configuration in test mode, you can test the form without making a donation. However, since you're unable to complete a donation you won't see the email and page confirmations.

  2. Copy the donation form's URL from Publish.

    Tip: You can copy a form's URL from its menu under Tools, Donation form designer.

  3. To display the form, paste its URL in your browser.

  4. Test the form.

    Tip: If you are using a payment configuration in test mode, you can use a test credit card number.

Warning: If you use a payment configuration in test mode, don't forget to change it to a live one when you're ready to take donations.

Take Donations

Warning: If you use a payment configuration in test mode, don't forget to change it to a live one under Get started.

To start taking donations, from All donation forms, under Related Links, copy the HTML code under Share form and paste it on a page on your organization's website. You can also download its QR code to add to print materials.