May 7 2024: Fundraising Improvement FAQs
Updated 5/3.2024
The May 7, 2024 Release includes various updates. Read the full release notes.
This article is supplementary to the release notes. It will answer additional questions you may have.
Included sections in this FAQ:
Q: I have existing fundraising campaigns. Do I need to do anything special?
Q: How can I learn more about these features?
A: Attend the upcoming webinar May 16, 1:30 CDT, “What’s New with Fundraising”. Register now.
Q: Are there any suggestions you have for how I make sure I don't miss implementing these new features into my existing campaigns ?
A: Yes. You could ask yourself a few questions to uncover ideas for feature you don't want to miss.
Self-Assessment questions to | |
| Ask yourself... | Here's a solution.. |
| Would you like to have the progress indicator bar visible on your fundraising form? |
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| Do you want to ask questions on your form? |
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| Do you give extra instructions about what to enter into the contact info? |
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| Would you like to force the contributor to consciously enter a specific address? |
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| Do you want to offer only a limited set of choices or no options at all for the Frequency of the contribution? |
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| Cleanup question: Do you accidentally have your Description in your Terms and Conditions? |
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| Cleanup question: Do you unknowingly have your Terms and Conditions in the Description field? |
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Q: I used to use System Terminology in order to make sure the donation/contribution wording on the public page was what I wanted it to be. Will I still have that control?
A: Yes. It will just look different. Instead of setting a System Terminology for Contribution/Donation under Setup, you'll optionally enter your custom 'Button Title" on the Setup tab of each campaign. The rest of the public page has been made 'generic' so that the phrase contribution, donation, gift are no longer on the form. The only use is on the action button that the contributor clicks to start the form. The default title on the button is "Contribute Now" if login is not required. If login is required, then "Login to Contribute" is the default. Make a change to this button title on each campaign if you desire. This new handling of the form will make your fundraising options much more flexible.
Q: Will these changes affect how the fundraising items work when included in event registration or the membership application?
A: No. The guardrails and styling changes only affect those that collect the funds using the public Fundraising form through the Fundraising module. No features updates were made to the events or membership application.
Q: If I want to host a fundraising campaign for my Political Action Committee (PAC) which fee item type do I use?
A: Use the Fundraising Fee Item Type if you are using the public fundraising module public page. The only time you use the PAC Fee Item Type is if you wish to have a voluntary fee that is included on the membership invoice. The PAC Fee Item Type is not directly related to the Fundraising module.
Upcoming Fundraising Improvements
Q: Are there future plans to show contribution data in a different format?
A: Yes. Coming at our next release, we will launch a new Contributions tab in each fundraising campaign that will display a table that has a row for every fundraising submission - whether by staff, public, or logged in users - or whether the submission is a recurring donation that starts in the future, or starts today, or is simply a one-time donation that was paid today or created an unpaid invoice. Whatever kind, by whoever, and wherever the contribution is made, it will be represented in this single location - the Contributions tab.
Q: What is the goal of the newly planned Contributions tab?
A: The goal of this new Contributions tab is to help you quickly answer - How much money have we received? How much do we expect to come in yet?
Q: What information will be included in the new Contributions tab?
A: Each row will provide information about all the associated transactions that happened when the form was submitted. This row will also continue to update with new transactions and other information as time goes on, making it so that this row will tell you everything you need to know about this contributors contribution: the invoice(s) associated, current amount paid, amount remaining (if any), and a running total of their contribution.
The result will be that every row and every column in the new Contributions table will be the details of the data that you need in order to match with the totals that the Summary tab will be displaying for you. So not only can you quickly see the totals you are looking for (Summary tab), but you’ll be able to confirm what is included in those numbers by what is shown in the Contributions tab.
Links to view more details will expand on the details you might need. You can view each associated invoice(s) and payment(s), and view the scheduled billing(s) if a recurring pledge.
For complete reporting, you’ll also find quick access to both reports, “Fundraising Report' and “Recurring Billing Report”. See the “A Fresh Look at Reporting” for why those reports will be great.
Q: Do you have plans to replace the existing tabs?
A: Yes. At the next release, the plan is to replace the three existing tabs currently available in each campaign -- Donation Activity, Recurring and Donors -- with the new Contributions tab.
Q: Why do your plans include replacing the existing tabs?
A: The tabs currently available in each campaign -- Donation Activity, Recurring and Donors -- provide the nuts and bolts of most of that information that staff need, but is not structured in such a way that allows us to tie out with the Statistics and easily present the answer to the common questions of how much is paid, and how much is remaining.
There are attempts on each tab to help answer those questions, but for instance, having Paid columns on all three tabs leads to questions and confusion about which Paid column to look at when the values might show a different paid amount on each tab, depending on if you are looking for what was paid for a recurrence vs. a one-time contribution.
Q: What benefit will the new Contributions tab provide?
A: Our goal with the new Contributions tab is to eliminate the confusion that occurs with the three tabs and replace it with a single tab that will become your single source of truth and a single location to perform your actions. Every action and every piece of information you currently have on the existing three tabs will be available in one way or another on the new Contributions tab, making the three tabs obsolete.
Q: Where will I find information on the upcoming features?
A: Watch for the upcoming release (likely July 2024) where we will guide you into finding the same information and actions using the new Contributions tab as what you used to do in the old tabs - but more intuitively and with greater understanding.