Updated 5-3-2024

The following release notes showcase upcoming changes and improvements to your GrowthZone software and will be available on May 7, 2024. 

In this article:

• ACH Available on Checkout
• Fundraising Module Improvements
• VoterVoice Sync Available
• M1 API Available (Real Estate Edition)
• M1 Updates for Code Of Ethics and Designations (Real Estate Edition)
• Miscellenous Improvements

Watch a 2 minute video giving a quick overview of these features. View video.

ACH Now Available in All Checkout Flows 

We are excited to announce that ACH is now available in all checkout flows for GZ Pay users.* Your members will now have the option to select ACH in any GrowthZone checkout flow. This includes the following areas:

• Events Registration
• Membership Application
• Online Store
• Fundraising
• Web Content Publishing

No action required on your part to enable this feature. It will appear as a payment option just as our standard credit card and other mobiles wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Stripe Link) do today. 

Our ACH partner, Stripe Financial Connections, supports instant verification of over 5,000 bank accounts in the US. Members with bank accounts that are not listed will still have the option for manual bank account verification via micro-deposits just as they always have. 

We are excited to be able to expand our payment offerings with GZ Pay by continuing to offer you and your members with more flexible ways to pay with GrowthZone.

*Available to US customers only

Don’t use GrowthZone Pay yet? Schedule a time with your account manager to see how much you can save with GrowthZone Pay. 

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Fundraising Module Improvements 

This release includes a variety of fundraising improvements. Fundraising managers can solicit contributors with confidence knowing that they are providing a professional experience when collecting or pledging their financial support. 

Those that haven't visited the fundraising module recently will notice that we have added new features, guardrails, and refreshed the style for a more capable, interactive experience. 

In this section:

• New Modern Look for the Fundraising Page
• Confirmation Page Gets a Make Over
• More Flexible Options to Support Your Campaign Guidelines
• Collect Additional Info on the Contribution Form
• More Attention to Contributors Address / Contact Info
• Fundraising Terminology is Generic and Flexible
• A Fresh Look at Reporting

Watch a 3 1/2 minute video that highlights a number of the features. Watch video.

Read the notes below and view a recording of the most recent webinar, “What’s New with Fundraising” to see this in action. View recording. 

Existing Fundraising customers: No action is required to start using the new features. However, you might appreciate a few implementation tips found in the FAQs. View FAQs.

Don't have the Fundraising module?  Connect with your account manager for access. 

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New Modern Look for the Fundraising Page

The GrowthZone Fundraising module now has a more modern, professional-looking form for the contributor to fill out.

In addition to updated styles, a wizard-like step-by-step approach, and colors that match your personal Info Hub selections, you’ll find a few other key improvements:

• An optional progress indicator displays your total contributions made
• Contributors can copy the URL or send an email using the Share button
• Terms & Conditions are now positioned more noticeably and show just above Payment section
• Lengthy descriptions are now balanced out by a “See more” link added

Contributors will also benefit from the updates in various ways:

• The form is organized into logical sections making it easy to complete
• The action button, “Contribute Now” is clear and compelling*
• Step-by-step sections keep the contributor focused on the information at hand 

*If login is required to contribute, the button will say “Login to Contribute”. Plus the button title is fully customizable. You can enter your own button title on a per campaign basis.

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Confirmation Page Gets a Make Over

When a contribution is submitted, the on-screen confirmation will now be updated as well. Here are a few of the things you might notice:

• A more professional look that coordinates with the form
• The page prominently features the fundraiser information that was just contributed to
• The contributor can quickly see how their contribution affects the overall goal
• A shareable link has been added making it easy to spread the word to others

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More Flexible Options to Support Your Campaign Guidelines

Contribution collections often need to adhere to state, national, or even your own very specific standards. With many new settings available, you’ll have more opportunities to set the system up to match your needs.

For example, you may need to limit recurring contributions so that they are completed by the end of your fiscal year.

Previously you could collect that type of contribution but you had to monitor the recurring pledge end date yourself. Now, we have added guardrails that limit the contributions to a set date range specified by the staff person. Image to the right shows a minimum amount and maximum end date being enforced.

Here are some of the new options that are now available that might open the door for you to run your next fundraising campaign in GrowthZone:

• Set a maximum contribution amount per contribution
  • Limits the contribution amount so no one gives over their maximum contribution amount in a single submission
• Specify the maximum possible end date for recurring contributions
  • Read the example above for why you might use this
• Determine available frequencies, even allowing only ‘one-time’ if desired
  • Some associations do not want recurring contributions at all; others want recurring but want the simplicity of having only monthly or annual recurrences. See image on the right.
• Required End Date on recurring pledges
  • The value of a pledge can only be calculated if you know the end of the recurrence. Now it ensures that data is available.
• End Date now an option on all recurring non-pledges
  • Even if not a pledge, contributors may want to put a cap on their recurrence. Now they can.

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Collect Additional Info on the Contribution Form

When collecting the fundraising submissions, you’ll now have an ability to place custom fields on the public form.

For instance, your association is collecting PAC funds where you need to collect their employer name and their job title. 

To solve for the above scenario, create two new Fundraising custom fields for Employer and Title*.  Select the Custom Field Date Type of Text. Mark it as Public and Required. Then add them to your campaign on the Fundraising Setup tab. This will require your contributors to enter their Employer and Title on each fundraising submission. See image to the right.

Another example: Those using the fundraising module to solicit contributions for their local charity where the largest donation amounts designated to a particular person will end up placing that individual in the charity event’s friendly dunk tank. In this case, you might consider creating a custom field type of Drop-down or Drop-down with Fill-in. You’ll be able to provide a list of candidates for your contributors to pick from. See image to the right.

Find the results by clicking the contribution details of a contributor on the Donation Activity tab or by running the Fundraising Report.

*Create your new Fundraising custom fields by clicking Custom Fields under Setup in the Miscellaneous section.

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More Attention to Contributors Address / Contact Info

The address of a contributor is a key piece of information for reporting purposes. For instance, you might require that someone enter their home address instead of their business address or maybe you encourage them to enter an address that matches their credit card address.

Whatever your needs are - we’ve built new options to help you collect and report on this critical piece of data.

• The contributor address is always required on the form
• An option to stop auto-populating address - so the contributor is required to consciously enter the address
• Staff can enter custom contact info instructions - to explain that a particular home or business address is needed
• Individual contributor information will now be collected with an 'On behalf of business” contribution in addition to the business name.

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Fundraising Terminology is Generic and Flexible

Fundraising campaign money may be tax-deductible or not - depending on the cause or purpose of the campaign. 

When the word used is ‘donation’ or ‘donate’, the contributor may infer it is tax-deductible simply because of the verbiage used. If that is not the case, you’ve given the wrong impression and in some cases, you may be breaking your campaign guidelines by calling it a ‘donation.’

Now, you’ll see that in places where appropriate, a particular designation for the money is left ‘generic’ i.e. amount, or total (instead of ‘donation amount’, ‘donation total’ etc) which allows the contributor to operate under the concepts that your association has laid down in the campaign description and other communications about what you call the money given.

The only public-facing word you’ll see is the action button displayed on the public form. It will say “Contribute Now” or “Login to Contribute” if the “Require Login to Contribute” is enabled.  Even that button title can be modified to your liking. You can change the button text on the campaign Setup tab. Maybe this event truly will be collecting donations so changing the button title to “Donate Now” is preferred. Or maybe saying “Invest Now” fits better with your association terminology for your membership PAC. See image to the right.

All other public-facing wording is generic. Even the public URL has been updated to include ‘contribute’ in the URL instead of ‘donate’. No worries, the old ‘donate’ URLs will still work. 

Back office wording has also been changed to ‘contribute’ if not able to be made ‘generic’. 

PS - We’ve also updated the friendly name of the URL to be the campaign name instead of always being the word ‘Donate’. Copying and sending the campaign URL will be more meaningful to someone who might only look at the URL name.

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A Fresh Look at Reporting

We’ve taken a new approach at how we are collecting and displaying information and we’ve decided to create a brand new Fundraising Report which includes the custom field data (new this release) and the collected contact information of your contributor. These new fields are in addition to all the regular fields you’ve come to know in the original Fundraising History by Donor report. 

New report: With the new Fundraising report available, we plan to remove the original Fundraising History by Donor report in our next release as it only contains the default contact info of your contributor and does not have access to custom field data. The new report will contain both the default and the actual contact info.

Existing report update: In this release, we are also adding a couple more fields to display to an existing report - the Recurring Billing Report. We are adding the Amount Remaining and Campaign Name fields. This will soon make the original Recurring Donations Report unnecessary which we plan to sunset as well.

Starting now, you’ll want to make the two new reports, the Fundraising report and the Recurring Billing report, your de facto standards for what you run in order to find the details about each contribution submission. 

The Fundraising Report reports on all transactions that are created for a campaign.

The Recurring Billing Report will tell you what’s remaining to be billed on recurring pledge amounts when using the new fields and filter added. You can filter the report to your specific campaign, and also by your specific pledge fee item. Make sure to add in the Amount Remaining column so you can see what is left to be invoiced.

For more about what's coming next for fundraising, see “Upcoming Fundraising Improvements" in the FAQ article. View article.

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VoterVoice Sync Available 

Increase your Association Advocacy This Election Year

With the election year ahead, there's no better time to connect your GrowthZone contacts with VoterVoice, a third-party digital advocacy software.  

When enabled and linked, Growthzone provides a sync of contact information to VoterVoice, updating contact records in VoterVoice to reflect changes made to contacts in GrowthZone. The sync in GrowthZone will send Active and Courtesy Member contact records to the VoterVoice database nightly.

In turn, you can leverage the power in VoterVoice to inform and motivate your members to action on government issues that are important to your association. Learn more about VoterVoice.

To connect GrowthZone with VoterVoice, get your API credentials from VoterVoice. Then enter them into GrowthZone Setup under VoterVoice in the Integrations section. Your contacts will push over to VoterVoice by the next morning. See more details here.

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M1 API Available   

Seamless Integration with M1 APIs

When M1 APIs are enabled with your Real Estate Edition, the integration will use the new M1 APIs to send member, office, code of ethics, and additional data to M1.

Starting in May, we will begin to roll out M1 (Members First) API integrations for Real Estate customers integrating with NAR.  

The update will be transparent to the end user as well as Staff members.

M1 APIs have been completed for Real Estate customers and will be rolling out as credentials are provided to us by NAR.

What does this Integration Mean for you?

As a Real Estate customer you will have the latest connectivity to M1 (NAR) 

The M1 APIs are actively supported and bug fixes for them come out on a regular basis on the M1 side, making the integration more reliable.

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M1 Updates for Code of Ethics and Designations

Code of Ethics and Designations to be updated from M1 APIs

After hearing your feedback surrounding updates to Code of Ethics and Designations from M1, we have improved this process.

Code of Ethics Agent report will now accurately filter on Cycle so verification of COE in GrowthZone are easier to track.

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Miscellaneous Improvements

The following reports have been updated to properly handle time zone differences. The updated version will now ensure that expected items will be included/excluded when the report is filtered by a date range. 

• Accounting Transaction Report
• Code of Ethics - Agents
• Contacts List/Committee Report
• GZ Pay Transfers Details Report
• Membership Report
• Payment Processing Report
• Projects Report
• Transactions By Contact Report

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