Setting up gift designations: How to

Adam Lemmon

Question:

We would like to have a general donation form with a field that donors could write in to designate a program that the gift would go to. Is this possible. I looked around briefly in the fields and wasn't able to find one ( clearly marked) Would I reformat an "in honor of" field.  I am sure convio has a way to do  this.

Answer:

Yes, this is possible.  On a Convio donation form there are two different ways to set this up.  I'll put some information below about both methods.  The first is the easiest:

1) You can add a list of designations by creating a custom field on your donation form.  If you are already a full site admin you will already have access/permissions as site admin to add a custom field.  If you are a standard Go! administrator, this permission will need to be enabled for you by your Convio Go! consultant.  To add a custom field to your donation form, when you are editing the donation form, on step three "Design Donor Screens" you will want to click "Edit" next the donation form page.  Using the Convio doantion form editor, you will click on the button at the bottom of the left column list that says "Create New" to create a new custom field.  As you create that custom field you will see that you can add a list of choices for the donor on this field.  add your various designations.  Then you'll need to add the field to your donation form and edit the field on the form to adjust the display to your liking.  Once this custom field has been added to the form, any donor which makes a selection from that list will have that designation associated with their transaction on the transaction by details report.  That report will contain their answers to all fields when they were making their donation online. (you'll need to download that report to see those columns of data).

2)  Another option for adding designations on a Convio donation form is to purchase the Convio Designated Giving module.  This will actually allow you to create a set of "designations" in a special section of Donation Management.  Once you have created those designations, you will need to use the adjust your donation form to incorporate the Designated giving level option on the form itself.  This second option might sound easier than the above option, but let me assure you, there are many more steps involved in adding designations using the Convio Designated Giving module.  Furthermore, if you choose to purchase designated giving you will also be using a separate report to find the list of designations as they were chosen by your donors because this information is not available using the standard donations by transaction report.  Due to the many steps involved in creating each designation separately and the additional reporting, I recommend using the method described in point #1 above.

I hope this helps, let us know if we can provide more info on either of the above options.

Best,

Adam

Susan Morningstar

Thanks Adam,

I set up a new donation form with a custom field and am wondering if there is some way to have the autoresponder thank you include that field as a conditional so the donor knows that the gift was made to _________group.  and it doesnt seem to be included in the transaction summary sent in the thank you either.

Any way around this?

Adam Lemmon

Susan Morningstar:

Thanks Adam,

I set up a new donation form with a custom field and am wondering if there is some way to have the autoresponder thank you include that field as a conditional so the donor knows that the gift was made to _________group.  and it doesnt seem to be included in the transaction summary sent in the thank you either.

Any way around this?

Hi Susan,

When you add a custom field to the donation form -- that custom field will not be available in the personalization drop down menu in the Convio WYSIWYG.  Let me check with some other folks here to find out if there is a way to manually code a tag that would pull that information in on an AR message.  I'll post what I find out here... will follow up.

Adam

Adam Lemmon

Adam Lemmon:

Hi Susan,

When you add a custom field to the donation form -- that custom field will not be available in the personalization drop down menu in the Convio WYSIWYG.  Let me check with some other folks here to find out if there is a way to manually code a tag that would pull that information in on an AR message.  I'll post what I find out here... will follow up.

Adam

Hi Susan,

Yes, this can be done!

I just spoke with someone from our web services team here and they pointed out that any custom field that you add to the donation form is available to be added to the AR message.  When you are editing the message, the Convio Personalization drop down menu has the field available by choosing "Other --> Donation Custom Fields --> name of field".  Each time that you add a new custom field to the form, that field will be available to be referenced on the AR messages for that form.

Caitlin Gadecki

Adam Lemmon:

Question:

We would like to have a general donation form with a field that donors could write in to designate a program that the gift would go to. Is this possible. I looked around briefly in the fields and wasn't able to find one ( clearly marked) Would I reformat an "in honor of" field.  I am sure convio has a way to do  this.

Answer:

Yes, this is possible.  On a Convio donation form there are two different ways to set this up.  I'll put some information below about both methods.  The first is the easiest:

1) You can add a list of designations by creating a custom field on your donation form.  If you are already a full site admin you will already have access/permissions as site admin to add a custom field.  If you are a standard Go! administrator, this permission will need to be enabled for you by your Convio Go! consultant.  To add a custom field to your donation form, when you are editing the donation form, on step three "Design Donor Screens" you will want to click "Edit" next the donation form page.  Using the Convio doantion form editor, you will click on the button at the bottom of the left column list that says "Create New" to create a new custom field.  As you create that custom field you will see that you can add a list of choices for the donor on this field.  add your various designations.  Then you'll need to add the field to your donation form and edit the field on the form to adjust the display to your liking.  Once this custom field has been added to the form, any donor which makes a selection from that list will have that designation associated with their transaction on the transaction by details report.  That report will contain their answers to all fields when they were making their donation online. (you'll need to download that report to see those columns of data).

2)  Another option for adding designations on a Convio donation form is to purchase the Convio Designated Giving module.  This will actually allow you to create a set of "designations" in a special section of Donation Management.  Once you have created those designations, you will need to use the adjust your donation form to incorporate the Designated giving level option on the form itself.  This second option might sound easier than the above option, but let me assure you, there are many more steps involved in adding designations using the Convio Designated Giving module.  Furthermore, if you choose to purchase designated giving you will also be using a separate report to find the list of designations as they were chosen by your donors because this information is not available using the standard donations by transaction report.  Due to the many steps involved in creating each designation separately and the additional reporting, I recommend using the method described in point #1 above.

I hope this helps, let us know if we can provide more info on either of the above options.

Best,

Adam

 

I completed what was outlined in Step 1 in order to enable an "other" fill-in designation field in addition to the suggested designee drop-down. How does this custom data element field differ from the pre-set "Giving Patterns & Premiums" Single Gift Designation field that is linked to funds that are in RE? We require data to flow through the RELO connector and don't want to have to run a report or make any extra steps for our gift management team.