Gift attribute form headings (not labels)

Chris Davies · May 2016

I am trying to bend OLX to my will - and not succeeding.

Every year we have a 'Sunflower' and a 'Light up a Life' appeal (summer and winter), which follow the same format.

A donor completes a form, donating how ever much they wish to - and 'remembering' as many names as they wish. With the 'Sunflower' appeal, these names are then written on individual sunflower sticks, and 'planted' in our hospice grounds. We then hold a service, at which the donors can take there sunflowers with them, or when completing the donation form, can request to have them posted back to them.

This means that I need to have the form collect:

a donation
gift aid
a number of names (not just one, some have up to 5)
a 'yes/no' on whether to post the sunflower back
a 'yes/no' to contacting them (data protection, and a legal requirement on online forms in the UK)

As far as I can tell, the only way I can collect the names, posting request and data protection confirmation is using the gift attributes - but this then groups all of these fields together, with one heading - so it looks wrong:

http://www.weld-hospice.org.uk/sunflower-memories-appeal

Is there another way of doing this - or is there a way of 'injecting' a separator or horizontal line, or (even better) a heading and text in between the gift attributes?

Thanks!

Jen Claudy · May 2016

Sorry your post didn't get any more-timely responses. I've been thinking about this, and unless there's functionality existing in OLX now that I'm not aware of, I don't think that OLX will accommodate this in the way you want. However, what you might do is set up a form on your website (don't ask me how, I know only enough to know that it's possible) to collect all of the data that you can't really get from OLX. Then at the bottom of that page is either a link to the OLX form for payment or the Donation Page itself, just below a header...although I'm thinking there would need to be a submit button on the first part as well.

You would end up with the sunflower data in an email and the donation coming separately thru OLX, so this would mean more work on the backend, if you need all of it to be in RE in the end. And matching them up might be difficult...unless you have the first form generate a number and ask the donor to copy and paste that into a (Gift Attribute) field on the Donation Page.

I'm also wondering if you could put the Sunflower information form after the OLX form...have OLX redirect the donor to that page once their payment is made or put a link (maybe? not sure OLX allows this) to that page on the Confirmation Page. Then at least you'd know that everyone who submitted names did make a donation, because they'll have made it first. Just put some text on the first page to indicate that there are two forms to complete.

Not perfect, but better than messy looking Attributes?

Also, regardless of what you end up doing with this, please visit the OLX Idea Bank and add either a new Idea or a comment to an existing one. (I'm sure there's one out there that's relevant, but I am heading into a meeting and don't have time to search.) Whatever you find or post, come back here and link to those Ideas so others can go add votes!

Steph Williams · May 2016

Thinking out loud a little here...

a few questions - how many do you typically receive for planting? Donors and tributes?

Do you have the events part of Online Express? I would almost set it up that way.. you may run into an issue, because you're not really 'selling' them for a set amount, though, I suppose. I'm envisioning an option to 'buy' however many sunflower sticks they want, and then making an additional donation of their choosing. We did this for some of our button sales, etc. (example) You could then have a participant attribute for "tribute name". The nice thing about this is that it would automatically give however many options were chose above, and it registers them to the event nicely too (guests of the donor.) Down side is you have to create a dummy event and set a price on those sticks, which isn't really accurate either.

You could also run it through the tribute option for a gift and allow multiple options.

Steph Williams · May 2016

I looked at your form again. I don't mind the attributes TOO much. I bet your donors will notice it less than any of us. IT's definitely workable, and probably better than any of my solutions

On an only semi-related note, your appeal reminds me of a story out of our area last fall. Long story short - a husband 400 acres of sunflowers in memory of his wife. IT's a really touching story. (Pictures if you're interested!)

Jen Claudy · May 2016

Steph's right...it's really not too bad as it is. Although, under the Names section the first question needs a "?" at the end, and the second question needs a capital "A" on the last sentence (the actual question). In my experience, you will have better luck if you rephrase that to be a simple opt-out...unless it's a required field. (Until OLX allows us to set a default answer on Gift Attributes...please vote on my Idea here!)

I also love the whole project!

Chris Davies · June 2016

Thank you both, I have tweaked the typos - that I obviously left there to check you were reading it all

As I said, the Sunflower Memories Appeal is a summer version of a much bigger appeal we run in the winter - Light up a Life. In this one, supporters add a 'light' to one of seven Christmas tress, at which we also hold services in December.

I thought you'd like data.

Sunflower:

2013 - 10 donations - £210 donated

2014 - 43 donations - £910 donated

2015 - 30 donations - £653 donated

So, not massive - but a lot more raised offline from direct mail.

Light up a Life (as a comparator)

2013 - 125 donations - £2,485 donated

2014 - 169 donations £3,347 donated

2015 - 207 donations - £4,050 donated

I don't think I could go down the event route - as we need to claim Gift Aid on each donation (an extra 25% from the government if the donor is a takpayer) - and we cabn't claim Gift Aid if people 'buy' something, or register for an event - only on gifts.

I do like the donate, then go to a thank you page which collects the names data idea - that's neat (for the user) - but would make our database team cry, as we've moved to OLX so that the user data comes from the form direct into RE, cutting out all the rekeying they were doing.

I have chatted to our new web developers - and there's a chance that we can insert an extra line of javascript below the form, that would insert the extra text blocks and titles I want (and that can be created by all the other form tools I have used!). I'll let you know how that goes.

It was nice to get some feedback from folk a few steps back from my own team - thank you so much!

Mark McConnell · September 2016

Chris Davies:

I am trying to bend OLX to my will - and not succeeding.

Every year we have a 'Sunflower' and a 'Light up a Life' appeal (summer and winter), which follow the same format.

A donor completes a form, donating how ever much they wish to - and 'remembering' as many names as they wish. With the 'Sunflower' appeal, these names are then written on individual sunflower sticks, and 'planted' in our hospice grounds. We then hold a service, at which the donors can take there sunflowers with them, or when completing the donation form, can request to have them posted back to them.

This means that I need to have the form collect:

a donation

gift aid

a number of names (not just one, some have up to 5)

a 'yes/no' on whether to post the sunflower back

a 'yes/no' to contacting them (data protection, and a legal requirement on online forms in the UK)
As far as I can tell, the only way I can collect the names, posting request and data protection confirmation is using the gift attributes - but this then groups all of these fields together, with one heading - so it looks wrong:

http://www.weld-hospice.org.uk/sunflower-memories-appeal

Is there another way of doing this - or is there a way of 'injecting' a separator or horizontal line, or (even better) a heading and text in between the gift attributes?

Thanks!

This is something I am looking at, at the moment (Currently on the move to Blackbaud NXT from another supplier). I can see our Sunflower Appeal working as we manually write the sunflowers out. However with our Light up a Life we used to print one card per tribute remembered. With some Donors remembering up to 5 people. This used to just merge from our database, although I dont see a way in which NXT would log this.

Warren Sherliker 2 · November 2019

Chris Davies‍ PM me if you are still having this issue. We do loads of quick scripts to modify OLX to be 'exactly' the way we need it. This one looks like a very simple one to sort out.

Gift attribute form headings (not labels)

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