Fundraiser Creation Process Overview

According to the M + R 2020 Benchmarks Study, there was a 10% increase in online revenue from 2018 to 2019. Leverage Engage's email marketing platform with secure, custom Fundraising forms tailored to your fundraising campaigns.

Check out the Salsa Scholars Fundraising Form training course.

Step 1: Getting Started

Click Activities from the left navigation menu.
Select the Fundraising tab.
Click the + Create a Fundraising Form button to the right of the window.
The Make Your Selection tab is selected by default. See Make Your Selection for more information.
The Basics tab is selected by default. Fill out the fields. See Activity "Basics" for more information.
If you use Salsa CRM, select a Fund, Campaign, and Appeal to be automatically applied to online transactions processed by the Salsa Engage form. When a donation is made, the information is pushed down to Salsa CRM. If you do not select a Fund, the default Fund ("Salsa Engage Default") will be applied to the transaction in Salsa CRM.

NOTE: these fields are for your organization's internal use only; they are not programmatically tied to the designation option that supporters will see on the Fundraising form itself.
Click the Next button in the lower right-hand corner to continue.

Step 2: Compose

This step enables you to create content and page layout, manage the activity's page settings, consider what type of confirmation the supporter receives, and add any third-party tracking to your form. See the Compose page for additional information.

The Donation Amounts element is an essential part of the Fundraising form.

This element contains controls to enable you to set the following:

How should donation options be displayed?
What giving options will donors have on this form?
What donation amounts will you suggest?
Let users enter different amounts?
For recurring gifts, how often will donations be collected—Yearly, Quarterly, or Monthly?
Can donors select how often their recurring gifts will be collected?
What donation amounts for recurring gifts will you suggest?
What do the buttons look like?

Elements Unique to Fundraising

The following elements are found only in Fundraising activities:

Designations—Designations are unique to the Form Field Element in Fundraising forms. Fund on The Basics tab is specifically tied to an account in your accounting software. The designation, in contrast, is not necessarily tied to a Fund. Your organization determines what the Fund will be when you fill out The Basics tab, but the donor chooses the Designation on the fundraising form. The Fund might be something like "Operations Fund", whereas the Designation might be something like "blankets for kennels" or "winter jackets for homeless". If you use Salsa CRM, the information that supporters enter into the Salsa Engage Fundraising form will be pushed down to Salsa CRM. It's important to keep in mind that a Designation made by a supporter on the fundraising form is different from the Fund that you used on The Basic tab.

NOTE: to force donors to choose a designation, you have to check the Required checkbox and select None as the default value when you configure the Designation field.
Dedications—Dedications are unique to the Form Field Element in Fundraising forms. This element allows your supporters to make a tribute donation— a donation in honor or in memory of someone. The Dedication element contains the tribute's name. If you use Salsa CRM, the information that supporters enter into the Salsa Engage Fundraising form will be pushed down to Salsa CRM. You should also add the field Please notify the following person(s) that a donation has been made in conjunction with Dedication fields.
Recurring Donations—There are actually two form fields you need to add to your form to allow donors to make recurring credit card donations: Make This Donation Recurring and Recurring Frequency. In addition, you'll need to edit the Donation Amounts buttons to activate recurring vs. one-time donations.

International Donations

While not unique, Country is an important form field value when it comes to fundraising forms. The United States is the default country for a form unless the Country field is added to a form. Country is not a default element on a form. To allow for international donations, you must add a Country form field to your form.

Step 3: Publish

Publish your form after you have it set up the way you want. Click here for more information. When you select Publish This Form, the page will be rendered, a URL hotlink will be generated, and widgets will be created. You can also see the available date, which shows when the page was published and made available for use. Most importantly, the form WILL BE LIVE.

Step 4: Embed Widgets in Your Web Pages

After you publish, Salsa Engage generates widgets that enable you to add a donate button or donate form to any web page that you own.

NOTE: You'll need someone with admin-level access to your website to apply widget codes to your website.

Click here for more information.

Analyze Results

Once you have published a fundraising form and collected at least one donation on the form, you will find new information generated on the Results tab of the form. The first piece of information you will see at the top is the total amount raised on this particular fundraising form.

To the right, you'll see an option to change the timeframe (30 days, 90 days, 1 year, or Lifetime) of when the data for the graphs in the lower section is pulled.

If you have a specific date range you want to filter by, click the date drop-down and select the range of days and click Apply.

See Performance Statistics for Actions and Messages for detailed information.