New Donation Form
All charities start off with two pre-created Donation Forms in their account when they sign up for a CanadaHelps Full Fundraising Account. You can edit your existing forms or you can create a new donation form. It only takes a couple of minutes!
NOTE: Your donation form is only visible to someone logged into your charity account. It is not live anywhere until you start sharing it (i.e., embed it into your website, provide the form URL in an email, etc.).
________
To start editing/managing a custom donation form, simply:
1. Login to your Charity Account and click on the ‘Donation Forms’ tab.
2. Towards the bottom of your screen, you’ll see your charity’s two pre-created Donation Forms (regular donations and securities donation forms). You can choose to edit one of these existing forms by clicking on the pencil icon.
Otherwise, click on the ‘Create New Form’ button to create an entirely new donation form.
TIP: Don’t see your Customizable Donation Forms? Make sure you’re signed up for a Full Fundraising account. Upgrading from a Basic account is completely free.
3. If you’re creating an entirely new form from scratch, you’ll be prompted to give your donation form a name, as well as to select the form type. Once you’ve selected ‘Save‘, your donation form is fully functional and ready to go. It’s that easy!
That said, once saved, you’ll then see your form’s navigation section (Form Setup, Form Branding) where you can continue editing and further customizing your donation form. All edits to your customized donation form can be made in either of these two tabs.
And, for your convenience, any changes made within the navigation section will instantly reflect in the Preview section on the right.
Check out this short clip showing how changes in the ‘Core Settings’ tab auto-populate in the form’s Preview section:
Just above the navigation section, you’ll find the navigation header with a few useful options:
Similarly, across the Preview screen, you’ll notice a preview header with a few different ways for you to preview your donation form:
_______
Want to copy an existing donation form while maintaining all of the same branding and setting options?
1. Back on your main Donation Forms screen, select the ‘Copy’ icon beside the donation form your wish to clone:
2. In the pop-up window, simply give your newly-copied form a name.
3. Selecting ‘Make a Copy‘ will add the newly copied donation form to the top of your donation forms list.
NOTE: any “amounts raised” will be set to ‘0’ for your new (copy) form.
_____
Which donation form type should I use?
That’s entirely up to you! Here are some things to consider when choosing your donation form type:
- Full form: A one-page scroll-through process, this requires the fewest clicks of your donors. Example Full form
- Multi step form: Breaks the donation process down into 3 easy steps. When opened in a new tab (i.e., linked vs. embedded), the smaller format is great for featuring an emotive background image. Example Multi step form
- Tribute First form: Brings the Dedication Information box (i.e., in honour/memory of) to the top of your form. Great for encouraging tribute gifts. Example Tribute First form
- Securities form: Only processes gifts of stocks or mutual funds. Example Securities form. Click to find out why this type of gift is beneficial to both your charity and your donors!
Up Next: Form Setup- Core Settings
