Configuring Key Giving Form Features

iDonate Giving Forms are more than just fields and buttons. They are powerful engagement tools that help you meet your fundraising goals by offering choices and clarity to donors at every step of their journey. Thoughtfully configuring features like fee coverage or recurring donations can increase conversion, lift average donation size, and strengthen donor satisfaction.

This article introduces the essential configurable components of a Giving Form and explains how each one works so you can apply them with confidence.

For all configurations outlined below, navigate to Campaigns > Select a Campaign > Create or Select a Giving Form.

Donor Covered Fees

Donor covered fees allow donors to pay the processing costs associated with their online donation, ensuring the organization receives the full gift amount while maintaining transparency around fees.

1. Navigate to Element Library > Payment Info.
2. Enable Allow Donor to Pay Transaction Fee.
3. (Optional) Customize the fee message.
4. Enable/Disable Automatically select for donor.
   1. Enabled by default.

Recurring Donations

Recurring gifts are a cornerstone of sustainable fundraising. iDonate gives you fine-grained control over how recurring giving is presented and configured.

Configuring a Recurring Gift Array

Setup

1. Navigate to Element Library > Recurring Options.
2. Select the Recurring Options (e.g.  Monthly, Annually) donors will be allowed to select.
3. Set the Default Option for donation frequency.
4. Enable/Disable Schedule Start Date
5. Set Recurring Method
   1. No End: Continues donations indefinitely.
      1. (Optional) Customize Indefinite End Notice Message.
   2. End Date:Stops donations on a specific date.
   3. Count: Ends the donation after a set number of occurrences.

Alternate Gift Array

You can optionally create a separate gift array for recurring donations on your Giving Forms. This allows you to present different preset amounts depending on whether a donor selects a one time or recurring gift, helping tailor suggestions to each giving type.

1. Navigate to Element Library > Donation Options.
2. Enable Allow Alternate Recurring Options.
3. Configure the Alternate Recurring Gift Array as you would the now One-Time Donation Gift Array.
4. Disable Allow Alternate Recurring Options to revert back to a single Gift Array for all donation frequencies.

Recurring Prompt

The Recurring Prompt appears before a one-time donation is completed and invites the donor to switch to a recurring donation. With customizable messaging and a Recurring Equation that adjusts the suggested amount based on the donor’s initial gift, it helps increase recurring revenue while keeping the ask aligned with the donor’s giving level.

1. Navigate to Element Library > More Options > Recurring Gift Prompt and Enable.
   1. Note, no recurring donation options are required as a prerequisite.
2. Customize the Header and Description.
3. Configure Recurring Equation(s).

The Recurring Equation lets you tailor the suggested monthly recurring amount based on the donor’s one-time gift. You can define one or more ranges to dynamically adjust the ask. For each range the following can be adjusted:

1. Minimum and Maximum donation amount range definition.
2. Percentage of the donor’s selected one-time gift that will be suggested as a recurring amount.

When a donor’s one-time gift falls within a defined range, the Recurring Prompt calculates the recurring amount using the configured percentage. Multiple ranges allow you to scale the recurring suggestion appropriately based on the size of the donor’s gift.

For example, a range of $5 to $100 with a percentage of 50% would result in a suggested recurring gift of $25 per month.