How to Make a Fundraising Page

Whether you’re launching a new campaign, raising funds for a specific program, or just want a polished website where you can send donors, MonkeyPod's fundraising pages have you covered!

Fundraising pages are simple, customizable, web pages hosted by MonkeyPod where donors can securely make their contributions to your organization. Every donation made through a fundraising page is automatically tracked directly in your MonkeyPod!

Before you begin: Setting up Stripe for online transactions

Stripe is a financial services platform that enables businesses to accept and process online and in-person payments. Stripe supports credit cards, debit cards, and other popular payment methods. Setting up a Stripe account is required to use MonkeyPod's fundraising pages.

If you're setting up your first fundraising page, the Fundraising menu will display an option to Set Up Online Fundraising.

Select that option, and follow the prompts to connect your Stripe account with your MonkeyPod so that you can receive online donations.

When the Stripe integration is complete, you're ready to move on to creating your first fundraising page.

How do I add a fundraising page in my MonkeyPod?

Once your Stripe account is connected, the Fundraising menu displays a number of Online Fundraising tools available to you.

Choose Fundraising Pages and select Add a Fundraising Page.

Enter the title for the new fundraising page, and click the check mark to save the name and create your page.

You'll be taken directly to the screen to enter the details for this fundraising page. This is the first of four tabs where you'll enter the details about this fundraising page. Each is covered in its own section below:

• Basic Info
• Visual Design
• Giving Options
• Tracking & Accounting

Setting up the "Basic Info" of a fundraising page

The "Basic Info" settings include:

• Title: This is a publicly visible title for the fundraising page.
• Description: Markdown formatting can be used to add text styles to your description. You may preview the description using the link below the field. Click and drag the lower right corner of the Description field to make it larger if needed.
• Access URL: This is the URL for the page. You can also generate a shorted URL to share, if desired.
• Goal: Enter an optional financial goal for the fundraising page and make your progress visible to donors.
• Prompt Social Sharing: Adds option to share the page on donor's social media accounts.
• Publication: Enter a date and time for the page to go live and begin accepting donations. You may optionally enter a date and time for the campaign to end, after which no further donations will be accepted.

When ready, click Next: Add An Image at the bottom of the page to move on to the Visual Design.

Configuring the "Visual Design" of your fundraising page

Select an option to upload an image or a YouTube video to appear at the top of the fundraising page. Additional settings, such as page colors and organization logo, can be adjusted using the Organization Settings link provided.

When ready, select the Next: Giving Options button to move on to the financial setup for the page.

Setting up the "Giving Options" for your fundraising page

The first section in the Giving Options tab lists the Donation Options configured for your site. Donation options are the building blocks for your fundraising pages, defining the various giving tiers you're suggesting to your donors. If you haven't yet created your donation options, see How to use Donation Options to get those set up before continuing.

Offline Pledges

Along with your online donation options (where donors pay directly online), you can choose whether you'd like to accept pledges for offline payment. If you choose 'Yes' for allowing offline pledges, donors will have the option to pay offline and the instructions you enter here will be provided to them.

Processing Fees

There are credit card processing fees involved when supporters donate online. Research shows that donors are more likely to cover the credit card processing fees if you give them the option to, so MonkeyPod gives you a few choices for how to present this option to donors in the "Processing Fees" section. Your options are:

• Donor pays fees by default, but may opt-out: This is the recommended option. Here's what it looks like to your donors, the check box will be automatically selected for them, but they have the choice to uncheck it.

• Organization pays fees by default, but donor may opt-in to cover them: The payment screen will look the same as above, but the checkbox will not be selected by default.
• Organization always pays processing fees: When this option is chosen, there will be no mention of fees or the option to cover them on the payment screen.

• Donor always pays processing fees: When selected, donors will be shown the fee that is added as part of their donation.

Receipts

All 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are required to provide receipts for tax-deductible donations. One of the many great things about using MonkeyPod for your online donations is that MonkeyPod automatically sends these receipts for you for all online donations.

Receipts are emailed to the donors immediately after they make their online donation. You can configure who (among your team's MonkeyPod users) should show up as the sender on those emails by choosing from the list under "Receipts Sent From". You can also enter a brief message to include at the beginning of the receipt.

Other Settings

The final settings under "Giving Options" cover what happens right after a donation.

By default, donors will see a thank you page. Enter your contact information or other relevant instructions under "How can donors contact you?" to make it easy for donors to reach you with questions or comments.

If you'd rather redirect donors to another web page when their donation is complete, enter the URL for that page under "Redirect After a Donation is Made?" If you choose this option, you'll need to ensure that the designation page remains available and functional and that its content is accurate and current.

The final step is to configure any tracking and accounting customizations for your fundraising page. Select Next: Tracking & Accounting at the bottom of the fundraising page setup form to move on to that section.

Setting up the fundraising page "Tracking & Accounting"

Under the "Subscribers" heading, choose which members of your organization should receive email notifications about new donations to this page. You may choose multiple people from the list.

Classify Donations

Classes, while mostly used for tracking revenue and expenses, can also be used to track income. This can be helpful, for example, when comparing year-over-year progress toward a specific goal like how much the annual gala brought in this year compared to last year.

To choose which accounting class should be applied to all donations received through this fundraising page, choose from the available options under "Classify Donations".

Allow Offline Gifts

The primary purpose of the fundraising page is to collect donations online. But what happens if someone hands you a check or cash in person that are part of the same campaign? If you choose the option here to allow offline gifts for this fundraising campaign, then any donations that you manually enter in your MonkeyPod and tag with this campaign will be credited to the fundraising campaign associated with this page. The specific tag used for this campaign is displayed at the bottom of the "Tracking & Accounting" section.

Frequently Asked Questions

What payment methods do MonkeyPod fundraising pages accept?

MonkeyPod's fundraising pages accept credit or debit cards, ACH payments, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

Note that Apple Pay and Google Pay are only accepted through specific browsers and devices. For a donor to pay via Apple Pay, they must have Apple Pay configured, use an Apple device, and use a supported browser like Safari. To pay via Google Pay, a donor must be logged in to their Google account in a Chrome browser.

Can I put markdown in the description to my campaign?

Yes! When you are describing your campaign, you can use basic markdown to add formatting to your descriptions. Check out this link here to see what markdown is supported.

What if I want to embed a simple donation form on my website?

We have an option to embed a super simple donation form here.

What happens if someone donates who *isn't* in my MonkeyPod already?

Since MonkeyPod is also your CRM, a new donor record will be created for the new donor.

Is there an option for donors to cover the credit card processing fee?

Yes there is! Research shows that donors are more likely to cover the credit card processing fees if you give them the option, so we give you a few options on how to present this to them!

Can someone make a recurring donation through a fundraising page?

You bet! You can give multiple donation options through fundraising pages.

Can donations to be given "in honor of" or "in memory of" someone?

Yes, they can. This option is an organization level setting that can by found by choosing My MonkeyPod from the main menu, then selecting Organization Settings and selecting the Relationships tab. There, choose "Yes, our donors sometimes give 'in honor of' someone else" or "Yes, our donors sometimes give 'in memory of' someone else".

How do I account for all of this!?!

Any donations you receive through a MonkeyPod fundraising page will be automatically recorded for you. MonkeyPod creates a record of the donation for bookkeeping purposes and adds a record for the donor who made the gift (or attaches the gift to an existing donor, as appropriate).

Much of the accounting logic used to record your online donations is configurable by you. Each donation option is associated with a contributed income account, which is used to record the contributed income associated with the gift. If you indicate that there is a non-deductible portion of the gift (i.e. because the donor will receive something of value in exchange for the contribution), then you'll select an earned income account to use for that part of the transaction. See How to use Donation Options for details.