How to use Donation Options

Both fundraising pages and embedded donation forms rely on donation options to define the giving choices available to your supporters. In addition to defining the gift amount and frequency, the donation option also includes other details like an image and a description of the giving tier.

Examples of donation options

Before creating your first donation option, give some thought to what options you'd like your supporters to see when they visit your fundraising page.

All organizations have one donation option by default: a basic donation that can be made in any amount, either one-time or every month, with no goods or services received in exchange. For some organizations, this may be all you need. Others might choose to create multiple options with different parameters.

Example

For example, let's say you want to create a fundraising page with three defined giving tiers to encourage support at those levels. You plan to define them as:

• Supporter: $100 (donors receive a branded tote bag as a gift)
• Leader: $500 (donors receive a branded insulated mug as a gift)
• Champion: $1000 (donors receive tickets to fundraising gala)

You might also want to include an option inviting recurring donations:

• Sustaining Member: recurring monthly donation at any level

And, of course, you have your default donation option where supporters can give any amount they choose. So that would be a total of 5 donation options to include in your fundraising page.

How do I set up Donation Options in my MonkeyPod?

Get started by choosing Donation Options from the Fundraising menu.

If you have any donation options already created, they will be displayed here. To create a new one, select Add a donation option.

Enter the basic information first:

• Name: Name of the donation option. For an ongoing monthly donation, you may want to use a name like "I would like to become a sustaining member" or "I want to support your organization every month"
• Description: The description of the donation option. For the example above, this would be something like "make a monthly donation"
• Image:  This should be a small image to appear alongside the donation option on the fundraising page or embedded donation form.

Together, the name, description and image are displayed to your donors on the fundraising page or embedded donation form:

Next, select the amount to charge for this donation option.

• Fixed amount: All donations are a fixed amount (e.g. every donor gives $100).
• Pre-set list: Donors choose a donation from a list of pre-defined amounts.
• Allow donor to enter: Donations can be any amount that the donor enters.

You can also indicate if donors are receiving something of value and therefore what portion of their donation is not tax deductible.

Example: Let's say you're setting up a "Supporter" option where donors give $100 and they receive a tote bag worth $10. That setup, shown here, would include choosing the option to "Charge a specific fixed amount" and enter "$100" as the amount, along with partial deductibility settings to show the $10 value of the tote bag.

Subscriptions / Recurring Transactions

Next, you can specify whether the donation option can be chosen as a one-time event, a monthly recurring gift, or an annual recurring gift. You can select multiple options here—all selections will be made available to donors to choose from.

The final step in setting up a donation option is to choose which account in your chart of accounts will receive the donation. If you need to change the default account, select the edit icon and then choose from other contributed income accounts available in the list. 

Select Save and the newly created donation option will appear in your list of options.

You would repeat that process for each donation option needed.

Editing or archiving donation options

If you need to make changes to the donation option, use the edit icon to the right side of the page. Be careful editing donation options that are already in use on live fundraising pages and forms—your changes will carry through immediately.

If you have a donation option that is not longer used on an active fundraising page, you may choose to archive it by clicking the archive icon. Archived donation options are not listed as available choices when building fundraising pages or embedded forms. They may be restored if needed, by clicking the restore icon (visible once an option is archived).

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm looking for an option to have donors cover the payment processing fees, where can I find that?

If you're looking for an option to ask donors to cover payment processing fees, that is done through the Fundraising Page settings, not the donation option.

What types of payment are accepted through these donation options? Where can I set that?

Once you have your Stripe account connected to your MonkeyPod, your fundraising pages can accept credit/debit cards, ACH, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Embedded donation forms can accept credit/debit cards and ACH payments.

I would like to import my Monthly Donors to MonkeyPod. Which donation options should I choose?

Check out this article on How to Migrate Recurring Donors.

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