A giving process is your Rhythm account’s recipe for accepting one kind of gift. It sets the default fund, controls whether donors can split a gift, add a tribute, choose a thank-you gift, or set up a recurring gift, and determines what the receipt says. This article explains how giving processes connect to the donation forms donors see, why donors see some giving options but not others, and what prevents related records from being deleted.
One Giving Process, One Donation Form
Every donation form uses exactly one giving process. This includes the public giving block staff add to a Portal page and the Console wizard staff use to process a gift with payment. The giving process controls which optional sections appear on the form, so donors only see the options that process allows: splitting a gift across other funds, adding a tribute in someone’s honor or memory, choosing a thank-you gift, and setting up a monthly, quarterly, or annual recurring gift. If your account uses more than one kind of donation form, such as a general fund appeal and a separate memorial-giving form, each form has its own giving process with its own rules, even when they share some of the same funds.
Because one form uses only one giving process, a donor can complete only one giving process in a single gift or pledge. If a donor wants to give toward two different purposes that use different giving processes, they need to complete two separate transactions, one through each form.
Why a Donor Sees Some Forms but Not Others
Giving processes can be limited to particular kinds of giver. An organization’s administrative contact, meaning someone with a role marked administrative at that organization, sees the organization’s giving processes along with any giving processes offered to them personally. They do not see that additional option when their organization’s type excludes a process, or when Rhythm cannot load the role that would make them administrative. A donor’s eligibility is private, so Rhythm refuses requests about someone else’s eligibility, and one member cannot use this to see which giving processes another member qualifies for.
What the Public Donation Form Lets a Donor Do
On the public form, a donor can do the following whether they are signed in or not, depending on what the giving process allows:
- give once, start a monthly recurring gift, or make a pledge paid on a schedule;
- choose a preset amount or enter their own;
- choose which fund receives the money, and split it across up to five more funds;
- give in someone’s honor or memory, give anonymously, and choose a thank-you gift;
- pay by card or electronic check, and optionally cover the card fee.
If the giving process offers more than one currency, the donor can switch between them.
Warning
Switching currency on the donation form rebuilds the form from scratch without warning the donor, so anything they already entered is lost. If a donor says their entries disappeared partway through giving, ask whether they changed currency; that is the most likely explanation.
Tip
When a donor starts a monthly gift, Rhythm records the giving process on that first gift. The recurring gift record that repeats the billing afterward does not carry its own giving process, so do not expect the recurring gift’s own record to show which giving process created it. Check the original gift instead.
Linking Directly to a Giving Process
A link to a Portal donation page can send a donor straight into one specific giving process instead of the process the page normally uses. Add ?givingProcessId=[Giving Process Code] to the page's address, using the process's own identifier as the value. For example, ?givingProcessId=SPRING-APPEAL opens the spring appeal's giving process on a page that otherwise uses a different one. Use givingProcessId exactly; other parameter names you might expect to work, such as fundId, have no effect. If the page's address does not include this parameter, the page uses the giving process it is configured with, or your account's default giving process when none is configured.
Overriding the giving process this way switches the default fund, campaign and appeal credit, receipt, and other settings to match the linked process. In some cases, a few page-level display settings, such as suggested amounts, whether the campaign-progress panel shows, and how many funds a donor can choose from, still reflect the giving process the page uses by default instead of the one your link names. If campaign progress does not hide the way you expect after you link to a different giving process, check that Show Campaign Progress is turned off on the page's own default giving process, not only on the one you linked to.
Rhythm has no separate setting that marks a giving process as staff-only or hidden from the Portal. Anyone who knows a process's identifier can reach it this way, including an inactive process or one you intended only for staff to use in the Console. To keep a giving process off the Portal, do not set it as your account's default, and do not place a link to it anywhere public.
What Protects a Giving Process's Records from Deletion
A giving process names a default fund, and it can also name a campaign, an appeal, and installment plans for pledges. While a giving process still names one of these records, you cannot delete that fund, campaign, appeal, or installment plan. Change or remove the giving process’s reference to it first, as described for funds in Funds, Fund Categories, and Fundraising Products Explained.
Warning
This protection covers a giving process’s default fund, campaign, appeal, and pledge installment plans. It does not cover a fund named only in the process’s list of funds a donor may choose from, which is its targeted-giving restrictions. A fund or category that appears only in that restriction list is not protected from deletion by this rule, so a giving process can still restrict a donor to a fund that no longer exists. If a donation form is missing a fund donors expect, check whether that fund was deleted while a giving process’s restriction list still pointed to it.
Related
See the related articles for setting up and managing giving processes and their form options, giving a gift or pledge online as a donor, and processing a gift with payment for a donor in the Console.