There is no separate switch to turn on before you use Fundraising. To set it up for your account, work through the decisions below in order, then run a live test in your sandbox before you use Fundraising with real donors. Use this guide as your starting point and setup map, whether you are setting up Fundraising for the first time or reviewing an existing setup.
The Recommended Order
- Review the Fundraising settings record. This record holds your account-wide defaults, including the default fund, default giving process, and donation product-to-fund mapping. Later setup steps use these defaults.
- Set up fund categories, then funds. Your account already includes a General Funds category, so you are adding to an existing structure. Add any other categories you need, then create the specific funds donors will give to.
- Set up campaigns and appeals, if you are running one. See Create and Change a Campaign and Add and Manage Appeals in a Campaign.
- Set up donor clubs, if your organization recognizes donors by giving level.
- Set up giving processes and their donation forms. Giving processes control the suggested amounts, gift types, thank-you items, and receipts donors see when they give.
- Turn on Fundraising's Portal feature settings and use the page designer to add giving blocks to your Portal pages, so donors can reach a giving form.
- Set staff permissions for Fundraising, so the right people can process gifts, manage funds and campaigns, and configure the rest of this list.
- Verify with a test gift, a test pledge, and a test recurring gift, all the way through, in your sandbox before you repeat the process in your live account.
Tip
Fundraising does not require you to follow this order. For example, you can set up a giving process before you finish your fund categories. The order above simply makes each later step easier because the setup it depends on is already ready.
Tip
Turning on Portal giving blocks in the page designer puts a donation form on your Portal pages. Designing and configuring the rest of your Portal experience is covered separately in the Portal documentation, so plan to use that guidance alongside this guide.
Warning
If your organization is bringing in existing fundraising data from another system, identify and complete that import before you go live. This kind of historical data import cannot be done once Fundraising is live on your account.
Warning
Importing historical fundraising data does not finish your setup by itself. For example, a migrated fund does not automatically create the fundraising product that a fund normally creates when you add it by hand. After a data migration, review your funds, products, and giving processes, then create anything the migration did not create before you test and go live.
The Setup Checklist in the Console
Fundraising also includes a built-in checklist. Go to Fundraising & Gifts › Setup to see the same steps grouped by topic, with each step linking directly to the page where you complete it. You need the permission that gives access to Fundraising setup pages to open this page. The checklist does not track your progress, so it shows the same list every time. Use it as a map of what to configure, not as a progress tracker.
What to Do Next
After your account can accept a real gift, pledge, and recurring gift end to end in the sandbox, use the task articles for day-to-day Fundraising work, including recording gifts, reviewing donors, and tracking campaign progress. Review a Campaign's Progress is a good place to see the results of a campaign you have just set up.