A donor record tracks fundraising details for one contact or organization, including giving totals, donor club, anonymity preference, and any donor custom fields your organization uses. Rhythm usually creates the donor when you first record a gift or pledge, but you may create one earlier, such as when you add a major prospect to a recognition club or mark them anonymous before their first gift. This article explains how to create a donor by hand and how to edit an existing donor.
Before You Begin
Prerequisites
- You need access to Donors in the Fundraising Console.
- The contact or organization for the donor must already exist in your Rhythm account, or you can add a new contact from the donor form.
- Every donor belongs to one contact or organization, called the giver. You choose the giver when you create the donor, and you cannot change it later.
Tip
A donation made through the Portal is always submitted as a contact. Giving on behalf of an organization is available only from the Console, such as when staff process a gift directly for an organization.
Create a Donor
- Go to Fundraising & Gifts › Donors.
- Select Create Donor.
- In the Donor card, choose Contact or Organization, then search for and select the giver. If the contact does not exist yet, you can add one from the same selector without leaving the form.
- In the Donor Information card, choose a Donor Club: if needed. The list includes only active clubs, and after you choose a club, you cannot clear it back to blank; you can only choose a different club.
- Check This is an anonymous donor if the giver has asked not to be named.
- If your organization uses donor custom fields, fill in the ones that apply.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
Rhythm saves the donor and takes you to the giver’s contact or organization page. The new donor’s totals, club, and tabs appear below the usual profile information. Rhythm copies the donor’s name and contact details from the contact or organization record and refreshes them each time you save the donor, so you do not enter those details on the donor form.
You can also start a new donor from the giver’s page by selecting Edit Donor Info. If the giver does not have a donor yet, that link is unreliable; see "If It Fails" below. Starting from Donors › Create Donor is the more dependable option.
Edit a Donor
Editing a donor lets you change the donor’s club, anonymity setting, and custom field values. You cannot change which contact or organization the donor represents.
- Open the giver’s contact or organization page, such as from a donor search, and select Edit Donor Info. You can also open the same form from a donor search result.
- Change the Donor Club: or the This is an anonymous donor checkbox as needed.
- Update any custom field values.
- Select Save Changes.
Result
Rhythm updates the donor and returns you to the giver’s page. Rhythm keeps every club change in the donor’s club history, so you can review when the donor moved between clubs and why.
Warning
If your account has automatic club placement turned on, a club you choose by hand may not stay in place. The next time Fundraising recalculates donor totals, Rhythm can move the donor into the club their giving qualifies for and replace your manual choice. See Recalculate Every Donor's Giving and Club for how that recalculation works.
Tip
You cannot edit donor notes from this form. The form also does not show the donor’s giving totals, pledge balance, or club history because those come from gifts, pledges, and recalculation, not from the values you enter here.
Warning
Donor custom fields are for Console use only. There is no Portal giving form component or configuration option for them, so you cannot place a donor custom field on a public donation form; enter donor field values here from the donor record instead.
Tip
A donor custom field cannot currently be populated automatically with the donor's first recorded gift date through a calculated field. Rhythm exposes a built-in last gift date, but there is no equivalent way to configure a first gift date through a calculated field; that would need a product enhancement rather than a setup change.
If It Fails
- The form won't save, and Rhythm shows "Unable to save donor." Make sure you chose a type, either Contact or Organization, and selected the matching giver. The form lets you submit without a giver, so this message often means that field was left blank.
- Unsaved changes warning doesn't appear when you close the browser tab. Rhythm warns you about unsaved changes only when you use a link inside the Console, such as the breadcrumb, a menu, or Cancel. Closing the browser tab or reloading the page does not trigger a warning, so save your work first.
- Edit Donor Info doesn't do anything for a giver with no donor yet. This link is meant to open the donor form for that giver, but it can fail for a contact or organization that has never had a donor record. If that happens, go to Fundraising & Gifts › Donors › Create Donor instead and choose the giver there.
- You can't change who a donor is for. After you save a donor, the giver is locked. If you chose the wrong contact or organization, create a new donor for the correct giver instead of trying to point the existing donor to someone else.