What are Custom Fields?
Custom Fields are custom questions you can add to your Harness giving forms (fundraising pages) to acquire information from your donor beyond the traditional/default fields/data points (ex: name, email, address, phone number, etc.)
Here are a few examples of some common custom field questions:
What's your preferred T-Shirt size? (Select)
What location would you like to designate your gift to? (Select)
How did you hear about us? (Select/Text)
Would you like to be added to our emailing list? (Checkbox)
Types of Custom Fields
Text
Provide the donor the ability to type in a their own response to your question.
Select
Adds a drop-down menu that you can populate with multiple options for a donor to choose from.
Radio
Adds a toggle menu that you can populate with multiple options for a donor to choose from.
Checkbox
Adds a single checkbox that can be checked or unchecked (true or false).
Date
Have a donor enter a date.
Featuring Custom Fields in Giving Forms
After creating custom fields, they will need to be added to your giving forms before donors will be able to respond to your custom questions. To add custom fields to a giving form, visit Fundraising > Giving Forms, then choose the 3 dots under Actions > Edit. From there, select the Custom Fields tab and select the + icon to the right of each Available custom field that you'd like to add to the giving form. You can also mark these as required so that a donor must respond to your custom question.
Viewing Responses to Custom Fields
Because of the variety of custom questions that you can create using custom fields, donors' responses to your custom questions are unable to be viewed directly within your Harness Dashboard. However, your Donations Report can be downloaded/exported as a Excel/CSV file, then through Excel (or similar spreadsheet app) you will be able to view donors' responses to your custom question. These responses will appear in the right-most columns of your downloaded donations report.
FAQs
Q: How do I create custom field questions?
A: Check out our tutorial video here. Click here to start creating > Add Custom Field.
Q: How do I add custom field questions I've created to my giving forms?
A: From your Giving Forms, click the 3 stacked dots under Actions > Edit > Custom Fields > (+) each custom field > Save.
Q: Where do my custom field questions appear in the giving form?
A: After the "create account"/donor profile information on your fundraising page.
Q: Where do my donor's answers to the custom field questions appear to me as an admin?
A: In your downloaded CSV/Excel Donations Report in the columns to the far right.
Q: How can I make my custom field questions required?
A: From your Giving Forms, click the 3 stacked dots under Actions > Edit > Custom Fields > (+) each custom field > toggle ON the Required button > Save.
Q: How many custom field questions can I add to my giving form?
A: You can add max 15 custom fields to your giving form. However, to reduce "friction" we suggest including as few custom questions as possible (no more than 3).
Q: How many custom field questions should I add to my giving form for the best donor experience?
A: Best practice is always to reduce the number of questions/steps your donor has to review/answer before being able to make a donation - so we recommend no more than 3 max questions/custom fields if possible.
Q: What type of custom field question options do I have?
A: Text, Select, Radio, Checkbox, Date