There are a couple of situations in which you might want to add new, individual contact records into your system.
For example, maybe you’ve met a new face at your organization’s recent event, and they mentioned an interest in volunteering further. You’d want to add their information in as a contact record, so you can reach out to let them know about future events and volunteer opportunities.
Adding a Contact Record from the Contacts Page
The first way to add a new contact record is through the “Contacts” tab. If you’re not already there, be sure to click on the “Contacts” tab in the left-hand navigation options.
Once you’re in the Contacts tab, click on the “Add Contact” button at the top right-hand corner of your screen.
Adding a Contact Record from the Dashboard
The second way to add a contact record is directly from the Dashboard itself.
If you are viewing Donor Management on a laptop or desktop, you should be able to use the blue “Quick Add” button at the top left corner of your screen (above the “Dashboard” tab).
If you are viewing Donor Management on a mobile device, such as a phone or tablet, you should be able to click on an “Add” button at the bottom of your screen.
There will be a pop-up that appears with several options – you'll want to click on “Contact.”
Adding a Contact’s Details
Regardless of what option you pick, you should now see an option to select if this new contact should be classified as an “individual” contact, or an “organization” contact.
Individual contacts are the most common type of contact – these are your donors, your friends, your board members, etc. Individual contacts represent one singular person – not a household, and not a business or corporation.
Organization contacts represent companies, businesses, government offices, or other nonprofits that your own organization may interact with professionally.
Still confused? Individual contacts would typically have a Social Security number (that you probably don’t know!), whereas organization contacts would typically have an Employee Identification Number (EIN).
There are some key differences between the two contact types – such as which features might be available, like householding.
Once you’ve filled out all of the information you have for a contact record, you’ll want to click on the “Save & Exit” button at the bottom of your screen.
If you want to add multiple contact records in a row, you can also click on the “Save & Add Another” button and the page will save the information you added and then refresh to allow you to input entirely new information.
Both contact types also have many of the same required details in common, though there are some special fields that only apply to one contact type or the other. You can find a list of those with a brief explanation below.
Individual Contact Details
*Full Name: You’ll want to enter the contact’s full name here – our system will automatically break out first name, middle name, last names, and prefixes/suffixes for you.
What if I don’t have a contact’s name – only an email address? Not to worry – if you’re missing a contact’s name, but you have their email address, you can enter the email address in the “full name field,” as well as the “primary email field.”
Primary Email: You’ll want to enter your contact’s email address here. You’ll also be able to add a secondary email address, if your contact has provided multiple email options.
Does this email address receive emails? This toggle option is selected as a default, and allows for this contact to receive email communications from your organization. If your contact has indicated they want to be placed on a “do not email” list, you’ll want to toggle this option from the blue checkmark to the gray “X”.
Mobile Phone: If your donor has provided you with their cell phone number, you’ll want to enter it here.
If you are planning on use our text messaging features, please be sure that you are only adding mobile phone numbers to this field – otherwise, this contact may not properly receive any texts that you send through Donor Management.
Home Phone: If your contact has given you their home phone number, this is where you’ll want to add that information.
Address: You’ll want to enter your contact’s street address, city, state, zip code, and country here.
If your contact lives in a country outside of the U.S., we recommend selecting your country before filling out the other address fields – that will then adjust the other fields to match their country’s address options (e.g. selecting “Canada” will update the “state” dropdown field to list Canadian provinces instead).
Contact’s Photo: If you have a photo of your contact that they’ve provided (such as your board members), you can upload that photo here! The photo will only appear on their contact profile internally.
Gender: You have the option to add your contact’s gender from the drop-down options. If you select “custom,” you will have the option to manually enter your contact’s gender identity.
Date of Birth: If you know your contact’s birthday, you can enter it here. If you know part of their birthday but not the whole date (such as day and month, but not year) you can still add the information that you have.
Employer: You can enter your contact’s employer, if they prefer to be contacted at work.
Job Title: You can also enter your contact’s job title, so if they do prefer to be contacted at work, you can address them by their professional title.
Work Email: You can include your contact’s work email, if they prefer to be contacted through that option. You’ll also have the same “does this email address receive emails?” option as you did with the primary email information, to ensure that your contact isn’t receiving any unwanted communications.
Work Phone: You can add your contact’s work phone number, if they prefer to be contacted there instead of via their home or cell phone.
Work Address: You have the option to include your contact’s work address, if it may be beneficial to stewarding and maintaining your relationship.
Do you want to add this contact to any groups? If you’ve created any groups within Donor Management, you can automatically add your contact to an existing group from this page. (We’ll talk more about groups in a moment!)
Your Custom Fields: You can also assign custom contact fields (which we’ll discuss in an upcoming module!) that you’ve created in Donor Management from this page.
Organization Contact Details
*Organization Name: You’ll want to enter the name of the organization in this field.
Primary Email: This is where you’ll want to enter the organization’s email address.
Does this address receive emails? This toggle option is selected as a default, and allows for this contact to receive email communications from your organization. If your contact has indicated they want to be placed on a “do not email” list, you’ll want to toggle this option from the blue checkmark to the gray “X”.
Phone: You’ll want to enter the organization’s phone number here.
Address: You’ll want to enter the organization’s street address, city, state, zip code, and country here.
If the organization is located in a country outside of the U.S., we recommend selecting your country before filling out the other address fields – that will then adjust the other fields to match their country’s address options (e.g. selecting “Canada” will update the “state” dropdown field to list Canadian provinces instead).
Website URL: You can add the organization’s website here, for quick reference.
Point of Contact: With organization contacts, you have the option to select an individual contact as a “point of contact” - this means that this individual will receive all communications on behalf of the organization and addressed to the organization. You have the option to select an existing individual contact, or create a new one as needed.
If an individual contact turns off the ability to receive emails, and they are listed as a point of contact for an organizational contact, then they also won’t receive any emails intended for that organizational contact. We recommend checking the communication preferences of anyone listed as a point of contact to ensure that they can receive those messages.
Do you want to add this contact to any groups? If you’ve created any groups within Donor Management, you can automatically add your contact to an existing group from this page. (We’ll talk more about groups in a moment!)
Your Custom Fields: You can also assign custom contact fields (which we’ll discuss in an upcoming module!) that you’ve created in Donor Management from this page.
Please note the required fields are marked with an asterisk – all other fields are helpful, but optional.
Managing Individual Contacts with Multiple Email Addresses
Each of your individual contacts can have a primary email address, a secondary email address, and a work-related email address. Each of these email addresses are considered “email-able” - meaning that when you send an email blast to a contact that has more than one email address listed, that the email will be sent to each email address listed in the contact’s profile.
This means that when you send a personal email communication or acknowledgement email to an individual contact records, it will attempt to send the communication to a contact’s primary email. If the primary email address isn’t able to receive emails, then the communication will be sent to the contact’s work email address. If the contact doesn’t have an available work email address, it will go to the contact’s secondary email address.
Additionally, this also means that when you send an email blast to two or more contacts that share the same email address, multiple copies will be sent to that email address. If you include certain “merge fields” that automatically pull in a contact record’s information, then each separate email will contain the details of only one of the contacts sharing the email.
For example, if Pam and Susie are separate contact records in Donor Management but they share an email address, two emails will be sent to that email address. One email will begin with “Dear Pam” and include all of Pam’s details, while the second email will begin with “Dear Susie” and contain all of Pam’s information.
“Mystery” Records
While reviewing your contact records in Donor Management, you might come a particular contact that you just don’t recognize. There are a couple of reasons that this might happen:
Someone did not complete their transaction on Fundraising Pages.
If someone makes a donation on one of your Fundraising Pages, they are prompted to enter their name and email address during the checkout process.
However, if that potential donor doesn’t actually finish the transaction, the name and email address that was entered during the checkout process is still added to Donor Management. After all, they may intend on completing that donation another way (such as a check), or may be looking to get involved with your organization in other ways – so retaining that potential donor’s info is important!
In instances such as this, you’ll be able to see information on that contact’s donor record, in the “Activity Feed” box, that indicates that they were added to your system via "integration sync.”
Someone filled out a Donor Management form that automatically adds contacts.
In some cases, a contact might be added if they’ve filled out a form – like a mailing list sign-up, or a volunteer interest survey.
When set up correctly, our forms allow you to automatically add a contact’s name and email address directly into Donor Management. (We’ll show you how to do this in a future module!)
In instances such as this, you’ll be able to see information on that contact’s donor record that indicates that they were added to the system via the form.
Someone is attempting to test credit cards on your Fundraising Pages.
If you’re noticing that there are several instances of unfamiliar contacts – particularly if the contact’s email address seems “spammy” or full of jibberish – it's possible that there may be someone attempting to test a credit card “script” on your donation page with the intention of performing further fraudulent activity in the future.
If you believe that this may be the case for your organization, please reach out to our Support Team and we will work with you to put safeguards up to deter this type of attempt in the future. We usually are aware of this type of attempt right away, particularly if there are multiple attempts being made over a short period of time – but it’s important to report these concerns, just in case we haven’t seen it quite yet!