Building Forms in Donor Management

Build custom forms to collect the information you need: mailing list sign-up, RSVPs to free events, volunteer info & more!

Updated over a week ago

Forms are a great way to collect information from any users who visit your organization's social media presence - you can embed a form on a website, link to it from an email blast, or even include it in a social media post on your organization's account.

Forms can also be used to run a survey of your existing contacts, collect names for a mailing list, or request additional details of guests for your upcoming event.

Creating a New Form

To create a new form, you'll want to select the "Communication" tab from the left-hand navigation, then select "Forms" from the drop-down options.

You'll then want to click on the "Add Form" button - you'll then be prompted to fill out some additional information on the form that you're creating and how you'd like it to "behave."

  • Name: You'll want to enter the name of your form here. This will be public, so give it a name that supporters can understand (and you don't mind them seeing!)

  • Submit Button Text: This is the text that shows up on the button the user will click to submit the form, so we recommend changing this to match whatever action you're asking of the user. For example, if you are creating a newsletter registration, the button could read, “Sign me up!”

  • Email Submission To: You'll want to enter the email addresses of your colleagues that should receive a copy of the submissions. For multiple email addresses, you'll separate those email addresses by commas.

  • Confirmation Message: This is where you can create a message that you want the supporter to see after they've submitted the form - it usually includes a "thank you," and contact information for your organization.

Next, you'll be prompted to fill out some additional "advanced" settings for your form.

  • Include form submission below confirmation message?: This option allows your supporters to see what they've submitted below the confirmation message, once they've completed the form.

  • Email confirmation message?: You'll want to select “yes” if you would like your supporters to get the confirmation message and a copy their responses sent to their email address that they've provided.

  • Redirect URL: You can enter a URL link here, if you would like your supporters to be directed to another webpage after they've submitted their response.

    If you enter a URL here, your supporters will not see a confirmation message or a copy of their submission -even if you have the setting set to “yes” above. Because of this, we do not recommend using this option if you plan on embedding this form into a website.

  • Submission Limit: This field allows you to limit the number of responses that can be submitted. This field can be helpful if you're hosting a free event with limited spots, as an example.

  • Populate Group: If you would like all supporters who submit the form to be automatically added to a group in Donor Management, select “Yes” and then select a group.

    This will only work if you have a textbox field labeled "Name" and an email address field labeled "Email" - please see our related guide for more details.

  • Prevent submissions after date?: This field can be helpful if you want to provide a "cut-off date" for form responses; you can select a date for the form to no longer be available.

  • Disable Captcha: This field should be used if you do not want the reCAPTCHA to verify if your submissions were created by a human before the form is submitted.

    We strongly recommend that you keep the reCAPTCHA enabled, to help minimize bot and spam submissions.

  • Text Keyword: This field allows people to access your forms on their mobile device by texting a specific keyword to your 10-digit number that's associated with your texting capabilities within Donor Management.

Once everything looks good with your form's settings, you can click "Save & Exit," and you should then be directed back to the main Forms page.

Adding Your Form's Fields

Next, you'll want to add fields to your form - after all, every form needs to have fields for your contacts to fill out!

You'll first want to locate the form that you've just created, and click on the "Add Field" link next to that form.

You'll be prompted to create a new field, such as "First Name" or "Email," and you'll be asked to select which type of field you'd like to use.

For more information on the most common types of forms, please check out our related guide here.

Once you've created your first field, you can then click on the "View All" link next to the form you just created, to see a list of the fields you've added to your form. You can also click on the "Actions" button next to that new field you've created, and select "Edit" from the drop-down menu to make any necessary changes.

Sharing Your Form

Once you've saved your form, it's ready to share with your community! You've got two options to share the form - by sharing the link directly, or by embedding the form into a website.

To share the link directly, you'll just want to take that link at the top of your browser when previewing the form and share that with your audience. You can hyperlink that URL on your website, include it in your email blasts and social media posts, or even include it in your email signature!

To embed the form into a website, you can click on the "Actions" button next to the specific form you're looking to share - then select the "Embed" option from the drop-down menu. A pop-up will appear with a "code snippet" that you can copy, and then paste into the coding for your organization's website - it'll then appear directly on that webpage.

Tracking Responses to Your Form

There are a couple of ways that you can track any responses that you receive from your forms:

  • Email Confirmation: Donor Management can send an automated email confirmation to certain email addresses every time a new form submission is created. You can update these settings by clicking on the "Actions" button next to the form, then selecting "Edit" and updating the "Email Submissions To" field.

  • Submission Report: Under the "Forms" tab, you can click on the "View All" link under the "Submissions" column next to the form in question. This report can also be exported out into an Excel file, for further external review.

Are you more of a visual learner? Check out our video below!

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