Custom fields help you track information unique to your campaign or organization such as preferred communication channels. These fields allow you to personalize outreach and maintain relevant context for every contact.
A key advantage is that custom fields don’t need to be defined across the entire platform. You can create or update them directly within an individual contact’s profile as needed.
How to View and Add Custom Fields?
There are two ways to add custom fields. The first approach allows you to add custom values by opening the contact’s profile. You can access it from the Search bar, Lists, Tags, or while using the Dialer.
Once you're in a contact profile, scroll down to the bottom left of the screen. You'll find the Custom Fields section (highlighted in a green box).
To add a custom field:
Click the (+) icon.
Two columns will appear:
Field Name – Define the label (e.g., “Volunteer Level”).
Value – Enter the relevant info for this contact.
You can continue adding more custom fields by clicking the (+) button again. Each contact can have its own set of fields as shown in the illustration below.
This approach works well if you are only dealing with a few contacts, but it can become a time consuming and tedious task if you want to add custom fields to a large pool of contacts.
The second approach works well when you want to add custom fields to a large number of contacts. Refer to How do I import contacts, donors, or pledges? When importing contacts, you can also import custom fields associated with those contacts in a spreadsheet.
For example, you can define a custom field (or column) as "Contact Method" in a spreadsheet, and input the preferred contact method such as "email", "phone" or "SMS" in each row. When importing contacts, map the custom field "Contact Method" to "Custom Field X", which will be renamed to "Contact Method" (Field Name) with value as defined for each contact.
Importing contacts from a spreadsheet will overwrite existing custom field values if the Field Name is the same. E.g. you already have a contact with custom Field Name = "Contact Method" and Value = "email". When importing from a spreadsheet, if the custom Field Name is the same and mapped to "custom field", it will overwrite Value = "email" if Value in the spreadsheet is "Phone".
Tip: You can also map other columns in the spreadsheet to "Custom Fields" if you want certain information to appear as custom fields on the contact information page (except First Name and Last Name, which are mandatory fields).