The Donations feature is a tracking feature and does not automatically record donations made through your PayPal button or given to you in other ways.  What the donation feature will help you do is to link a donation to a  contact and track your donations from each contact, as well as any other data you want to track and manage.

Where do I find it?

You can find the Donations page by going to Contacts > Donations.


On this page:

The following actions are available for Donations with the specified service and user roles:

Action

Description

Services

User Roles

View

Able to view donation information

Data Management
Web Site

Contacts Admin

Add

Able to add donations

Data Management
Web Site

Contacts Admin

Edit

Able to edit donations

Data Management
Web Site

Contacts Admin

Delete

Able to delete donations

Data Management
Web Site

Contacts Admin

Adding a Donation

When we talk about adding a donation, what we are adding is the note about the donation.  In other words, your database through RescueGroups.org is your tool for managing and tracking the money you receive, just like a notebook and pencil, only spiffier and easier!

To add a donation:

  1. Click on Add a Donation button.

  2. Enter the information about the donation.  Note that the asterisk, as always, denotes a required field, in this case, the date and the Contact.  That tells you that every donor must be listed as a contact in your organization.  See the section on Contacts.

Filling out the Add a Donation form

There are 8 fields in the Add a Donation form, as described below:

  • Contact: A required field - select a contact from your contacts list or click the plus sign next to the drop-down contacts list to add a contact.  The Add a Contact form opens.
  • Add the contact to the Donor group by clicking the Yes radio button next to the Contacts drop-down list. Your contact will be added to a contacts list named Donors.
  • As with other date fields in your RescueGroups.org account, you can add the date of the donation by clicking the calendar button to move through months and days, or click the calendar sheet icon to select today's date.
  • Fill in the amount of the donation.
  • The field Inkind type indicates a donation of a product or service, such as a cage or a case of food. 
  • Make a note of the purpose of the donation, such as whether it was for a specific animal's care or for spay/neuter or just a general donation.
  • Add a comment (what do you want to remember about this donation?)  For instance, a person may say, "Call me anytime you have an animal with a specific medical need," or "Remind me every year around this time and I'll send something."
  • Letter sent Yes/No is a notation to you to indicate whether you sent a thank you note.  You can say No the day you receive the donation and change it to Yes when a note is sent.  We recommend you use this field in combination with the Comments field to indicate whether a receipt was needed or sent.

Click Save.

Donations made by PayPal to your organization are not automatically tracked. You must still enter them into the database manually to track them and to link them to the appropriate contact.


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