Donations are charitable contributions made to your organisation. They can also be referred to as gifts, contributions or charitable giving.
Funds and Donations are combined in Spektrix to help you fundraise for your organisation.
In this article, we'll cover:
- What are Donations?
- What are Funds?
- Tailoring your ask with Funds
- Gift Aid (UK)
- Memberships
- Accounting Date
- Recognition and Tributes
- Soft Credits
What are Donations?
A Donation is when a customer chooses to gift a sum of money to your organisation.
There are two types of Donations in Spektrix, Ticket Donations which can only be processed alongside tickets, and stand alone Donations which can be processed alongside the sale of tickets as well as independently.
Ticket Donations
Ticket Donations are fixed or percentage amounts which can be added to a ticket at the point of purchase. Ticket Donations can be processed in the Box Office or by customers who are purchasing tickets online.
You can set Ticket Donations to contribute to specific Funds and adjust the Donation ask based on Event Instance, Ticket Type, Sales Channel or value of ticket.
TIP: An ask or a Donation ask is a request you make to a customer or organisation, either verbally or in writing, to gift a sum of money.
To learn more about Ticket Donations, and how to set them up, take a look at the article How to Set Up Ticket Donation Structures.
This is an example of how a Ticket Donation ask can display on a website when eligible tickets are added to the basket. This example is from a basic iframe and will look different depending on the styling applied on your website.
Donations
You can process stand alone Donations in your system alongside sales, or as individual transactions independent from ticket sales.
Donations can be processed on your website, or, by your Box Office team in the Sales Interface.
You can set Donations to contribute to specific Funds in the purchase path on the website, or, in the Sales Interface, so that customers can make a Donation whilst they are buying a ticket. You can also adjust the default Donation ask based on Customer Eligibility, Event Criteria and what is in the customer’s Basket.
This is an example of how a stand alone Donation (not a Ticket Donation) can appear in the purchase path. It will look different depending on the styling applied on your website.
What are Funds?
Donations can be organised into Funds. In order to process Donations, you'll need to have at least one Fund set up on your system.
Each Fund can represent a different reason why you are raising or asking for money. You can think of Funds as pots of money into which donations are channelled.
It’s possible that your organisation might be actively fundraising for multiple purposes at once. Using Funds allows you to tailor and track different fundraising asks.
For example, you might run a ‘Summer Fundraising Drive’ which would only run for a specific period of time. Using Funds, you can concurrently run a ‘Building Improvements’ donation ask which could run until the fundraising target is achieved.
You can also use Funds to determine when and how someone is asked to donate and create multiple Funds with tailored asks. Some of your Funds will be for internal use only, but some will be visible to your customers online.
You can see all of your available Funds in the Sales Interface > Other > Donations.
Tailoring your ask
You can tailor fundraising asks made in the purchase path using Event Criteria and Customer Criteria in Funds.
Event Criteria can be used to ask for donations on specific Events and Instances.
Customer Criteria can be used to ask for donations based on customer eligibility such as:
- The value of a customer's Basket
- Specific customer Tags or Attributes
- Whether or not it's a customer's first time donating
- How much a customer has donated in the past
A customer will be presented with all the Funds that they are eligible for but you can change the settings on your system if you’d prefer only to show the highest value donation.
Gift Aid (UK)
If you are an organisation from the UK and eligible for Gift Aid then you can track this in your Spektrix system and make Gift Aid claims.
Take a look at the following articles for more information on how to set up and track Gift Aid:
Memberships
As well as one-off Donation asks, Spektrix also allows you to sell Memberships that are entirely Donation-based, or which have a Donation element and can be directed to a specific Fund.
For more information on Memberships, start with our article on Setting Up Memberships.
Accounting Date
The Accounting Date feature helps improve the accuracy of financial reporting on Donations. It's a manual date field that you can add to an order which is different from the date that the order was created in Spektrix.
This might be useful, for example, if you process a donation in one month but can’t process the payment until the cheque is received the following month. In this case you would then set the Accounting Date to the date you want the income accounted for.
This means you can recognise income as it is received – not just when it is processed into your Spektrix system.
To start using the Accounting Date feature, first take a look at the Accounting Date article to learn more about the key considerations of adopting this feature.
Recognition and Tributes
The Donation Recognition feature allows you to collect data about how donations made through your Spektrix system should be recognised.
This can be useful if, for example, you want to add a Donor list to your website, or to print their names in event programmes.
Using the Donation Recognition feature, the customer can choose to either:
- Enter a Recognition Name which is how their name should appear when publicly thanking them or recognising the Donation.
- Remain anonymous so you know not to publicly thank or recognise this Donation.
- Make a Tribute in honour or memory of another person.
To start using this feature and set this up on your system, take a look at the Donation Recognition and Tributes article.
Soft Credits
Soft Credits allow you to assign a Donation to one or more other records, other than the customer record which is attached to the Order.
This is often useful in fundraising departments, where a Donation may have come from one person, but you wish to see the money against multiple records, or example, a married couple or a Donation made by a group of individuals.
To get started with Soft Credits, take a look at the article Soft Crediting Orders.
On-Demand Training Video - Funds and Donations
In this section of our Spektrix Training: On Demand video on Fundraising and Opportunities, we cover the setting up Funds and processing Donations process.
This chapter is a guided walkthrough of:
- Setting Up Funds
- Soft Credits and Tributes
- Processing a Donation in the Sales Interface
- Exchanging Donations
VIDEO TIP: With our Spektrix Training: On Demand videos- you can stop, restart or move to specific chapters. Click the CC option to turn on captions. Click into the Settings menu cog icon to control speed, captions and quality.
Further Reading
Now that we’ve covered the introduction to Funds and Donations, to get started setting these up on your system, take a look at Setting Up Funds and Donations.
The following articles are also a good place to start learning more.
- Processing Donations
- Selling Donations & Registering Gift Aid (UK)
- Tracking and Claiming Gift Aid
- Setting Up Memberships
- Soft Crediting Orders
- Donation Recognition and Tributes
- Accounting Date
Discover more in the Customer Loyalty and Fundraising section on the Support Centre.