First things first - have you created a Donorfy system for your organisation yet?
Yes - wonderful! Sign in here.
No - no worries, set one up in minutes here.
Once you have signed up to your new Donorfy database, the next step is to configure it so that it works for you.
Donorfy does come with some pre-configurations, which you can opt to keep or switch off.
Areas to Configure
Constituent Types
Every constituent in Donorfy is designated with a Constituent Type. This is the top-level categorisation.
Donorfy comes ready configured with a number of suggested constituent types, ready to use. If you choose to customise them, you ca do that in :
Settings,click Configuration, Constituent Types.
📌Note:
Constituent Types need to be mutually exclusive, and you should have as few as possible.
You can opt to have just two: Individual and Organisation. However as you can use them for reporting the sources of your income you can choose more: Individual, Corporate, Trust, Community Group etc.
Everything else about their engagement with you - whether they're a donor, a volunteer, a prospect, a member, etc. is described by tags and their timeline.
Tag structure
Now you're going to want to identify the attributes by which you want to segment and search your database. Tags are there for that purpose - they're a visual way to apply (and remove) attributes to a constituent.
The tags and the categories can be grouped, for example:
First Level | Engagement | Volunteer Skills | Interests |
Second Level: | Donor - low | Office work | Cycling |
| Donor - mid | Gardening | Running |
| Donor - high | Fundraising | etc. |
| Lapsed donor | Media work |
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| Member | etc. |
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| Volunteer |
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| Service User |
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| etc. |
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The first level are the Tag Categories and the second level are Tags themselves.
Samples are given in the standard Donorfy configuration, but feel free to amend or delete and start again.
You can set up or amend your Tags by going to Settings, click Configuration, then Tags and Tag Categories.
And if you want to automate the adding / removing of tags you can use Auto Tagging (Professional feature).
Financial coding
Donorfy has powerful features that enable you to record money as part of a constituent's timeline. Money can arrive into Donorfy manually (you enter it), or automatically via various online donation possibilities.
Each transaction is comprised of two halves, the Payment and the Allocation :
Payment:
Campaign - the "why" it was given. Required.
Payment Method - the "how" (also affects Gift Aid eligibility). Required.
Allocation(s) - can be more than one if you have a split gift:
terms of how it will be accounted for
Product - the "what" the money was given for - eg donation, membership, merchandise etc (also affects Gift Aid eligibility). Required.
Fund - the "where" - ie. in which pot / project / restricted or general fund does this money sit. Required.
Department - which department / cost-centre within your organisation is responsible for this transaction. Optional.
The codes for each of these need to be created within the Donorfy settings.
You should also set up your Transaction entry defaults to make transaction entry easier.
More details The elements outlined in the Payment and Allocations above can be found in the Settings section .
Gift Aid claims (Professional feature)
To take advantage of one of the biggest time-savers that Donorfy offers, you will need to set up your Gift Aid credentials.
To set up Gift Aid go to Financial, click Gift Aid, then click Settings.
📌Note:
HMRC are VERY strict about the settings - make sure you have no extra or trailing spaces in names, ids, etc. otherwise your claim will not work.
Activity types
Activities appear in a constituent's timeline and show the non-financial 'moments' in the history of the constituent's engagement with you.
Some examples are: communications in and out, taking part in volunteering activities, attending events, etc.
Donorfy comes with a set of standard Activity Types, but you might want to add them for specific things that you want to record.
This is actionable within: Settings , click Configuration then Activity Types. You can also add custom fields to Activity types.
For further configuration settings please see the Configuration section of the Knowledge Base.