⚠️ Important:
The Donorfy–Mailchimp integration works best with a single Mailchimp audience. If you are using multiple audiences or the legacy integration, you must complete this process before re-enabling syncing.
Understand Why a Single Audience Is Recommended
Mailchimp allows multiple audiences, but subscribers can exist in more than one audience, creating duplicates and management complexity.
Recognise that the same email address can appear multiple times across audiences.
Understand that interests such as News, Volunteering, or Events should be represented using Groups and Tags within one audience.
Only use multiple audiences if they are genuinely mutually exclusive.
Prepare for the Migration
Before merging audiences, pause activity to avoid data conflicts.
Identify your largest audience, such as your Newsletter audience.
Suspend new signups to all related audiences until the migration is complete.
⚠️ Important:
Remove or disable signup forms on your website during this process.
Disable the Legacy Integration
If you are using the legacy Donorfy–Mailchimp integration, it must be stopped.
Open the relevant Donorfy lists.
Go to the Mailchimp tab and stop the sync.
Create Your New Main Audience
You will reuse your largest audience as the new consolidated audience.
Rename the audience so it represents all communications, for example “Organisation Email List”.
Delete any webhooks for this audience that point to Donorfy.
📌 Note:
Subscribers will see the audience name, so ensure it is clear and appropriate.
Configure Groups in Mailchimp
Groups identify subscriber interests such as News, Volunteering, or Events.
Create groups in the audience for each communication type.
Ensure the groups use checkbox options.
Add Existing Subscribers to Groups
Populate the new groups so no existing subscribers lose access.
Select all subscribers currently in the main audience.
Use Actions, then click Add to Group, and add them to the News group.
Import Other Audiences into the Main Audience
Bring other audiences into the consolidated audience using CSV imports.
Import the Volunteering Audience
Export the Volunteering audience from Mailchimp as a CSV.
Import the CSV into the main audience.
Populate the Volunteering group during import.
Select the option to update existing subscribers.
Import the Events Audience
Export the Events audience as a CSV.
Import it into the main audience.
Populate the Events group.
Confirm existing subscribers are updated, not duplicated.
📌 Note:
Subscribers already in the main audience will be added to the new group, while new subscribers will be created only once.
Reconnect the Audience to Donorfy
Once the audience is consolidated, reconnect it to Donorfy.
Ask Donorfy Support to deactivate the old Mailchimp integration.
Create purposes in Donorfy for News, Volunteering, and Events.
Configure the Mailchimp integration settings in Donorfy.
Map Donorfy purposes to the corresponding Mailchimp groups.
Create a Mailchimp webhook so subscriber updates sync back to Donorfy.
Test the Integration
Confirm that syncing works correctly in both directions.
Subscribe using different combinations of groups.
Check that subscriptions update automatically in Donorfy.
Update purposes in Donorfy and manually trigger a sync.
Confirm the changes appear in Mailchimp.
Re-enable Signup Forms
Once testing is complete, you can allow new signups again.
Add the Mailchimp signup form back to your website.
Ensure the form displays group options for News, Volunteering, and Events.
Donorfy Academy
The Donorfy Academy features a learning course for Mailchimp - enrol here.