Welcome to GiftTool Donation service – an easy way to professionally handle your online donations. This guide will introduce you to many of GiftTool's features and help orient you as you begin to set up and manage your online donations.

Create donation appeal forms - quickly and easily!

1. Add an Appeal Coordinator: Confirmation emails will list your coordinator's contact details and, as well, use their email as the 'From' email address displayed in each donor's inbox.
2. Create optional targeting giving programs on your donation appeal page, to give donors a choice of funds to which they wish to designate their donations.
3. Now you're ready to Add an Appeal!
   
   The wizard will walk you through each section and page, step-by-step.
1. Setup: Set up the details of your Appeal, including...
   • If you have asked us to setup multiple template designs to match various micro-site designs, you can specify which template is used for this appeal.
   • If your merchant accounts process multiple currencies, you can define the currencies display on this donation appeal form.
   • Determine if donations made through this appeal are tax receiptable.
2. Sections: Customize the sections of your appeal form:
   • Determine the personal information collected from donors.
   • If you wish to provide donors a choice of funds to which their donation can be targeted, you can include as many Targeted Giving Programs as required.
   • Optionally, add an In Tribute section to allow donors to make a donation in memory or in honour of someone.
   • Optionally, specify suggested donation amounts by donation frequency (one-time, monthly, quartely) Contribution Amount section.
   • If you would like to collect additional information from your donors, use the Ask Questions section. Questions could include:
     • Please send us a message. We appreciate any feedback. Thank you!
     • Would you like to join our mailing list? If so, what is your email address?
     • Please inform me if my company has a matching gift program. My company's name is:
3. Pages: Determine if sections should appear on a single page, or across multiple pages. This section also allows you to determine the order of each section of your appeal.
4. Messages: Customize your confirmation message shown on-screen to donors once a donation has been made online, as well as, the Thank You email.

Update & launch your Appeal

• When changing an Appeal once it has been saved, you must click on Update & Next before proceeding to another screen. And don't forget to click the Save button when you are finished with all your changes.
• Next, preview & test your donation appeal form.
• When you're ready to launch your appeal form on your web site simply activate the Appeal and then insert your appeal URL link into your Web site.

Save time and resources through web site automation

Why waste time and resources processing credit cards and thank you messages manually? For Canadian charities issuing tax receipts, is issuing printed tax receipts for Canadian donations an extra burden at tax time?

With GiftTool,

• Credit cards are instantly authenticated / processed,  and your donors are automatically thanked with a personalized email.
• Your reports are automatically updated when an online donation is made, and can be easily downloaded in Excel at any time.
• For Canadian charities, you can track down any eTax Receipt at a moments notice, and send an electronic copy to a donor who has lost their original.  Or instantly issue eTax Receipts for Canadian donations received offline from your other activities.

Boost donations by encouraging recurring donations

Recurring monthly & quarterly donors can greatly add to your long-term fundraising efforts. These donors are valuable supporters of your cause. We encourage you to provide donors the option to contribute monthly and/or quartlerly in your set up. This option can either appear on the same appeal form, or create a separate appeal form specifically for recurring donations.

The recurring payment will be processed for the first time when a donor submits their donation, and will repeat on the monthly or quarterly anniversary of that date.

If you have a list of recurring donors, you can add a recurring donor in the GiftTool BackOffice to have the donations processed automatically on a recurring basis on the date that you specify.

Setup tips

• If you have a very simple appeal form, you can skip through many of the screens by clicking on the Update & Next button at the bottom to move to the next screen. Don't forget to click the Save as Draft button when you're finished.
• You can preview your results from the Profile section, by copying the Appeal Link and pasting it into a new browser.
• If you are creating multiple appeal forms that are similar in nature, copy your first appeal to quickly create additional appeal forms, which you can easily modify to your needs.