Online Giving, With Even MORE Style!
There is so much to consider when crafting online giving experiences for your donors. Have you removed unwanted friction? Is your form accessible for all of your supporters? Do you have a functioning hyperdrive, or do you need to force a child to enter a deadly space race to get you one? (Wait no…that’s not right.)
But beyond all that…shouldn’t your donation form look nice, too?
We sure think so! And that’s why we’ve added some new image design options for giving forms and pages!
Now, when you add a background image to any section, you can control the focus area, add a color overlay, and even configure the opacity, brightness, and contrast, all to get things looking their best.
But wait…images aren’t just for backgrounds, right? (That would be a little silly.)
So why stop with just background images?
We didn’t!
We’re also introducing new settings for regular images, including the ability to customize padding, margins, add rounded corners, and more! Now, you can easily add your image and customize it right in the Form and Page Builder—no need for a separate image editor! (Unless you are just really into Photoshop; we’re not the boss of you.)
These options are great, but did we call this section “Customize Your Images” (or, more likely, some clever pun about “Getting the Picture” or something)? No, we did not. Which means…we did not stop at just new image tools!
Now, you can also customize columns within your forms and pages!
Yes, we’ve had support for multiple columns, but until now, the columns in a section would all share the same background color. Not anymore!
Now, you can set custom background colors or images, add borders, customize margins…well, you get the idea. More customization means more opportunities to make your form your own!
And yet…well, that still didn’t seem like enough. So we went back to the top and added…new page header settings!
Now, you can choose from a handful of layout options and determine how the header should be positioned, which will control how the header behaves as users scroll on your page. For mobile pages, you can also choose whether to have your header menu open in a Standard or Drawer style, making it easier to match the rest of your site.
Whew! New image editing tools, column design options, header styling…that’s a lot! You can check out all of these features in the Form & Page Builder today!
BUT…
Well, while all these design options are great, we are still here to help you raise more money for your cause. And what better way to do that than letting your donors know EXACTLY how their donation will help?
That’s right, by popular request, we’ve ALSO added the ability to include custom descriptions on gift arrays. Now, your donors will know the impact of their gift before they even make a donation!
You can toggle on Gift Array Descriptions from in the settings for your donation block.
PHEW! Now, that’s a lot! Hop on in and check out these new options for your forms and pages!
What’s in a URL?
Who doesn’t love a good URL parameter?
You know, those things you add to the end of your links?
The ones that let you set Segment Codes, Gifts Amounts, and more?
Yes, THOSE!
Well, as handy as URL parameters are…we figured, why not make them better?
Yes, that’s right: with this release, we’ve beefed up what you can do with your urls.
Want to set the values in a gift array? Now, you can! Just add the array-amounts parameter, like this:
www.example.org/give?array-amounts=10,25,50,125
But hey…why stop there? (We’re on a roll!)
We’ve also added the ability to set form field values, like the donor’s name, email address, phone number, and address. So, a donor could click on a personalized link and have their data filled in automagically 🪄.
For those who want to be a little…extra, we’ve also added these options to the Global Javascript object. Check it out here!
…And the Rest
This update also includes a number of other fixes, tweaks, minor modifications, and assorted nudges. Here’s a roundup of other items released over the last month:
- Just in case talking about URL parameters and JavaScript isn’t quite nerdy enough for you, how about an additional UTM parameter? (We know how to party!) We’ve added support for UTM IDs along with the rest of the existing UTM values available on Gifts. Because nothing says “unique identifier” quite like a procedurally-generated ID.
- If you make a fantastic giving page and don’t tell anyone about it, did it really happen? We’ve squashed a few bugs that prevented using the social sharing tools to customize how your giving experiences look when shared on social media. So get out there and share your page with the world!
- We squashed a bug that was causing exports to show the wrong next charge dates for recurring gifts. ‘Cause if there is a problem, yo, we’ve solve it…(if you are of a certain age, this may start playing a song in your head, sorry).
- You know that thing where you don’t want to deactivate a Project, because you might still want to manually add it to a Gift, but you don’t necessarily want donors to see that Project on a giving page? (If we had a nickel for every time this has happened…) Well, fret no more! We’ve added a new “Available Online” setting for Projects. Now, Projects can be Active but not Available Online…kind of like when you’re working on a deadline so you turn on Do Not Disturb for your notifications.
- We heard from some users that switching from viewing one donor’s recurring gift to another still showed the original recurring gift. We were trying to make a philosophical statement about the importance of seeing every donor as a unique individual but, alas…just kidding, this was totally a bug, so we fixed it. (OMG, could you imagine?)
- Just when you thought we were done with the nerdiness (we’re never done being nerdy 🤓): we’ve added support for setting custom field values via our Global Javascript object. Whoohoo! If you’re into this sort of thing (and who isn’t?) you can check out our documentation here.
- Some users reported seeing two records sync to Virtuous CRM+ when a recurring gift payment was received: the gift itself, and an update to the next payment date (because a payment was received, you see…). While we are big fans of measure twice, cut once, it seems that sync twice, paid once is not taking off like we thought it would. So we’ve eliminated the extraneous update.
- Picture it: you are setting up white labeling for your domain, and then you make a mistake. Hey, it happens (or so we’re told). Now, you can reset your white label settings and redo the configuration. Because second chances are good for everyone.
- When merging two donors, you will now be able to set the primary email address on the new, merged record. As one should.
- When updating recurring gifts, they will now sync to Virtuous CRM+ with the correct amount for costs. Because clean data is important, and cleanliness is next to…oh what was it…something good.
- ACH gifts can take longer to process, but our Virtuous CRM+ sync was a little impatient and decided to send some transactions to Virtuous CRM+ while they were still pending. We’re all about efficiency but patience is a virtue, so we’ve made sure that these transactions will not be sent over until they are complete.
- Users of our Virtuous CRM+ sync reported that reversed gifts were being included in annual statements. We’ve found the offending code and whipped it into shape (lovingly).
- OK…one more nerdy item: we’ve added a frequency indicator for one-time gifts to the data layer object. Technically, there is no frequency, but then again you could argue that if something happened once that is a frequency…we’re really good at software, but maybe not philosophy. So now, we’ve just covered all the bases.
And that's the list! Phew! As always, if you have any questions about these or other features, feel free to contact our support team.