Reaching New Levels of Giving with Targeted Donation Messaging and Recurring Donations - Tue - Mar 19, 2019 - 8:38am

Posted by Stacy Updated: Mar 2019 0 Comments Announcements
We've made a lot of significant improvements around donations. Last week, we introduced a feature that allowed you to tie a specific fundraising campaign to an event. This is particularly useful for themed events or high schools where activities for donations are tied to the performers in your events.
Today, we've launched two major donation features: the ability to accept and collect recurring donations and an exciting donor outreach program.
Monthly Recurring Donations
We know many of you use third party donations platforms to collect monthly recurring donations from your donors. Now, with ThunderTix, you can have your general donations, campaign donations and recurring donations in a single system. Patrons may elect to make their donations recurring monthly by simply checking a box at the time of ticket purchase or via a separate Fundraising Campaign.
We'll first process the donation at the time of order, then we'll create future charges to cover upcoming months. We'll even help you handle expired credit cards or declined transactions. This new feature is available for Stripe Gateway users only. We chose Stripe for several reasons:
1. They offer fantastic rates with no monthly fees.
2. Stripe has even lower fees for non-profits.
3. Their gateway connection allows us to see errors to help you troubleshoot any refund challenges.
4. Their API and documentation provided an excellent foundation with which to work.
Getting Started for Recurring Donations
Please consider the Stripe gateway by going to the Gateway tab of your Account Settings and signing up by clicking the button on the right to "Connect with Stripe".
If you already use Stripe, you will need to go to your Gateway tab in your Account Settings and click the button to "Connect with Stripe" again. When you do so, you'll see a small link in the upper right corner to "Sign In" if you already have your account set up.
Automated Donor Outreach
If you've had any donations from customers that dated more than 12 months ago, you should find a new link under the Fundraising tab in the black menu bar called, Donor Outreach. This page looked back over time and created a list of customers who donated and may be prepared to donate again. You'll be prompted to set an email template that invites your patrons to support your newest endeavors. Simply enter your email message, and we'll create an email for you to send with a click of the mouse.
You may click on any customer's information and use your customer notes or review their order and donation histories to customize any message prior to sending. We hope this helps you reach new levels of fundraising.
Donation Totals for Customers
Every customer record that has prior donations now reflects the total giving for that patron. Use this information to help guide your personalized messages in your Donor Outreach program.
New Look for Fundraising Campaigns
We gave the public view of your fundraising campaigns a new facelift. We'd love to hear your feedback!