As ServiceU Support representatives, our job is to assist you, our customer, with any technical difficulties you may experience while using the system. In addition to our technical support roles, we also act as consultants; providing guidance for best practices and the most effective use of TransactU, along with the rest of the ServiceU product family.

In this post I will detail some best practices to keep in mind when creating a donation form using TransactU. These are not hard and fast rules for donation form creation, nor are they a cure-all for poorly designed forms; these best practices are part of a thought process that will enable you to create well-designed giving opportunities for your donors.

Know Your Goal

Like any task, the creation of a donation form should be approached with a goal in mind. Very simply, the goal of a donation form is to collect donations by providing giving opportunities to your donors. A donation form is simply a tool; a means to an end. You use a tool to complete a task, and that tool has a single purpose in its function. When you begin creating a form, you should ask yourself: “How can I use this tool to accomplish my goal?”

Create Giving Opportunities

The function of a donation form is to collect donations, so pay special attention to the questions on your form that represent giving opportunities. Your best answer choice will usually be a Currency answer type, which allows the donor to enter the exact amount they wish to contribute.

Using other answer types such as Radio Button, Drop Down Box, Check Box, etc. restricts the donor to predefined choices, which may not be appropriate for a donation form. You want to provide the donor with the greatest degree of freedom when making a contribution; limiting their choice to a predefined amount works against that principal.

If you offer multiple giving opportunities on a single form, you should create individual questions for each opportunity. This allows the donor to allocate their total donation between several different giving opportunities while still performing a single transaction. Donation forms will sum all cost fields on the form, so when the donor reaches the Secure Payment Page they will see a single amount that represents their total contribution. Separating giving opportunities also benefits your accounting staff. They can generate a Payment Report and view the breakdown of donations per opportunity.

Collect Demographic Information

Collecting information about the donor is very important, but do not be overly concerned with collecting every bit of information possible; donation forms are not surveys. Limit your form to questions that collect enough information to adequately identify and contact the donor, but nothing more. Collecting too much information can be tedious for the donor who must enter a response to each question. If your form is time consuming to complete, donors may not return to make subsequent contributions.

First Name, Last Name, Address, Phone Number and Email are excellent questions to build a form around, especially if they are Predefined answer types. If a donor has created a profile, the Predefined answer fields will automatically populate with the donor’s saved information once they log in, thereby saving the donor the task of completing those fields. When asking simple questions such as first or last name, you should always try to use the Predefined answer types.

You can also ensure that you collect the information you need by marking certain questions as required. A required question must be completed before the form can be submitted.

Final Word: Keep it Simple

Donation forms should always be a simple as possible, and collect a minimum of information. The more complex a form becomes, the more likely potential donors are to avoid it. Optimize your donation forms by collecting only enough information to identify the donor. Your overall goal should be simplicity in every function, which facilitates positive donor response. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Our life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify!”

We now have 3 training classes scheduled

Don’t miss your chance to see how it all works! Pick our brains! Learn about the latest features! Ask questions about your own ServiceU setup!

Brian Robison
Support Manager

ServiceU Training!
Many of you have asked us to hold more training classes around the country and we have herd your requests. We will be conducting 3 advanced training classes before the end of this year. The class locations will be Addison Texas, Charlotte North Carolina, and Orlando Florida.

Our first training class will be held on Oct. 7th and 8th in Addison, TX which is close to Dallas.

Registration is currently available for the Dallas Training, Click Here to register.

Addison Training Location:
Holiday Inn Express – Addison
4355 Beltway Dr.
Addison, TX 75001
972-503-7800

Brian Robison
Support Manager

Hello Friends,
Welcome to our new Blog and our new Support category. As you may know, one of the things we strive to do at ServiceU is stay in contact with our customers. We have realized over the years how important it is to keep you informed of new features, new products, training classes and other things that can improve your experience with ServiceU.

We will use the Support blog category to post information about a variety of things such as, how new features will work, best practices in the ServiceU system, updates to manuals and training materials, and much more.

As always we welcome your feedback. In this blog you will be able to comment on our posts which will be helpful for us and other readers. I have said this before and will say it again, much of our ServiceU system has been developed based on feedback from our customers, so we really do want to hear from you. Many of our organizations are very different from one another, but the ServiceU system is versatile and will become more robust as time goes on. We can’t do it without you though, so speak up and tell us what you think.

Stay tuned…

Brian Robison
Support Manager