Fall is almost here and for many private schools and colleges, it is a time when educators and administrators look forward to helping a new group of students continue their academic journey.  During this busy back-to-school time, many schools and colleges are offering many events for parents and students as well as launching new fundraising programs.  This often means mountains of paperwork and accounting for faculty and staff. While fundraising and event management might be considered among the unpleasant aspects of operating a private educational institution, TransactU can help simplify the process.

“If you are responsible for administrating these projects, you know all too well the headaches that can accompany the process,” says Tim Whitehorn, president and CEO of ServiceU. “From managing information sent out to students, parents, and the community, to keeping track of pledges and donations, to hosting fundraising events, there are many factors involved. TransactU can help you simplify the process. It’s the uncomplicated, straightforward, easy-to-use online solution for keeping track of donations, event registrations, and online payments.”

TransactU can help your school with event registrations and online donations

TransactU offers everything you need to accept online registrations, payment and donations with a credit card or online check in a secure, hosted environment. Patrons, whether they are parents, grandparents, or friends of your organization, can simply visit your school’s website when it’s convenient for them, 24/7, whether your office doors are open or closed.

Here’s how TransactU can help your school:

Online event registration and payment – Your school has a lot going on. From workshops to alumni reunions to athletic training camps, there are a lot of ways for people to get involved. Make it easy for students, parents, alumni, and guests to participate in your events by offering online event registration and payment. Because TransactU enables your school to accept payments, you can use it to set up tuition payments and help your staff more effectively manage their events using TransactU’s powerful reporting capabilities.

With TransactU, there are no more hand-written forms to be filled out. People can simply go to your website to register for events and pay using their debit or credit card, or an e-check.

Online giving – Alumni may not return to the campus as frequently as they would like, but they can keep up-to-date with your organization through your website. Many busy parents and distant grandparents would like to contribute to the school or college, but don’t always have the time or the ability to go to your school to drop off a gift. Give them to the opportunity to make online contributions to your school, directly from your school’s website.

In addition to ongoing giving opportunities, TransactU is also a helpful addition to your development team’s fundraising efforts. As your school launches annual fundraising campaigns, your campaign materials can direct patrons to your “online giving” section of your school’s website. From there, patrons can contribute online.  By asking your patrons to give online, you can save your school countless dollars on postage and printing costs.

With TransactU, your patrons can:

• Set up recurring gifts and select amount
• Make payment with debit or credit cards, or e-checks
• Select which fund their gift goes to from a drop-down menu of choices

Sign up for a TransactU demo today and learn how to get a handle on the fundraising process, online donations and payments, and event registrations. Call us at 1.866.709.7420  today to get up-and-running in a week or less!

Bookmark It

Avalon Consulting represents ManeGait, a non-profit therapeutic horsemanship center. Avalon needed an online registration and donation solution for ManeGait’s annual “Gala at the ‘Gait” event. For previous Galas, registrations and donations were received by mail or in person. To maximize the fund-raising potential, Avalon decided to add an online component to this year’s Gala. ServiceU worked closely with Avalon to create and customize the online registration and donation experience. Not only was the staff of ServiceU able to guide Avalon through the process of building the registration form for the event, but they also helped build a customized web template to match the style of ManeGait’s website.

“The donations and contributions were great, and the registration form did wonders.” Thanks to the general convenience TransactU provided Avalon, registrations for the Gala saw a dramatic increase. Though much greater than expected, registrations weren’t the only thing that saw an increase. Overall fund-raising goals for the entire event were nearly doubled. More than half of the fund-raising total alone came from online registration and contributions.

This is only one example of the many success stories experienced by our customers. No matter the size of your organization, event, or fundraising goal, TransactU can work for you. ServiceU can help you rein in the potential of your organization and its goals, and make them a reality.

Bookmark It

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!”

Bookmark It