Understanding Forms
Forms within a campaign are the primary call to action elements your donors and fundraisers will interact with. Therefore understanding how your donation, sign up, ticketing, and lead forms work, is crucial to running successful campaigns. Let’s explore how to create the perfect form…
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Donation, Sign up, Ticketing, and Lead Forms
Managing Multiple Forms & Styling
Form Follow-up: Messages and Thank You’s
Understanding Forms
Forms are a simple way of collecting and processing data from your donors and fundraisers, as they navigate your campaign. Forms contain data fields, visible or hidden, in which the viewer can input their preferences. You can also populate or direct preferences for fields, helping you collect the right data.
All forms collect data that is then stored within Raisely’s Supporter Management Tool. Raisely uses the viewers' email address as the unique identifier to create a single record where that viewers' data is stored. Through forms, you can access data on personal information, donations made, fundraising activities, and more.
Forms capture data within the various data categories in Raisely. These include Donations, Person, Profile, & Ticketing.
Donation, Sign up, Ticketing, and Lead Forms
Within Raisely, there are 4 main forms used within Campaigns:
- Donation Forms: A simple 3 step form that enables donors to select a donation amount, enter their personal details, and lastly, process their donation payment via credit card.
- Sign up Forms: A simple 3-4 step form enabling fundraisers to sign up to a Peer to Peer Campaign. The fundraiser firstly enters their account information, then the Campaign Profile information, followed then by Ticketing or Self Donation options, and finally the payment process if required.
- Ticketing Form: A simple registration form enabling event attendees to purchase tickets. The form creates a user account, collects attendee information, and processes payment via credit card.
- Lead Form: A basic form providing the ability to capture leads through collecting the viewers' data.
Expand the form selections below to understand the setup and setting for each form type.
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# Donation Forms
Donation Forms allow you to collect online donations from donors. They contain 3 Steps + 1 Optional Step:
Select Donation Amount + Enter Personal Details + Process Payment + Thank You modal (optional)
Once a donor fills out the form, Raisely creates a new user within the Supporter Management Tool as well as records individual/recurring donations.
The Donation Forms' primary settings are found by selecting Settings > Donation Form from your campaign sidebar. Here you can:
- Customise your Donation Amounts and Frequency Options
- Add/Edit/Remove fields within the Donation Form
- Adjust Settings to setup features like the Thank You message
- Apply Regular Giving Upsell Options
- Access Embed code for your Donation Form, allowing you to publish the form on another website
Further information on Donation Forms can be found in the Donation Forms: The Basics guide.
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# Sign up Forms
- Selection of Activity Type (for Activity-based campaigns)
- Create/Login to a user account
- Create Campaign Profile
- Create/Join Team Profile (Optional)
- Ticketing Selection (if enabled)
- Self Donation (if enabled) and Payment Processing
Once completed, the Sign up form creates or links the fundraiser to an account, whilst also adding a new campaign-specific profile to their records in the Supporter Management Tool. This allows fundraisers to participate in multiple peer-to-peer campaigns over time with your organisation, as each time just a new campaign-specific profile will be created.
The Sign up Forms field settings are found by selecting Settings > Sign up Form from your campaign sidebar. Here you can add/edit/remove Person or Profile fields for the form.
The other settings are found within the Sign up Forms block in the Page Builder. Simply access Pages then select the page where your Sign up Form lives (often Home and Sign up). You can add new Sign up Form Blocks on any page simply by selecting the Add Button within the Page Builder. Now select the Settings icon on the block to reveal more options.
Here you can:
- Enable Teams, Facebook Sign up, Ticketing, and Self Donations
- Change Forms Headings & Language
- Access unique Advanced settings
Sign up forms are naturally the most comprehensive, so it is good to keep in mind the users' experience. Making this form simple by leaving out fields you can capture another time, prefilling fields using queries (see Personalisation guide), and other considerations can greatly improve your sign up rate.
The sign up form is the first step the fundraiser takes, so make them feel surprised and supported!
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# Ticketing Forms
Ticketing Forms allow you to process non tax-deductable items, such as registration fees, merch, or event tickets. The form is either stand alone, or can be activated within a Sign Up form to enable items such as Registration Fees within the fundraiser activation process. Within a Tickets Form you can:
- Enable/Disable Ticket Types
- Change the forms wording
- And enable donations within the form process
To add a Tickets form:
- Within the Page Builder (on any page), simply Add a new block, and search or select Ticket Form, adding it to the location on the page you determine.
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Select the
Settings icon on the block, where you can change wording, enable/disable Ticket Types, and enable donations.
- To configure your Attendee Fields that appear on the form, from the campaign sidebar select Tickets > Settings > Attendee Fields.
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# Lead Forms
Lead Forms are a simple way to invite viewers into an opportunity. Some examples would be:
- Newsletter subscription
- ‘Notify me’ sign up
- Contact form
- To collect Petitions
- Gain access to a gated page
- Questionnaire/Survey
Lead form use the User fields created in the Sign up Form as the foundation, though Custom Person fields can be added to create a unique form.
To add a lead form:
- Within the Page Builder (on any page), simply Add a new block, and search or select Lead Form, adding it to the location on the page you determine.
- Select the Settings icon where you can add tags and submission settings.
- To change the form fields, select Add Field. This will then override the default field settings that are based on your Sign up Form user fields.
- Now select from the dropdown the forms you’d like to add, and once done, tick Approve your changes and select Save.
Note: you are unable to shuffle the order of your fields once selected. If you make a mistake, simply remove the fields and start from where you need them.
Lead Forms are very flexible in their use, and all information captured is stored within the Raisely Supporter Management Tool. Adding Tags to your Lead Forms is also a helpful way to segment your database.
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Add a Form to your page
All Campaigns templates will already have either a Donation Form and/or Sign up Form depending on the template. If you want to add a new form to your page simply:
- From the campaign sidebar, select Pages > selected Page
- In the Page Builder, select Add (bottom right) > Blocks > either Donation Form, Sign up Form, Lead Form, or Ticketing Form
- Now place the form where you want it on your page
Form Fields
The fields for each of the forms are all found within your Organisation settings under Custom Fields. Here you will see your Donation, Person, Profile, and Ticket fields. Every field has a name, an ID, and a type. The Field ID is always unique and is used as the key reference when your site is searching the database for information.
Raisely stores default fields such as Email, Last Name, and Country that cannot be deleted, though here is where you can add new Custom Fields. For more information, check out the Using Custom Fields guide.
When setting up your Donation, Sign up, Lead, or Ticketing Forms, you can choose the fields you wish to use in your campaign settings.
Managing Multiple Forms
Most campaigns will have a single donation and/or sign up form on their campaign. The settings for these will all be found in the campaigns Settings.
Though, you can add multiple donation, sign up, and ticketing forms to your site. For example, your Appeal Campaign may have a donation form on the first row but also one in your footer. These are in fact the same form, though you do have the flexibility to style them differently. To do this, you will need to give the form an attribution and then you can target this in your CSS. To do this:
- Within the Page Builder, select the form blocks Settings Icon on the form you wish to assign an attribution.
- Select the Advanced tab, then expand Attributes.
- Here you can add a class attribute name of your liking. Eg. dform--footer or signup--page.
- Now you can edit this form's styles in your CSS simply by targeting the class name you attributed to the form. For example, if I wanted to change the background and text colour of my footer donation form ( dform--footer), I could enter this into the CSS:
.donation-form.dform--footer {background:coral; color:white;}Notice here that we also need to add in the .donation-form class in order to override the existing styles.
You can also use this to hide certain amount buttons on your donation forms if needed. Simply:
- From the campaign sidebar, select Settings > Donation Form.
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Expand the Button Amount you wish to hide (though you can do this for all of them), and in the Custom CSS Class field enter a class name for that button amount.
Eg. amount--30 (for the $30 button)
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Now back in your Page Builder, select your CSS Editor and enter:
.dform–footer .amount--30 { display:none;} - Notice here that there is a space between the classes as the amount buttons are a level down from the donation form parent classes.
Optimising Forms
Forms are a process. The trick to a great form is to optimise this process so the user feels that the experience is clear and predictable. If they hit hurdles in the form that either doesn’t meet their expectations or are just poor experiences, then they may very well abandon their initial decision to donate or sign up.
There are two primary areas to focus on when optimising your forms:
Form Fields
Form fields are primarily valuable for you, not the user. For the user, they are an expectation, but they can also be considered time-wasters or intrusions. Therefore, form fields are to be a balancing act, between greater user experience and helpful data collection.
Rule of Thumb - if you can get the information another way later on, then leave that field out.
Using field conditions to hide unnecessary fields is also a great way to make the experience more undistracting for your users. You can access these in your Donation Form, Sign up Form, or Ticketing settings.
Donation Button amounts (for Donation Forms)
There has been a lot written around the psychology of user choice when it comes to being presented with donation amount options. Though, one of the best ways to gain insights is to run some A/B testing using Google Optimize. This live testing allows you to set up different donation forms with different amounts, and report on the decision that users made.
This can be a really helpful way to understand your audience through either short testing periods or longer-term use. You can even use it to test some of your data theories you may have, by targeting say your B Test to only activate on certain demographics.
For more information on how to use Google Optimize, check out the following support guide.
Your forms should be intentional and a delightful experience on both desktop and mobile. Taking time to test them yourself using Stripes Test Credit Cards or dummy information is really worthwhile.
Form Follow-up: Messages and Thank You’s
Part of a good user experience includes a confirmation at the end of the form. Users are seeking three things:
- An acknowledgement that they filled out the form correctly,
- A feeling that their time was appreciated
- A next step
Raisely has these covered for you, enabling both an immediate on-screen Thank You Popup and email or SMS communications.
Setup Thank You Popup
Donation Forms
- Within your campaign, from the sidebar select Settings > Donation Form.
- Select the Settings tab and scroll down to Thank You.
- Here you can enter the Thank You Popup settings to customise a personal message.
Lead Forms
- Within the Page Builder, select the Settings Icon on the Lead Form block you have placed on page.
- In your General settings, you can add a Success Message and also add a success redirect if required.
Raisely Messages contains default messages that send on Form submissions, such as Donation Receipt, Fundraiser Welcome, and Donation Thanked. You can use these to customise a unique message that makes your donors and fundraisers to feel appreciated and know the next step they can take. For more information on how to set these up, check out our Understanding Messages guide.
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