Giving & Donations Module
Giving in Fresh Vine allows you to keep track of contributions donated to your organization. You are able to enter donations (or portions of donations) under a particular designated fund. By doing this, you are able to keep your giving entries earmarked for the specific fund they were given to. These gifts directly tie to the profiles of individuals and couples.
Quick Overview
Contributions are tracked in sets. You can think of a set as one instance of giving. That set is a connection of one profile, one date, one method (cash, card, in-kind, etc), an optional service connection, and the contribution itself - which can be made to one or more funds.
You're also allowed to enter a method reference (ex: check number), and intneral/external notes. If one person were to write 2 checks, or different dates you would enter another set for them.
Spouses can be allowed to share giving (this is managed on their profiles when editing a relationship). The set must still be assigned to one of the spouses, and then Fresh Vine will combine the contributions to both profiles when looking at either profile, or when creating statements.
At anytime you can geneate print or online statements. Information on how to do that is below. We also make it easy to accept donations online, and sync data with several different payment providers directly into Fresh Vine.
Manual Entry
You can enter contributions into Fresh Vine from the start, but it will most likely be helpful to set up some basic configuration and templates.
When you go to enter giving, we've provided a few settings so you can see how your contributions change and grow over time. By entering the date and if the money was given in association with a Service, you're able to keep track of how giving fluctuates based on time of year and type of gathering.
If you select a service (needs to be set up prior to entering giving - or right now - go do it!), you are also able to enter the total amount given on that day. Fresh Vine will then 'count down' your total until you reach a balance of $0, letting you know everything was entered without error.
You can also select a Template from this page, narrowing down the fund categories you've entered.
Configuration
This is a very simple system at its core. Many of the different components that go into a giving set are customizable. This allows you to define the methods, and funds that are used.
Funds
Every donation is made to a fund, or funds. Every organization has their own set of designations used to account for their various programs and expenses. You are able to enter as many funds as you require and supply each of them with a description to provide any clarity required. These funds will then be avaiable to use for the giving module (entry, campaigns, reports, statements).
Once a fund has contributions entered you are not able to removed it. This is to avoid reporting issues with those donations no longer mapped to a fund they would fail to appear. As a best practice you should not have annual funds in Fresh Vine. Instead use the reporting features to view the contributions to a given fund/s over a desired period of time.
Methods
By setting up just a few basic things, it will make each time you enter contributions go much smoother.
You have the option to set whether you enter giving by name or (to set) a Giving ID number. Your community members can also give online, via our giving partners (read more about that in 'Online Payments'). You're also able to set an unlimited number of Giving Funds. Giving Funds are the specific earmarked pools of money that people contribute to. For example, you may have a fund set up to keep track of a building fund, and others to keep track of benevolence, a community outreach, or contributions to a partnering homeless shelter or program. The possibilities are endless. What your community can do is endless. We just help you keep track of it all.
Once you have your funds entered, you'll want to create Templates to help you organize the funds, and be able to enter your contributions even faster.
Online Giving & Giving Pages
Once your Fresh Vine account is connected to one of our Payment Partners (see Payments) you can enable Online Giving.
Tips & Tricks
Embeding Videos
If you've published a video online somewhere and wish to use it on your page simply grab the supplied embed code from the site it was published on. If it gives you options of sizing, please choose the largest size.
Full Width Content
You might want your content to be the full width of the content area. You can do this by adding the class noPadding to the parent element. This will expand that element to the full width by undoing the padding. All other content will still have the white border.
Campaigns
Much of the contributions made to your organization will be a part of a campaign. Fresh Vine supports loosely tracking contributions by campaign. This means that a given set of contributions is not bound to a campaign, but rather is included because it matched the criteria set for that campaign. The goal is to ensure every gift that meets the campaign criteria is included in that campaign.
A campaign is defined with a date range, and a selection of included funds.
Aspects
There are a few different aspects to a campaign. The goal is to allow campaigns to be an easy way to track, and manage the contributions to your organization.
Pledges
This portion of campiagns has not yet been released.
Reports
This portion of campiagns has not yet been released. When finished it will update the existing giving reports to allow for showing a specific campaign.
Statements
Once a campaign has reached the end of it's date range you can then publish the statements online. These statements are then available through the portal to the people in your organzation. For someone to reach their statement they must have - or create - an account to your online portal. This is for the confidentality if your contributors, and the donations they have made.
Each campaign will have its own URL to use for viewing it inside the portal. This link can then be used to email, post, and share to your organization. When they log in to see the campaign they will only see their contributions. Everytime someone views their statement online it is logged. This is done so that you can then only print statements for those individuals who have not see their statement yet.
If you wish to also print and mail statements to contributors you can do that. If the campaign was published you would have the option of including every donor, or only those who have not yet accessed their statement online. By only sending printed statements to those who have not see it online you will save time and money.
Configuration
You can create and manage your existing campaigns by navigating to the campaign section of the giving module (People -> Giving -> Campaign).
- Title: (required) Descriptive title for what this campaign is tracking. Examples: 20XX Annual Campaign, Maple Road Building Campaign, Northside Afterschool Program.
- Short Description: Allows more space to describe the campaign. Appears alongside the title in many places.
- Date Range: (required) Every campaign must have a specific start and end date.
- Stop Changes to Campaign: When enabled you will not be able to change the details for this campaign. Helpful to avoid making changes by accident. Note: If campaign funds are set to a Fund Template those funds will adjust with that template until the campaign is published.
- Only Include Reconciled Contributions: Waits until giving sets are marked as reconciled before showing them to users in the portal, or exporting them in statements.
- Visible in the Portal: Should this campaign appear in the portal or not.
- Visible to the Public: Should this campaign be publically available.
- Funds Included: Choose if you want to use a customized selection of funds, every fund, or a fund template. Choosing every fund, or a template will keep the funds used fluid until you publish the campaign. When published, the current funds included are locked in to avoid making changes to statements.
- Donation Graphing Period: Should the donation graph display donations in which size segments: weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.
- Fund Report Ordering: Allows the option of sorting funds from A to Z or from $$$$ to $$ in the online reports.
- Tax Exempt Notice: There is a default notice that should be sufficent (is used when empty), but this allows you to customize one as needed.
This letter serves as your receipt for tax purposes and certifies that that you did not receive any goods or services in exchange for your donation.
Campaign Messages
Every campaign can have 2 seperate messages attached to it. There is a portal message, and a statement message. Every message gets it's own directory of content on the Fresh Vine servers. This means that media and documents uploaded for one message is not accessible to others. This is done to minimize the chances of media and file being removed accidentally.
Portal Message
This message is the first thing that visitors to the campaign page will see. It is right at the top of the page and allows your organization to share information about the campaign. You can adapt and update this message over the course of the campaign as you see fit.
Statement Message
If this campaign will publish a statement you can use the statement message to add a note to it. The statement message appears just below the published date, and just above the total given. It is highly encouraged that you write a thank you message showing your organizations appreciation for their donations over the course of the campaign. This is a good time to remind people of larger projects or initatives those donations supported.
For annual campaigns you might also wish to upload budget reports to go along with the statement. The same tool you use to upload images can be used to upload PDF files which you can then link to in your statement message.
Publishing a Campaign
You can only publish a campaign after the end date has passed. When published you are announcing that there will be no more changes made to the campaign (title, dates, funds, descriptions, etc), and that you're ready for statements to be accessed or printed. This does not keep changes from being made to the giving that has been entered. You would still be able to alter or add giving.
After it is published you can:
- Track which statements have been accessed
- Export Statements that haven't been accessed
Fund Templates
Giving Fund Templates are a great way to narrow down your Funds, so that you only use and see the most helpful ones on any given day when entering contributions, or generating statements. Your campaigns will also work as Fund Templates as well.
If you have many "Funds" of giving (for example, Building fund, Benevolence, Missions, etc.), templates are a great way to narrow those down for specific instances. They can make your weekly giving input go much faster and smoother. Many communities may have one template for their weekly giving (only using the most given-to funds in their weekly giving template), others for special offerings.
When creating a template, simply drag and drop the funds to become active, and reorder them as would be most beneficial to you.
Statements
Statements are the way that you communicate the gifts you've received. These are dynamic and customizable, and it is possible for them to overlap so pay attention when generating them.
A statement allows you to define:
- A Date Range
- Specific Funds, Campaign, or Fund Template
- Includes reconciled or All entries
- If visible in the Portal or not
- Note to the Gives (visible online, and in email, not included in print)
- Tax Exempt Statement (Stating no goods or services were provided in exchange for the donation)
There is also the option for generating a quick statement without creating a statement record. This functions as a one-off exporting of data from fresh vine.
Emailing Statements
Not available for Quick Statements
Online Statements
For a person to see their statement online they must have an active Portal user account. This is the only way that we can verify with a level of confidence that the correct person is seeing their statement.
Not available for Quick Statements
Exporting Statements
Printing Statements
For the foreseeable future there will be people who need us to send them hard copies of their contribution statements. We've done our best to make this process easy, customizable, and relatively simple to do. There are two files you'll need for this. The first is generated by Fresh Vine that holds your contribution records. The second file is available to download below and is the Microsoft word template that you will data merge the spreadsheet into.
Printing Statements Tutorial Video
Printing Statements Step by Step
- Download the Statement Word Template
Available in *.docx or *.doc - Open that Template in Microsoft Word
- Review the default thank you note (make sure to set the year)
- Update your Address in the Header
- Export the statement spreadsheet from Fresh Vine
- In Microsoft Word data merge the file you just downloaded
(‘Mailings’ > ‘Select Recipients’ > ‘Use Existing List…’ ) - Print the Receipts
(‘Mailings’ > ‘Finish & Merge’ > ‘Print Documents…’ ) - Stuff envelops, apply postage, and mail them
In the Portal
Allowing your donors to quickly acccess, review, and see their donations can be a crucial aspect of stewardship and fundraising. This is very easy to do with Fresh Vine. By default all donations made to tax decutible funds will appear in the donations portion of the portal. Note: Since tax decutible funds can be included in campaigns there is potential for issues to arise when viewing the receipts.
In addition you can also use the campaigns feature to instantly create donor reports and statements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Should we handle gifts without a donor?
It's normal to have a certain amount of donations that are not attributable to a specific person. This is often in the form of cash that is simply given loose as a donation. The easiest way to handle this with Fresh Vine is to create a profile that is 'Anonymous Cash'.
Then attribute all of those donations to that profile. This will allow you to properly designate/account for these contributions, let you track these loose donations over time, and allow you to create a statement of all the loose gifts.
We have spouses that want individual/joint statements?
Most spouses request joint contribution statements. This has to do with decisions that couple has made about how they manage their finances and how they file their taxes. Yet not every couple makes the same decisions. You manage this prefrence while editing either of the spouses profiles. Simply look at the relationship section where the spouse is. There you will see a button to syncronize giving. When that is enabled they will receive a joint statement and when you view either of their contribution reports online they will be consolidated together. When disabled their contributions are treated individually.