Understanding how projects in RaiseDonors can be used will ensure your organization is setup for success and easy reporting. A project is essentially an accounting bucket where money is accumulated for reporting purposes.
Some organizations decide to use one project for all fundraising, while others use thousands of projects. For instance, if your organization is involved in offering child sponsorships, or sub-business units, or has a need to track revenue clearly and precisely, then creating many projectss is the way to go.
Beyond projects, the organization can use pages, motivation codes, and source codes to bring clarity and understanding of where a donation originated from or which marketing effort contributed to the donation.
API
Projects can be fully managed through the RaiseDonors API which include GET, PUT, DEL, POST. There is also a publicly accessible endpoint for quick retrieval of projects. This endpoint is helpful for providing a list of projects for public visitors to search through.
Remote Searching
Wouldn't it be slick to have a google style search box on your website which allows visitors to search through the projects in RaiseDonors? When clicking on a project, it would then direct the visitor to a custom donation page (that you configure), with the chosen project pre-selected. This is a great value add to any organizations wanting to give their visitors the ability to search, locate a specific project, and then donate. Read all about it here.
Donation Page Options
Projects can dramatically control the presentation of a donation page, allowing the donor choices in how to support your organization.
Single Project
The simplest case is having a donation page assigned to one singular project. In this instance, there is no need to display any project information to the donor, because the donation will be attributed 100% to the one project.
Single Project Choice
You can choose two or more projects to be associated with the page or you can indicate All projects. The projects are displayed in a searchable drop down list giving your donors the opportunity to indicate which project they wish to donate towards. If a project includes an image or description, that will be included in the public display.
* Pro Tip: Pre-select the project for the donor by using URL parameters. This is helpful if the donor has selected the project they wish to donate towards in a previous screen or marketing efforts desire to load the page with a specific project pre-selected.
Multiple Projects
You can allow donors to place a singular donation across multiple projects too. This approach allows a donor to indicate the amount they wish to give towards each projects. If the donor opts to make this donation recurring, each future scheduled donation will maintain the project allocations.
Virtuous Sync
Once your projects are setup, it will be important for your project information to sync with your Virtuous CRM. When integrating with Virtuous, efficient designation tracking will require keeping up with both your projects in RaiseDonors and your projects in Virtuous, and making sure the two stay in sync. Read more about the Virtuous Sync here