Setup Paths & Pitches
For the Online Giving module we had to invent a couple of terms. There is a lot of loaded terminology in the world of philanthropy. Gift, Pledge, Campaign, etc all get immediately disqualified so that we can be sure you're not bringing any assumptions into the conversation that we did not intend. For that reason, we've created what we call Paths and Pitches.
Paths
A Path is kind of like a landing page. It contains a giving form and there are a few configuration settings that can be specified separately for each path:
Giving Form Options (Per Path)
Friendly URL: e.g. "football" becomes https://you.alumniq.com/giving/to/football
Default Gift Amount
Default Appeal Code: If there is an appeal code in the URL, we'll use that one. If not, we'll use this default. (see Appeal Code Hierarchy below)
Lock designations: Whether or not to include an "other" option to search for a non-featured designation
Show Athletics Waiver: Whether or not to show the athletics waiver field when an applicable designation is receiving a gift.
Show Affiliation Fields: Whether or not to ask the donor about their affiliation to the school.
Show Company Match Fields: Whether or not to allow the donor to indicate their company should match their donation.
Show Anonymous Field: Whether or not to allow the donor to indicate that they would like this gift to be anonymous.
Confirmation Screen & Email Options (Per Path)
Email Theme ("Wrapper Template")
Email Sender Name: e.g. "IQ University Athletics"
Email Sender Address: e.g. athletics-gifts@your-school.edu
Email Reply-To Name
Email Reply-To Address
CC confirmation emails to: A list of email addresses to CC on every confirmation email
How to get help: To whom should a donor reach out if they have a question or concern?
Contact Name
Contact Phone
Contact Email
Introduction Message (Per Path)
This is a rich-text message to display above the gift form on the first screen. Keep it brief! Remember that phone screens are small and if you push the gift form "below the fold" donors are more likely to leave without making a gift.
Confirmation Note (Per Path)
This is a rich-text message to display on the confirmation screen.
Confirmation Email Note (Per Path)
Just like the confirmation note, and in many cases may be exactly the same content. But just in case you want the email contents to be slightly different, you put the email contents here.
Form Wrapper (Per Path)
This is where you can place custom HTML & CSS to skin your path.
Pitches
If the Path is the showroom at the car dealership, the Pitch is the way the salesperson approaches you. If you look particularly affluent, she may steer the conversation toward luxury cars.
Similarly, Pitches allow you to customize the gift form to the person or population that is being invited to visit it. You might be inviting people to click through to the Athletics Path, but if you are targeting high-dollar past donors then you might want to increase your ask and set a higher default gift amount.
A pitch manifests as a link to the giving form. Instead of /giving/to/football it will resemble /giving/personal-link/p/ABCABCABC-ABCAB-ABCABCABCABCABCABC. The last portion identifies the pitch, but using an unguessable identifier. Once the pitch has been set into the user's session, they will be redirected to the Path's friendly URL, so what the user sees is still /giving/to/football or similar.
When configuring a pitch, these are your options:
Path: You must pick a path to which donors will be directed.
Default Amount: If you want a different default from the Path default.
Default Iterations: Number of monthly recurring payments to be selected by default.
Note: Currently this feature is limited to 12 months and assumes the intent is for recurring gifts (no support for installments). Higher iteration values and installment support is coming soon.
Default Designation: Which designation to select by default.
Send Personalized Emails: Toggles use of the "Personalized Pitches" section below.
Personalized Pitches
If a pitch is the result of the salesperson sizing you up and deciding you look affluent, a personalized pitch is analogous to that salesperson recognizing that you are Bill Gates, and knowing that she should ask for quite a lot of money and probably suggest a technology or healthcare designation.
Personalized pitches are your chance to flex all of the data-mining muscle you've got to solicit individual people with requested gift amounts that are targeted to them.
After you toggle on Personalized Emails you may choose an Ask Column: Choose a pre-determined column from your Warehouse to set the default pitch amount. This allows you to set a per-person ask amount based on what you know about them.
These links will look very similar to standard pitch links, but without the /p/ section in the middle: /giving/personal-link/JKLJKLJKL-JKLJK-JKLJKLJKLJKLJKLJKL. Just like standard pitch links, these will set special pitch information into the donor's session and then redirect to the Path's friendly URL.
Appeal Code Hierarchy
The most specific appeal code will be attached to the gift. In descending order of specificity:
?appealcode=XXXXYYY on the inbound url to the giving site (if it exists)
THEN an appeal code configured as a default on the pitch (if it exists)
THEN an appeal code configured as a default on the path (if it exists)
The idea is that you may need on-the-spot flexibility to override an appeal code for a certain segment. The specificity ladder allows you to do that while preserving safe and sane defaults for other donors.
If you're sending email via AlumnIQ, the appeal code on the message will be auto-injected into all giving links included in the message UNLESS the link already has one on it. This corresponds with the most specific behavior listed above.
Designations
As part of your Warehouse sync, you should send us information on Designations that could be useful in Event Registration gift collection as well as the Online Giving module.
You may optionally include a flag that indicates that a gift to the designation confers some other benefits (e.g. box seats to athletics games) which affect the tax-deductibility of the gift. We can use this flag to present the donor with an option to waive their rights to those benefits to maximize their tax deduction.
General Settings
Daily Summary Email Recipients: Recipients of a once-daily email summarizing new gifts and collected payments.
Pledge Alert Email Recipients: Recipients of a notification email each and every time a new pledge is made.
Event Designation Change Recipients: Recipients of a notification email each time designations change on an event.
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