When a supporter donates to your organization, you can include a custom field to gather information you need from your supporters.

A good example of this is adding “How did you hear about us?” on your custom Donation Form to capture how the supporter found out about your organization. We’ll detail how to create this field in this article. Use this as an example to help you create any other custom fields for your donation form.

How did you hear about us?: Customize your Responses#

First, you will need to set up the fields you want to provide when asking “How did you hear about us?”

To do so, you will need to set up Custom Fields for your Supporters. 

Here’s how:

• Go to Data Setup > Custom Fields
• Click + New Field
• For the Title, we suggest typing in How did you hear about us?
  • Note: You can enter in any Title you wish. However, note that the Title text you include will be text shown on the Donation Form. 
• In the Referral field, select Supporter
• Leave the check boxes un-checked
• Choose your Type of Data
  •  If your organization wants to provide options, choose Dropdown Select as your Type of Data and then add each option individually by continuing to click on Add Option to Select for each response you would like included. (example: Church, Social Media, Friend/Family, Other).
  • If your organization wants to provide a text field, choose Single Line Text as your Type of Data. Supporters can then type in any short response that fits into a single line of text. 
  • Note: One Type of Data can be included for each custom field. To include two Types of Data, create two separate custom fields. Example: Adding an “If Other, How did you hear about us?” field as Single Line Text.
• Click Save Changes

Adding to Your Donation Form#

To add the “How’d you hear about us?” or any other Supporter Custom field to your Donation Form:

• Go to Settings > Donation Forms
• Click + New Form
• Add a Title
• Check the box if you want to make this the Default Donation Form for your account
• Add Amount Levels, if desired
• On the Form Elements tab, scroll down and click on Add Element
• For Select Section, choose Supporter Custom Field
• Next to Supporter Custom Field, choose “How did you hear about us?” or the Title of any other Custom Field you created.
• Check the box if you want to Require supporters to fill out field to complete donation.
  • Note: If your organization added a second Supporter Custom Field (such as “If Other, how’d you hear about us?”) repeat the above steps to add the Supporter Custom Field.
• Use the Header Content, Footer Content and CSS Styling tabs to add additional content, if desired. 
• Once complete, click Create Form or Save Changes(if updates were made)

Next to the donation form, you can click on Action > Share. Here, you will see a Link, Embed Code and a button to Generate a QR Code that you can use when sharing the donation form. 

Reviewing Captured Data#

Data that is captured in response to the “How did you hear about us?” or any other Supporter Custom field on your Donation Form can be viewed in your supporter’s records or on a generated Report.

Supporter Record#

• Go to Supporters > type in supporters name to search for your supporter and then click on their name to open up their supporter record
• On the Details tab, the data will be shown under the Other Info area

Note: From the Supporter Record, you can also click on Actions > Edit to add, edit or remove the data for this field.

Report#

• Generate a Report
• Choose your search criteria
• Click on Select Columns to Display and find and check the boxes of your custom fields.
• Click Search

Importing “How did you hear about us?” Data#

Once your Supporter Custom Field has been created, you will have the option to import previous records into the REACH system if you know how your previous/current supporters found out about your organization. You can also add them manually into each supporter’s individual record.

Here’s how: 

• Go to Data Setup > Data Import/Export
• On the Imports tab, click System Import Templates
• Choose Supporter Import Templates to download the template
• You will now see a column for “How did you hear about us?” or the Title of your supporter custom field
• Add the required data in the spreadsheet and import into REACH

On an individual Supporter’s record, you can also click on Actions > Edit and add information into this field manually.