Donation Setup

REACH allows nonprofits to customize the various options shown on their Donation Forms.

This article will walk you through the setting options shown on Settings > Donation Setup.

Organizations can include a suggested additional donation to help cover their transaction fees, choose which information they require their supporters to include, and update their thank you message that is displayed and emailed after a successful donation.

Donation Form Settings

Note: For details on customizing your default or custom Donation Forms, refer to our Donation Forms and Links article.

Go to Settings > Donation Setup. Under the Donation Form Settings tab, you can:

  • Provide a Suggested Additional Donation Amount on the donation form asking your donors to help cover your organization’s credit card processing fees.
    • Type in a Percentage Amount or a Flat Amount.
    • Note: If you update the Percentage or Flat Amount, the new amount will be for new sponsorships and new donations. Existing recurring sponsorships and donations will remain unaltered at the previous Percentage Amount or Flat Amount.
    • Note: This is different from the Suggested Extra Donation Amount setting in Account Rules > Sponsorships. The Suggested Extra Donation Amount is where you can include a suggestion, with text, for an extra recurring donation that is added to a sponsorship.
  • Choose which Supporter Donation Options to include
    • Check the boxes if you require supporters to include a billing address and phone number.
    • Note: Some payment gateways require certain information so please check with your payment gateway prior to proceeding. REACHpay requires only the billing address, the phone number and date of birth are optional.
  • Check the box if you would like supporters to schedule recurring donations
  • Check the box if you’d like the supporter to include their date of birth
  • Check the box if you’d like to send a text confirmation for a completed donation.
    • Note: This requires text to give being setup and the supporter’s mobile number on file.

Update your Donation Thank You Message

  • Customize your text and add any photos, if desired, to your donation thank you message.
    • Note: This is the message that is displayed after a donor successfully completes a donation. It is also included in their email receipt.
  • Click Save Changes

Currency

REACH supports recording donations in several base currencies using our multi-currency feature. Accept donations from various currencies and have them converted to your base currency.

Multi-currency is available for REACHpay and other payment gateway users. If you are not using REACHpay, please verify with your payment gateway that multi-currency is accepted.

Note: For REACHpay users, multi-currency donations incur an additional 1% transaction fee. Multi-currency donations are donations that are not using your base currency.

If you would like your public donation page to accept donations in other currencies, please email our support team.

To set your base currency, go to the Currency tab:

  • Select your base Currency
  • Click on Save Changes

Credit Card Setup

On the Credit Card Setup tab, check the boxes for the credit cards your payment gateway supports. The icons of the cards you selected will be shown on your donation page.

Your organization must have an account with a payment gateway to use REACH.

We offer our own payment gateway, REACHpay, to US-based nonprofits.

If you do not decide to use REACHpay, we highly recommend Stripe due to its ease of use, non-profit discount, all-inclusive price with fewer hidden fees and the amount of countries, currencies and card types it works with.

Review your Card Expiration Notifications for expiring credit cards and cards that have already expired. Set the number of months prior to card expiring or after the card has expired for the notifications to be sent.

To set up your notification preferences:

  • Go to Settings > Donation Setup > Credit Card Setup
  • Select your Expiring Cards preferences
    • Example: If you want to see the current month and the next month’s expiring cards, set your Months Before Card Expiration to 1 month. If you set the expiring for 2 months, it will return the current month as well as the next two months.
  • Select your Expired Cards preferences
    • Example: To notify donors of expired cards up to 6 months prior to January, set your Months After Card Expiration to 6 months. This will include anyone with a card that expired in the months of July, August, September, October, November, December.
  • Click Save Changes

The system message uses the Default Supporter Email to notify the supporter: 

REACH Notification Email for Expiring Credit Card (will also include a login link to your organization’s Donor Portal):


You have a credit card expiring soon. Please update your card information to continue your recurring donation.

REACH Notification Email for Expired Card (will also include a login link to your organization’s Donor Portal)

You have an expired credit card. Please update your card information to continue your recurring donation.

Organizations on our Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans have the option to customize these notification email templates when notifying their supporters of credit card expirations. To learn more, read our Creating a Custom Email Template article. 

In addition to the auto-generated system notifications, you can also run or schedule to run a report that details which supporters have credit cards set to expire or have expired. To do so, go to Reports > Card Expiration Search and choose your desired date range. 

Note: The notification process will run on the 1st of each month. Only supporters with credit cards that are expiring or have expired in your selected time frame will receive a notification. 

If you would like to make sure an admin receives a report on the notifications that have gone out to supporters, you can do so in Admin Users > Admin > Notifications > Card Expiration.

Payment Gateway

Your organization must have an account with a payment gateway to use REACH online donations.

On the Payment Gateway tab:

  • Choose whether to Require 3D Secure Credit Card Transactions
    • Note: This was implemented to authenticate credit card transactions and to meet SCA compliance.
  • Select a New Payment Gateway from our list of accepted gateways.
  • Enter any API or tokens required by the gateway
  • Click Save Changes

Contribution Statements

On the Contribution Statements tab:

Custom Payment Types

Organizations can create their own custom payment types for offline donations.

These can be used to record single offline donations that were set up from your supporter’s side and have already occurred. For example, these donations could be from a particular bank or a secondary payment gateway or used to record donations using cryptocurrency.

Another common example is to create an In-Kind custom payment type to be used when a non-monetary donation is made to your organization and you want to record it for tax receipting purposes.

These will be shown on your Donations and can be filtered in your reports.

On the Custom Payment Types tab:

  • Click Add Custom Payment Type
  • Enter in a Title
  • A Permalink will be generated
  • Click Save Changes

Any Custom Payment Types you create are then listed in your Donation History Import Template under payment_types. This can be used for importing any donation records.

Gift Aid

If you are a UK-based organization, you can configure your Gift Aid settings on the Gift Aid tab. You can enter any custom text to display when a donor is asked about Gift Aid. Be sure to click on Save Changes when done.

If a supporter is enrolled in Gift Aid, the Gift Aid amounts will be shown in their supporters record in the Donation Details.

There is a column available to import Gift Aid details in the Supporter Import template.

When Gift Aid is enabled, you will have a Gift Aid Donations Report available in your Report list. This Report can be used to generate a line item list of all Gift Aid donation activity for your account, campaigns, sponsorships, etc. to export into a HMRC-ready format.

You can also run a Donation Details Report and click Select Columns to Display and check the box for Gift Aid Amount for reporting purposes.

Default General Ledger (GL) Codes

Organizations have the option to include General Ledger (GL) codes as a way to further record, designate and track your accounting transactions. GL codes will be included on your transaction descriptions and available in your donation reports and exports for accounting (such as QuickBooks).

In REACH, GL codes are tied to donations for your Projects, Places, Campaigns, Donation Categories, Sponsorship Types, Events and Products.

Here is an example transaction description of an online donation sent to your payment gateway:

8667800be70eee – REACH donation to General Fund – GENERAL

The description begins with the REACH Confirmation ID which can be found on completed donations: 8667800be70eee.
Following is the description of the transaction which will always begin with “REACH” to identify where the transaction originated from: REACH donation to General Fund.
The GL Code will be shown last.  In our example, the Donation Category “General Fund” has the GL Code set as: GENERAL.

To add/edit your GL codes:

  • From your Admin Console, go to Settings > Donation Setup
  • Click on the Default GL Codes tab
  • Add/Edit the GL codes as desired for each donation purpose (examples below)
  • When complete, be sure to click Save Changes

You can also add unique GL codes for individual donation purposes as desired. For example, if you want a specific GL code for a particular Campaign, you can add a GL code into that Campaign in the GL Code field (as shown below). Once added, be sure to scroll down and click Save Changes.

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