With Feathr Fundraising, you can replace existing donate buttons and embedded donation forms on your website with customized Feathr donation buttons and forms. Your donors complete transactions securely, and when they choose to add a tip, those tips convert directly into Feathr Growth Credits you can use to fund your campaigns. Importantly, all of this activity is saved within the Feathr Community database, allowing you to nurture your relationship with all of your supporters.
How Feathr Fundraising works
Feathr Fundraising focuses on three main features:
1. Form Creation and Publishing. You build donation forms using Feathr's form builder, customize suggested donation amounts, and publish forms to your website. Forms can appear as modal overlays launched from donate buttons or as embedded forms within your web pages.
2. Donation Collection. Donors visit your form, select or enter a donation amount, add their information, and complete payment through Stripe. The experience is mobile-responsive and designed for quick, secure transactions.
3. Tips-to-Credits Conversion. During checkout, donors see an option to add a tip that supports your marketing efforts. When donors add tips, those amounts convert into Feathr Growth Credits that you can allocate to specific Projects and spend on your ad campaigns.
Donation Forms
Feathr Fundraising centers around customizable donation forms that you create and manage through the Fundraising dashboard. Each form includes:
- Suggested donation amounts with optional descriptions explaining what different donation levels support
- Custom or open amount options allowing donors to give exactly what they choose
- Tip options that donors can add to support your marketing efforts.
- Automated email receipts containing tax-deductible donation information
Forms are mobile friendly and can be designed to provide a modern donation experience across all devices.
Publishing Options
You have flexible options for how donors access your forms:
- Modal overlays that appear when someone clicks a donate button or link on your website. These are also known as pop-up pages that display over your existing page.
- Embedded forms that display directly within your web pages.
- Direct anchor links that you can share in emails, social media, or other channels. These can link to Feathr Landing pages that contain your donation form.
These publishing options allow you the freedom to provide a user experience that meshes seamlessly into your existing website.
Stripe Payment Processing
Feathr Fundraising uses Stripe Connect for secure payment processing. You'll connect your organization's Stripe account during setup, which allows you to:
- Accept credit and debit card payments securely
- Process donations without incurring fees or passing along fees to donors
- Receive funds directly into your organization's account
- Provide donors with immediate payment confirmation
Stripe handles all payment security and compliance, so your donors' financial information stays protected.
Tips and Growth Credits
The tips-to-credits model is what makes Feathr Fundraising unique. Here's how it works:
During the donation process, donors see an option to add a tip that supports your organization's marketing efforts. This tip is separate from their donation amount. When a donor adds a tip:
- The tip amount processes along with their donation.
- Feathr converts the tip into Growth Credits.
- You allocate those credits to specific Projects in your Feathr account.
- You use the credits to fund your advertising campaigns.
This creates a sustainable cycle where your fundraising efforts directly generate the marketing budget needed to reach more potential donors and supporters.
What Exactly Are Growth Credits?
Growth Credits are what the additional tips from your donors become. You can think of these like points systems, such as the Frequent Flier Miles programs of airlines. As you receive donations through Feathr Fundraising, 100% of the additional tip provided to support your outreach becomes Growth Credits that are redeemable to spend on digital ad campaigns.
Growth Credits help with the issue of funding overhead. By turning tips directly into Growth Credits, the tips will not be reported as direct revenue and can be cycled directly into your upcoming or ongoing ad campaigns. Learn more about Growth Credits here.
Donor Data and Groups
Feathr automatically captures donor information and creates person records in your account. For each donation, Feathr records:
- Donor name and email address.
- Donation amount and date.
- Which donation form they used.
- Whether they viewed or completed the form.
This data integrates with Feathr's existing Groups functionality, allowing you to:
- Filter and Group donors by donation amount, date, or form.
- Create targeted campaigns to nurture your relationship with donors.
- Build campaigns for people who viewed forms but didn't donate, also known as cart abandonment campaigns.
- Segment your audience based on donation history.
The person activities captured through donation forms work just like other Feathr activities, giving you powerful audience building and targeting capabilities.
Fundraising Dashboard
The Fundraising dashboard serves as your central management hub for all donation activities. From this dashboard, you can:
- View your Stripe Connect setup status
- See all your donation forms in one table
- Monitor key metrics for each form (views, completions, total raised, tips earned)
- Create new forms or edit existing ones
- Enable, disable, or delete forms as needed
- Adjust tip allocation settings to assign credits to different Projects
The dashboard provides a comprehensive view of your fundraising performance and makes it easy to manage multiple forms across different campaigns or initiatives.
Getting started with Feathr Fundraising
To begin using Feathr Fundraising, you'll need:
- An active Feathr account
- A Stripe account (you can create one during the setup process if needed)
- Access to your website to add form links or embed code
- Basic understanding of how you want to structure your donation appeals
Once you complete the Stripe Connect setup and configure your tip allocation settings, you're ready to create your first donation form and start accepting donations. For more about getting started, read this article.