Creating Custom Affiliations for Your Donors

Donors can choose their affiliation with your institution when giving. Default options include Alumnus/a, Student, Parent, Faculty/Staff, and Friend. If needed, you can create Custom Affiliations that vary by campaign and giving form.

Follow these instructions to create and use a Custom Affiliation:

1. Create a Custom Affiliation:

Within the School-Level Settings tab of the Online Giving Dashboard, click on the “Affiliations” section.

Create as many custom affiliations as you’d like by giving each a Name/Label, choosing the name you would like GiveCampus to use to identify this affiliation in your reporting, and selecting an icon to correspond to that affiliation. 

It is possible for the custom affiliation you create to have the same Label as a GiveCampus default affiliation or another custom affiliation that you have already created (e.g. Parent). However, custom affiliations cannot have the same Report Column name as default affiliations or a previously created custom affiliation. The report column names associated with default GiveCampus affiliations that cannot be used as the reporting columns for custom affiliations are "alumni," "student," "parent," "employee," and "friend." For example, if you created a custom affiliation with the name "Parent," the report column name could be "parent_new" or "parent1" but not "parent." 

2. Add a Dropdown (if desired)

If you want donors who select your new affiliation to be prompted with a dropdown that seeks additional details/information from them, select "Include Dropdown."  For example, you might want Grandparents to select the class year of their grandchild, ad you might want a Faculty member to select their department. 

3. Add a Write-in Field (if desired)

If you want donors who select your new affiliation to be prompted with a write-in field that seeks additional details/information from them, select "Write In."  For example, you might want to prompt staff members to enter the name of their department 

4. Linking GiveCampus Account Affiliations:  

When creating a GiveCampus account through Facebook, GiveCampus automatically pulls in information about their affiliation to the institution. With standard affiliations, this was automatically done for the alumni and student affiliations. With custom affiliations, you still have an opportunity to pull in this information for users registering with GiveCampus accounts through Facebook. By selecting an option under the “autocheck affiliation for registered users” you are choosing the field that GiveCampus will pull information from to determine their affiliations to your institution. For example, if you’re creating an affiliation labeled “alumna”, but you would still like it to pull in their education fields, select “alum” from this list.

5. Selecting Custom Affiliations for a Campaign:

Once you have created Custom Affiliations, you can select the affiliations you would like to be used for each campaign. Go to the Campaign Settings > Giving Experience > Form Settings & Display page for the campaign and select the “Campaign Forms” tab.  You can select up to 15 affiliations.

6. Custom Affiliations and Reporting

When creating a custom affiliation, be sure to update your donation report as well. Under the "Reporting" tab of your Online Giving Dashboard, check the field 'selected_affiliations' and move it to the desired location in your donation report. Click "Update Donation Report" to save this change. All affiliation data, including both the affiliation and affiliation details (e.g., selected year, department, grouping, write-in, etc), will appear in the same column in your reporting.

FAQ: Are you able to update donor affiliations after a gift is made?

Yes! Here's how to go about adding missing affiliations to existing donations

If a donor forgot to select an affiliation (like Parent) when making their gift, you can add it afterward:

1. Locate the donor's gift in your Online Giving dashboard

2. Click the donation ID to edit the donation record to add the missing affiliation

3. The donor count and dollars will automatically update in your affiliation leaderboards, there is no manual recalculation necessary for the leaderboard to update after affiliation has been added to an existing gift

4. Changes typically reflect immediately in campaign totals and reporting

FAQ: Can I add class years or other specific years to the default Alumni affiliation?

No. The default Alumni affiliation cannot be edited. To capture specific class years or custom year groupings, create a separate custom affiliation.

Steps to set up a custom alumni year range:

1. Create a custom affiliation with a clear label (for example, "Alumni — Class Years").
2. Enable Include Dropdown and enter the exact class-year options (for example, 2020, 2021, 2022–2024) so donors can select from these options at checkout.
3. Assign a unique report column name. Do not use the reserved name alumni; for instance, use alumni_custom_2024 or alumni_years.

Important notes:

• The default Alumni affiliation cannot be modified.
• Custom affiliations may display the same label as the default, but the report column name must be unique.
• Dropdown selections from custom affiliations are recorded in your donation reports.
• Both default and custom alumni affiliations can coexist. To display them, add the custom affiliation alongside the default option via Campaign Settings > Giving Experience > Form Settings & Display > Campaign Forms.

Reporting reminder:

Because custom affiliations use a different report column name, update your donation report to include the new field. Affiliation details, including the selected class year from the dropdown, will appear in reporting once the custom affiliation is active.