Create custom affiliations for your donors
When making a gift, donors are able to select their affiliation with your institution. The default options are Alumnus/a, Student, Parent, Faculty/Staff, and Friend. If these default options don't meet your needs, you also have the option to create Custom Affiliations. These Custom Affiliations can vary from campaign to campaign, and giving form to 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."
Note: Affiliations cannot be changed or modified once created, so be careful! If you make a mistake while creating a new affiliation, simply create a new affiliation.
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.
- Note: If you choose to include a "Custom" dropdown, be sure to enter the dropdown options in the order that you'd like them to appear in the dropdown, as the order cannot be edited once entered.
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 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.