Why is ShulCloud’s Forms builder different from all other form builders? For one thing, it has a very special field type perfect for shuls that ask members to make annual pledges. It is called Donation Based on Contributed Amount and it can be used on an online pledge form to remind members what they pledged last time and even suggest increased pledge amounts at this time.
Because this is ShulCloud, there is a multitude of options available to tailor your pledge form to suit your shul’s needs. This article walks you through a typical pledge form setup and focuses mainly on the core aspects of the Donation Based on Contributed Amount field. Your form will no doubt include additional fields and you may want to choose to use different form options.
Form Options
This section touches upon form options worthy of your attention when creating your pledge form.
General
Submit Button Wording. The default wording is "Submit" but this is your "call to action" so consider choosing something a little more motivating.
Form Permissions
Form Visible To. Set this to Logged in Only. The form cannot suggest a pledge based on the last time without knowing who is making the pledge.
Financials
Time of Payment. What you choose here depends on how you want to handle your pledges. In our example, we only want the member to make a pledge, not actually pay it upon submitting the form. As the page indicates, that means some extra work for Admins to create the charges at a later date.
If you do want to collect payment when the member submits the form, you need to decide whether you want to require immediate online payment or whether you want to allow the member to bill the pledge amount to their account. If you do not like the idea of having to create charges later but do not want the immediate payment request to act as a hurdle to getting your members to commit, allowing (if not encouraging on your form) billing to an account is the option for you.
If you opt for anything other than Pledge Only, there are two more fields you want to give your attention:
Charge Note. This appears on your statements so make it simple yet descriptive.
Charge Date. The default is to use the date of submission. However, for this particular application, it makes sense to set the Charge Date in the future, such as the start of the next fiscal year (July 1 for many shuls).
Emails
Sending a confirmation email is a good practice as it gives your member a record in his/her inbox. It is also an opportunity to say thank you. So consider a few words from the Board of Directors or the Rabbi. Remember to add the email field to your form so you can send out those confirmations.
Confirmation Messages
The confirmation messages are another opportunity to communicate meaningfully with your members. They appear on screen after your member submits the form. Sure, the defaults get the job done – form received or form not received. However, considering kicking them up a notch with a big thank you when the submission goes through or how to get help when the submission does not.
Status
Open. Set this to Yes when you are ready to have members complete your pledge form.
As previously mentioned, you have many more form options available to you. For example, you might want to tag the person completing the form. Here we only touch on those options most relevant to the task at hand.
Setting Up Your Donation Based on Contributed Amount Field
With your form options set, it is now time dive to the Donation Based on Contributed Amount. You will find it in the Financial Fields section of the Field Type dropdown.
General Settings
The Donation Based on Contributed Amount field starts out looking like an ordinary Enter an Amount payment field. Enter your label, adjust the width if desired, assign a Charge Type, and enter an optional description.
In our example, we are showing a Charge Type. As this is a "Pledge Only" form, it is not actually required here. If you are requiring payment and/or billing at the time of submission, then the Charge Type setting in this section should reflect the new charges that you want to create for the pledge when the member submits the form.
Use the Description field to convey additional information. It could be a pitch to be generous, details on how the funds are used, or how and when payment is due.
Financials Settings
This is where the magic happens! Just a magician practices a trick before performing for the public, you will find that you want to thoroughly test out your settings here to make sure it works how you want before your members fill the form out.
The first four rows of settings dictate the past transactions that are used to compute the suggested pledges for the coming year.
Date. Whether you need or want to specify a date range really depends on the Charge Type(s) you choose on the third row of settings. If you want to base the pledge suggestion on Charge Type(s) only used during the prior fiscal year (typically indicated in their name, such as "FY19-20 Dues," you really do not need to enter a date range here. However, if you want to base the suggestion on continuously used Charge Types (such as "Membership Dues"), then you do want to restrict the transactions by date. May sure the range captures the transactions you want to include.
Amount. Most shuls will leave the starting amount at 0 and raise the upper limit above 1000 (especially if using the "in total" option as dues are often over $1,000) to cast the widest net.
When might you want to exclude charges based on its amount? Suppose you that you do not use very granular Charge Types and you have a few members who donate large sums that are charged to those more generic Charge Types. You might not want to ask for that $25,000 in an online form!
You also have the option to limit the amount by individual transactions instead of total transactions. Use that option to filter out smaller transactions from the computation (maybe you do not want members pledging convenience fees for example).
Charge Types. Here is where you set which Charge Types should be used in the suggestion computation. What you choose here will dictate the verbiage you set further down below when you describe the member’s past activity when presenting the suggested pledge amount. For example, if you include just dues Charge Types here, down below you might say "Your dues last year were:". If you include other types of charges here, that you might say something broader down below, like "Your charges last year were:”.
Payment Status. You can choose whether or not to include past transactions based on whether or to what extent they are paid. If you include Paid Partially, the full amount is used in the suggestion computation. Uncheck Unpaid to exclude transactions that were never paid at all.
The next two rows have to do with what you want to happen when the member has no charges meeting the criteria you have set above.
If 0 - Label. In cases where a suggested pledge cannot be computed using past transactions, you can suggest your own amount. This field will be used to introduce that suggestion.
Suggested Amount. Here you enter the amount you want to suggest when the suggestion cannot be computed using past transactions (such as a member who recently joined). In the Using field choose the Charge Type to use if you are using an option to charge on submission.
Override Description Below. You may want a different description below the suggested pledge amount in cases where the suggestion is not computed based on past transactions. Enter it here.
The next four settings govern if and how you suggest an increased pledge based on last year’s.
Suggested Multiplier. If you want to suggest that your member consider an increased pledge, you complete this field. The first increase you list will be used as the default so if you want to offer last year’s amount as the default suggestion, you start you list with 0. Entering 0,5,10 would show last year’s amount, that amount plus 5%, and that amount plus 10%.
Multiplier Display As. You can choose to show the suggestions in a dropdown list or text.
Multiplier Label. What you enter here appears on the dropdown list or as the heading of block of text, depending on what you choose above. If you want to use a long label, the text option is for you.
Previous Contribution Label. Last but not least, this field is where you enter how you want to introduce last year’s contribution.
A Look at the Sample Form
Here is how our sample pledge form is set up to solicit pledges for FY 2020-2021:
- Pledge Only (set back in Form Options)
- Suggest amount based on charges that are
- All dates (because our Charge Type used for the suggested amount computation is very specific)
- Less than $100,000
- Made to Charge Type 2019-2020
- Paid or partially paid (if the member paid nothing we are going to skip that charge)
- If there are no transactions to use to compute the suggested amount:
- Display "Please consider a pledge of this amount:"
- Suggest $360
- Using the Pledge 2020-2021 Charge Type (because this is a pledge-only form, this can really be left blank)
- Show the override message explaining that no past applicable pledges were found
- If there are transactions to use to compute the suggested amount we want to suggest:
- Last year's amount as the default
- Possible increases of 3%, 6%, or 18%
- Show the suggestions in a dropdown (down below you can see how it would look with the Text option)
- Our form also has two other fields:
- An Information Snippet to introduce the form and the pledge drive.
- An Email field that will be used for our confirmation email
- We have also set the confirmation messages as shown above
Our first member is Shulem Shtisel. Here is a look at Shulem's transactions.
You can see that Shulem has a charge for Pledge 2019-2020 for $3600 and like a mensch he has timely paid it. So we expect to see that $3600 used on the pledge form when he logs in and fills it out.
When Shulem clicks the dropdown list he will see the 3%, 6% and 18% amount options. Of course, Shulem can enter any amount he wishes to pledge. After he submits his form, he will see this:
Once Shulem submits his pledge, he sees our Thank You confirmation message. He will also receive an email.
Next, we have Libbi Shtisel. She's new to the shul with no transaction history. Here is what Libbi sees:
She has no history so she is presented with our default suggested pledge of $360.
Lastly, we have Akiva (Kive) Shtisel. Here are his transactions.
He made a second pledge but failed to sell his big painting so it remains open or unpaid. Because we chose to exclude unpaid pledges, the form displays $1800, not $3600.
Conclusion
As noted above, you have a great many options available in order to tailor your pledge form to your shul's needs. For example here is how showing the suggested amounts as a text block instead of a dropdown looks:
And just like we walked through some examples to make sure that the results were what we expected, you should do the same. Choose a few members that reflect different scenarios and see how your form looks.