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Onboarding guide

Step 10: Launch

In this step, you will review your Fundraise Up configuration and accept your first live donation.

If you have completed steps 1 to 9 of this guide, you’re almost ready to accept your first donation using Fundraise Up. Before you do, review the launch checklist below.

Launch checklist

1. Check your Stripe account

Check your Stripe account to ensure that any required actions have been resolved. This is especially important if you have connected a newly-created Stripe account to Fundraise Up. Return to Step 1: Stripe →

2. Check the installation code

Confirm that the Fundraise Up installation code is active on your website by reviewing the site’s source code. Ensure that your organization’s unique account ID is shown right before the closing </script> tag. Your organization’s account ID can be found in the installation code snippet. Return to Step 2: Installation →

3. Review your payment methods

Check that the payment methods you want to show to supporters have been successfully enabled. If you have enabled Apple Pay, confirm that the domain where it will be used has been verified. Return to Step 3: Payment methods →

4. Review your campaigns

You should have at least one campaign created. Review its configuration to make sure the expected settings are applied. Enable your Campaign as a Checkout modal, a Campaign Page, or both. Use the Checkout modal URL to confirm that the Checkout launches on your website and the Campaign Page URL to check your Page opens correctly. Return to Step 4: Campaigns →

5. Review supporter emails

In Step 5, you customized supporter emails in your Dashboard email settings. Preview your emails to confirm that they appear as you expected. Use the Send test email option displayed on each email page to send a test email to your email address. Return to Step 5: Emails →

6. Check Donor Portal settings

Use the preview option in the Donor Portal settings to confirm that it is customized correctly and appears as expected. Return to Step 6: Donor Portal →

7. Review Elements

In step 7, you created some Elements. Review the components that you created, checking that they are connected to the right campaigns and that they are customized as expected. For any overlay-style Elements, leave the Element is enabled checkbox unselected for now. You will enable these components later, once you’ve gone live with Fundraise Up. Return to Step 7: Elements →

8. Check your account settings

Review the Account section of your Dashboard settings and refer to the guidance in step 8 for specific settings that should be applied. Return to Step 8: Account settings →

9. Activate integrations (optional)

If you are launching Fundraise Up with one or more other services connected to it, check the settings of each integration to confirm that there are no errors, that you are no longer syncing test data, and that automatic sync has been enabled. Return to Step 9: Integrations →

Make a live test donation

Now that you have configured and checked your Fundraise Up account, it's time to process your first live donation. We recommend processing a card-based $5 USD (or equivalent) donation. Donate using an email address you have access to, so that you can review any emails sent by the platform.

When your donation is complete, review its donation record in the Donations view. You can find this option to the left of the top menu bar in the Dashboard.

If you have connected any integrations, review the record Fundraise Up created in your app to ensure data is appearing in the other platform as you expected.

Going live with the Checkout modal

Once you have reviewed your configuration and processed at least one live test donation, you are ready to start accepting donations using Fundraise Up’s Checkout modal.

Changing your website’s donation button

If you have a donation button in your website’s navigation, you can either replace it with a Donate Button or a Donate Link from the Elements library (our recommended methods), or you can modify it to launch the Checkout modal. Any changes should also be applied to all other buttons and links on your website.

Implementing the Donate Button or a Donate Link will enable you to track conversion within Fundraise Up.
  1. If you want to replace your website’s existing donation button with the Donate Button Element, start by create the component in the Elements view of the Fundraise Up Dashboard.
  2. Customize the button as required, then click Create an element and copy its code snippet.
  3. Replace the code of your existing “Donate” button with the code snippet from your new Donate Button.
  4. Once it is placed on your website, the Fundraise Up installation script will render an animated button that launches the Checkout modal.
1<a href="#XTGWFZFR" style="display: none"></a>

This is an example of what the code for a Donate Button might look like.

The benefit of using a Donate Link instead of a Donate Button is that you can retain the original style of your website’s donation button. For websites with complex layouts or advanced/unique styling, using a Donate Link is likely the best approach.

Because the Fundraise Up installation code has already been installed on the page where the link is placed, the Checkout modal will launch without the page having to refresh itself.

  1. Start by creating a Donate Link in the Elements view of the Fundraise Up Dashboard.
  2. Customize the link as needed, then click Create an element and copy the URL.
  3. Replace the code of your existing button with the code snippet from your Fundraise Up account.
1<a href="https://donate.ropsi.org/-/XWZBZUBB" class="myButton">Donate now</a>

This example uses the Donate Link Elements component as the href value. Notice that the link retains its custom “myButton” class.

Option 3: Modify an existing donation button to use a query string

With this approach, you launch a Checkout modal using a query string. Because this approach does not use an Element, it’s not possible to modify the link’s behavior from within Fundraise Up and it is not possible to track conversion within Fundraise Up.

For these reasons, we recommend using this method only if you encounter problems changing your website’s donation button using the two previous methods.

To use this method, change the href attribute of your donation button to the Checkout URL query string of the Checkout modal you want to launch. The string should include the unique ID of the Checkout modal, which is located in the campaign’s Overview tab.

1<a href="?form=FUNCPJTZZQR" class="myButton">Donate now</a>

This example code launches the Checkout modal using a query string. The query string includes the unique ID of the Checkout it will launch.

Pushing your website changes

Assuming that you have staged your Fundraise Up implementation, it is now time to push the changes you made to your live site. Concurrently, you can enable any overlay-style Elements that you created in Step 7 of the onboarding guide. This can be done by viewing the settings for each overlay-style Element and selecting the Element is enabled option.

Once your changes are published and the Elements appear on your live website, you have completed your initial implementation of Fundraise Up and can use it to process real donations.

Wrapping up

This onboarding guide provided steps for a basic implementation of Fundraise Up. Now that you are familiar with some of the core concepts of the platform, we strongly recommend exploring more of the features that you can implement to engage supporters and increase your donation revenue.

What to do next

 

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