Sponsorship

Sponsorship fits programs where a supporter commits to one specific person or animal over time. For example:

• Child sponsorship programs.
• Programs where supporters sponsor specific adults, such as students.
• Animal sponsorship programs at shelters, sanctuaries, and zoos.

If you want supporters to give to a cause or a program, use Gift Cart. One catalog can include both, so supporters can sponsor someone and give to a cause on the same page.

In the Dashboard, you create a catalog and add a sponsorship profile for each person or animal in your program. A sponsorship profile is a page about the person or animal: their name, photos, story, and details such as date of birth and country. You then add the catalog to your website.

Supporters can donate from a profile in two ways, depending on the frequencies you offer:

• A recurring donation, such as a monthly one, makes the supporter the sponsor of this person or animal.
• A one-time donation supports the person or animal but doesn’t make the supporter their sponsor.

A sponsorship lasts as long as the recurring donation behind it:

1. A supporter sets up a recurring donation from a profile and becomes the sponsor.
2. Fundraise Up hides the profile from your website, so each person or animal has one sponsor at a time.
3. The recurring donation is charged on schedule. If the sponsor pauses it, or Fundraise Up retries a failed payment, the sponsorship continues.
4. The sponsorship ends when the recurring donation is canceled or stops after repeated failed payments. Fundraise Up then shows the profile on your website again, so another supporter can become the sponsor.

After a one-time donation, the profile stays on your website, and any supporter can still become the sponsor.

On your website, supporters can:

• Read each profile, with its photos, story, and details. Supporters see the age, not the date of birth.
• Filter profiles by gender, age, country, species, city, or shelter.
• Sponsor one person or animal, or several at once.
• Make a one-time donation.

After they donate, supporters can follow their sponsorships in Donor Portal. In the Sponsorship section of Donor Portal, they can:

• See each person or animal they sponsor or donated to, with the details from the profile.
• See the history of their donations to each person or animal.
• Update or cancel the recurring donation behind a sponsorship, depending on your Donor Portal settings.

Sponsors can’t reactivate a sponsorship after it ends. To sponsor the same person or animal again, they need to set up a new recurring donation. A one-time donation can’t be turned into a sponsorship later.

Fundraise Up adjusts several emails for sponsorships:

• The Plan receipt, sent after the first payment, includes details about the person or animal.
• Receipts don’t offer to increase the donation or to switch to monthly giving.
• The Plan canceled and Plan failed emails don’t offer to reactivate the sponsorship.

In the Dashboard, you create Sponsorship as a Gift Catalog campaign, the same campaign type used for Gift Cart. You can create a separate catalog for Sponsorship, or add sponsorship profiles to a catalog that already has Gift Cart gifts. In that case, supporters see profiles and gifts on the same page.

Each profile must have:

• The name of the person or animal.
• A designation that receives the donations.
• At least one donation frequency with a default amount.

You can also add:

• A description and up to 8 photos and videos.
• Details about a person: date of birth, gender, and country.
• Details about an animal: date of birth, gender, species, city, and animal shelter.

When a supporter becomes a sponsor, Fundraise Up hides the profile from your website and marks it as Sponsored in the Dashboard. When the sponsorship ends, Fundraise Up removes the mark and shows the profile on your website again. You don’t need to do this yourself.

If a person or animal leaves your program, you can archive their profile. An archived profile is hidden from your website, but its sponsorships don’t end: the recurring donations continue until you or the sponsor cancels them.

You can edit a profile at any time, for example to update photos or the story. Your changes appear on your website right away, but sponsors keep seeing the version from the time they donated, in Donor Portal and on receipts.

Sponsorship donations appear in the Dashboard, in exports, and in your CRM along with your other donations. Each one includes details about the person or animal it supports, so you can:

• See all donations for one person or animal. In Donations or Recurring, filter by Gift and select their profile.
• See only the catalogs that include sponsorship profiles. In Campaigns > Gift catalogs, filter by Sponsorship.
• Include profile details, such as date of birth and country, in donation and recurring plan exports, and map them to fields in your CRM integration.
• Export all your profiles with their details and sponsorship status. In Exports, create an export with the Gift cart items type.