Entering a New Donor

To enter a new donor, press F3, click the New button to the right of the Donor Details area on the main screen, or select File à New à Donor. Then fill in all of their details. Remember to press Tab, not Enter, to move from field to field.

You will notice that as soon as you start editing the new donor, the Donor Details area expands downwards so that you do not have to scroll it to enter all of the fields, if necessary. When this happens, the Donations area also disappears (though only if the Donor Details area would otherwise be overlapping it). This will change back when you finish editing the donor's information.

Optional Fields

Which fields are displayed in the Donor Details area can be controlled by a number of checkboxes in the Maintenance à Main Window Options window. The fields that can be optionally omitted from the Donor Details are are Member/Env. #, Email Address, Category 1, Category 2, Charitable Number, Annual Pledge, Other Info 1 through 3, and Comments.

Member or Envelope Numbers

If your organization uses Member or Envelope numbers, you can fill this into the first field, Member/Env. #. If you are assigning such numbers for the first time, or are willing to reassign the numbers, you can have the program fill them in for you automatically. To do that, either click the drop-down arrow at the right of this field, or right-click in this field. Either action causes a small one-item popup menu to come up, as long as the field is currently blank. Select New Member/Env. # from that menu. It will then automatically fill in the field with the number one higher than the highest Member/Envelope # used so far for any other donor. (You can also use the File à New Member/Env. # menu option, to do the same thing.)

Name Fields

There are three name fields: Business Name, Last Name, and First Name. When the Business Name is filled in, it is assumed to be the name of a business or organization that is making the donations. In that case, you can also fill in the Last Name and First Name, but they are assumed to just be the contact name within the organization - the main name that is displayed on receipts, reports, the Donor List etc. will be the Business Name.

For individual donors, leave the Business Name field blank, and fill in both the Last Name and the First Name for the person making the donation.

In versions of DONATION prior to version 3.03, there was no Business Name field, and users often put the business name into the Last Name field. When version 3.03 or later is first started, this is fixed, by moving names with only a Last Name filled in to the Business Name field. However, for long business names that would not fit into the Last Name field, users sometimes split them between the First Name and the Last Name field. Those ones would have to be moved to the Business Name field by editing the donor record directly.

For couples donating together, select one name to file it under. You can then enter both first names under the First Name field (if they have the same last name), e.g.:

If they have different last names, you can do something like the following:

Since names are always printed as First Name then Last Name, this will print as "Bob Smith & Mary Jones" which is what you want. However, note that it will always be alphabetized under "Smith", so you can't find it sorted under "Jones". However, you can find it with File à Find Donor.

Address Fields

You must have at least the first line of the address filled in. Canadian users must include addresses on their receipts. For U.S. or other users, if for some reason you prefer to omit the addresses, you can enter one space in the Address 1 field and it will allow you to save the field, which normally requires something to be entered in it.

The Postal Code field was new in version 2.30. There is nothing wrong with having the Postal Code included with the Address Line 2 or Address Line 3 field, as was required in earlier versions. However, always putting it in the Postal Code field would allow you to sort some reports by Postal Code if that was desirable.

Phone Number

The phone number is only for reference, and is not required or printed on the receipts.

Email Address

You may enter an Email Address for the donor, which is mostly just for reference. For any donor for whom you have entered an Email Address, if you right-click on that field, a small one-item popup menu comes up, with the option Send Email. If you select that menu option, an email will come up in your email program, addressed to the email address in this field. (This requires you to be using a standard email program like Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird. If you use only web-based email like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail, just send an email to the desired email address yourself. You can copy the address out of this field by selecting it and pressing Ctrl-C, then paste it into the "To:" field in your web-based email with Ctrl-V.)

Charitable Number

If the donor is itself another charitable organization, enter their Charitable Number in this field, for tracking.

Donor Categories

If you wish to select categories, the easiest way is to Tab or click into the Category 1 or Category 2 field and just type the first letter of the category name. If more than one category starts with the same first letter, type the letter a 2nd or further time to get to the other categories starting with the letter. Alternatively, click on the small down arrow button at the right of the field and select the category from the scrolling list that appears. If you need to undo a category selection, the first entry in the scrolling list is always a blank one, which means no category. If you haven't yet set up your lists of categories, or need to add some, save your changes so far with F10, then use Maintenance à Donor Category 1 or Maintenance à Donor Category 2 to set them up.

If you set up a value "Non-Receiptable" in either the Category 1 or Category 2 list, and use that value for a donor, that donor will never have receipts issued for it. This could be helpful if you have a donor such as "Cash", in which you enter anonymous cash donations, or for donors that are themselves charities to which you should not issue official charitable receipts. (This latter point is true at least in Canada. I'm less sure about it for other countries.)

Annual Pledge

The Annual Pledge field is an optional field where you can enter the total amount the donor has pledged to give your organization in the current year for which you are entering data.  If your donor makes weekly pledges, just multiply that by 52 to get the annual amount. If you accept pledges by category, then I'm sorry, DONATION does not handle that.

Other Info Fields

After the Annual Pledge, there are three fields which you can use for your own purposes. By default they are called Other Info 1, Other Info 2 and Other Info 3. But you can change the labels of those fields to anything you want by using Maintenance à Main Window Options and changing the values in Other 1 Label, Other 2 Label and Other 3 Label. For instance, you might change them to be called "Email", "Fax", and "Birthdate".

Comments

To edit the comments, you have a few choices. One option is to use smallish box in the Donor Details area, into which you can type the comments directly. Alternatively, pick the menu option File à Edit Comments, or with the cursor positioned in the Comments field, right-click in this field and select Edit Comments from the small one-item popup menu that comes up. A mid-sized window will come up on which you can edit the comments. Comments can be virtually any length, and contain anything about the donor that you wish to include. To go onto a new line when editing them, just press Enter. The comments will automatically word-wrap as you type.

N.B. If you have made the Comments field invisible by unchecking its checkbox in Maintenance à Main Window Options, you can still edit it with File à Edit Comments. It just won't show up in the main Donor Details area.

Saving Changes or Cancelling

When you are done, save the information by pressing Enter or F10, or clicking the Save button, or selecting File à Save Changes. If you decide you did not want to enter a new donor after all, press ESC, or click the Cancel button, or select File à Cancel Changes. (Note that you can't do anything else in the program until you choose one of those two options to finish or cancel entering the new donor.) Also note that you can't use Enter to do the save while you are in the Comments field, because it is reserved for inserting a new line into the comments.