Importing Donors and Donations from CanadaHelps

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Importing Donors and Donations from CanadaHelps

If you use the CanadaHelps service to accept online donations, they have an option to export data files for importing into other programs.

 

You can import that one file with the Database Import Donors and Donations menu option, in order to import both donors and donations that are included on the same lines of the file.

 

Please first read the Help topic Importing Donors and Donations from One File to understand the general issues about doing this type of activity. What follows are the specifics for CanadaHelps. This page will not repeat the details from that overall instruction page.

 

Here is a table of some sample data exported from CanadaHelps as of mid-2020, using its default export columns. Please note that they could change the list of fields at any time, and then you would have to adjust the details below!

 

We have actually turned the data sideways to make it understandable (and fit on a page!). So if this was in Excel, the rows would be columns and vice-versa. We added a first column to the table below to count the field numbers. What I have listed as Field 1 is really Column A in Excel, Field 2 is Column B, etc. The 2nd column of the table below is the row of headings from the data, and the 3rd column is a made-up sample data row.

 

 

Field #

Heading

Data

1

TRANSACTION NUMBER

TRxxxxx

2

PAYMENT METHOD

Credit Card

3

RECEIPT #

 

4

DONOR TITLE

Ms.

5

DONOR FIRST NAME

Anne

6

DONOR LAST NAME

Andrews

7

DONOR COMPANY NAME

 

8

DONOR ADDRESS 1

1 Main St.

9

DONOR ADDRESS 2

 

10

DONOR CITY

Toronto

11

DONOR PROVINCE/STATE

ON

12

DONOR POSTAL/ZIP CODE

M1M 1M1

13

DONOR COUNTRY

CA

14

DONOR PHONE NUMBER

 

15

DONOR EMAIL ADDRESS

anne.andrews@mailservice.com

16

DONOR EMAIL OPT IN

N/A

17

DONOR LANGUAGE

ENGLISH

18

CHARITY LEGAL NAME

MY CHARITY

19

CHARITY BN#

12345…

20

FUND DESIGNATION

E- General

21

AMOUNT

20

22

RECEIPTABLE AMOUNT

20

23

DONATION DATE

01/01/2020

24

DONATION TIME

5:59 AM

25

FEE

0.7

26

DISBURSEMENT STATUS

Disbursement confirmed

27

TOTAL DISBURSED

19.3

28

IN HONOUR OF

FALSE

29

HONOUREE

 

30

IN MEMORY OF

FALSE

31

ECARD SENT

NO

32

CARD REQUESTED

FALSE

33

CARD NAME

 

34

CARD ADDRESS 1

 

35

CARD CITY

 

36

CARD PROVINCE/STATE

 

37

CARD COUNTRY

 

38

CARD POSTAL/ZIP CODE

 

39

CARD ADDRESS 2

 

40

CARD SIGNED AS

 

41

CARD SPECIAL MESSAGE

 

42

MESSAGE TO CHARITY

 

 

There are more columns beyond that, but we do not current see a use for them in this importing.

 

Based on this, the following list of columns would be selected in the Fields to Import list of the Database Import Donors and Donations window:

 

Skip 3 Columns

Title

First Name

Last Name

Business Name
Note: in our examination of the data, this often showed up as the first name plus the last name, so it might be better to use Skip 1 Column here!

Addr1

Addr2

Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)
This merges the DONOR CITY and DONOR PROVINCE/STATE fields into one field.

Postal Code

Skip 1 Column

Phone

Email

Skip 4 Columns

Category

Total Amount

Eligible Amount

Date Received

Skip 18 Columns

Description

 

The rest of the columns are irrelevant, so we will ignore them. When importing donors and donations, if there are extra columns at the end of each row you will be warned about that, but given an option to just ignore them, so we don't need to have a big "Skip ... Columns" at the end to skip them.

 

Import that possibly edited file now, with the following other settings:

 

1 header row

Email Address as the unique identifier for donors

either Update existing donors from data in matching rows from the file or Ignore rows from the file matching existing donors (whichever you prefer)

In Section 5, choose Pre-Receipted.

 

The reason for that last selection is that CanadaHelps.org issues tax receipts itself. So we need "Pre-Receipted" to be entered into the Cheque # / Paid By field, to ensure that we don't send a receipt too for these donations.

 

Warning: CanadaHelps allows anonymous donations. In that case, "ANON" will be put into many of the fields, including the EMAIL field. Since that is not a valid email address, it will cause the file to be rejected, with an appropriate error displayed. To fix that, you will have to load the file into Excel, find any instances of "ANON" in the EMAIL field (Column O in the current version of that file), and change it to something importable into a new anonymous donor record, perhaps "anon@anon.com". You will also want to find that donor record after it is imported the first time, and set it to be non-receiptable.

 

Saving the Settings

 

You can repeat these imports each time you download a new file from CanadaHelps, using the same settings, which the program remembers for you unless you do other different imports with this window in between, that get memorized in place of these settings. To be sure you can get back to these settings, we recommend using the Save Settings button and saving them with the name "CanadaHelps", without the quotes. Then if you have used this same window for some different importing, you can get back to these PayPal settings with the Load Setting button.

 


This topic was last edited on Feb 17, 2023