In this article, we will walk you through how to add donations you received outside of Trellis into your thermometer.
If you are getting ready to run your Fund a Need or Paddle Raise at your event and have already gotten donations or commitments from important donors, you can pre-seed your fund a need with those donation amounts using our Pre-Seeded Donations tool.
This is a highly-recommended tactic to build momentum at the start of a Fund a Need and encourage others to donate!
You should use this feature if all of the following are true:
- You have received donations or commitments and the donor is paying off of Trellis (i.e. bank transfer, cheque, etc).
- You do not want/need the donor to donate or raise their paddle during the Fund-a-Need
- You do not need these donations to appear in your exports/reports. You only want them to appear in your public thermometer.
If any of the above are false, you should look into our Pledge Feature instead, which allows the donor to participate and you can manage payment for the pledge through Trellis.
Option 1: Using the Pre-Seeded Donations Feature
Use this feature if you want your Fund a Need activity roll to show who donated. This also allows you to enter these contributions ahead of time and release them when you want to add them to your raised amount.
1. Go to the Pre-Seeded Donations Feature
- From your Fundraiser Page Builder, go to Donations > Edit Pre-seeded Contributions.
2. Add a New Pre-Seeded Donation
- In the top right corner, click Add New to create a new donation
- Add Contributor Name and Amount
- When finished:
- Click Save to save the donation and return to the previous screen.
- Click Release to automatically release this donation, which adds to your thermometer.
- Click Release and Add More to release this donation, and immediately add another.
3. Choose how to Release Pre-Seeded Donations
- With your event planning team, discuss how you want to release Pre-Seeded Donations during the Fund a Need / Paddle Raise portion of your event.
- Typically, we see donations released as that giving level is announced during the Fund a Need. Note that this requires a person who is tasked with releasing the donations on schedule.
- You could also choose to release all donations at once, as soon as the Fund a Need Starts.
4. Release Pre-Seeded Donations
- Click the Release button on each donation to have it add to your thermometer.
- If you are using the Live Event Simple Fund a Need View, the donation will also now show on the screen.
Please Note:
Releasing a donation shows it instantly on screen. You do not need to save or publish your fundraiser for the donation to appear.
- You can select multiple donations to release at once by using the checkboxes.
5. Un-release Pre-Seeded Donations
- If you released a donation by mistake, click the 3-Dot icon and select Unrelease to remove the donation.
Option 2: Using the Fundraiser Goal Settings
You may use this if you do not need to specify from whom the donation/fund came.
1. From your fundraiser page builder > sidebar settings > Fundraiser Goal.
2. Open Advanced and Enter an amount under Have you already raised money towards his goal?
3. You will now see that amount added to your thermometer
Did this answer your question? If not, please feel free to contact us using that teal chat bubble on the lower right corner of your Trellis account dashboard.