Creating An Action Network Fundraising Page

Creating An Action Network Fundraising Page

Before Starting

Before creating your Action Network Fundraiser you'll need to prepare some things.
  1. You'll need a Stripe account in order for card payments to be processed. You should set this up before creating your Fundraiser. When creating your first Fundraiser (or paid Event) you'll be asked to link your Stripe account. You only need to do this once.
  2. Define your ask. What are you fundraising for? Why should people donate? You'll need to prepare some text for your Fundraiser, and it's a good idea to do this in advance.
  3. Consider the amounts you're asking for. How much do you want people to donate? Do you have suggested amounts or do you want donors to be able to choose their own amount?
  4. Decide if you want to generate recurring income or one-off donations. Often it's best to do both, on separate pages.

Why Are The Amounts Shown In Dollars?

Within Action Network all financial transactions are shown with the dollar ($) symbol. This is purely cosmetic, so you can read each value in GBP (£). There's no need to convert the amounts shown. Although Action Network Administrators will see the dollar symbol, anything public-facing will show the currency in which donations are being made.

How To Create An Action Network Fundraiser

1. From the Start Organising menu select ACTIONS, move your cursor over Fundraisers and click on the plus (+) icon that appears.



2. On the following page you'll be asked to give your Fundraiser an Administrative Title. This is optional, but it's a good idea to give every Action a title that makes it easier to find in future. This title will only be seen by you and other Administrators, and so you don't need to worry about potential donors seeing it.


3. Beneath this you'll see another title field, labelled Title of your fundraising page. This is the title potential donors will see, and is a mandatory field.



4. Next, you will see a row of buttons with different monetary amounts, along with a final button labelled $Other. These are the amount options that will be shown to potential donors. To remove any amounts you don't want to be displayed simply click on the Remove button in the top right of each donation button.



5. To add a new amount simply type in the amount in pounds into the box labelled $Amount. Then click on the text ADD AMOUNT OPTION.



6. You'll notice that the donation buttons are displayed in the order that they're added. So, in this example, the buttons will show £15, £20, Other, and £100. This order might not make sense. So we'll first remove the Other button by clicking on the Remove button.



7. As we want to include an Other amount field we need to add it back to the page. This is achieved by clicking on ADD AMOUNT OPTION, without typing anything into the $Amount field.



For the sake of ease, you may wish to simply remove all donation buttons and then add them in the order you want. Just click remove on all donation amounts, and then repeat Step 5 for each donation amount you want to add, in the order you'd like.

8. Next, you'll need to decide if this Fundraiser will accept one-off or recurring donations (or both). In this example, we're going to set up a recurring donation page. So we'll choose Make All Contributions Recurring from the first drop-down menu, and Set Period To Monthly in the second drop-down.



9. Next you'll need to set the recipient for any funds raised. In most cases this will be the local party or Group you're already in. To start, click on the button marked ADD A RECIPIENT.



10. There are two options to choose from. The first drop-down menu will show all of the Groups of which you're an administrator. Simply select the Action Network Group you're raising funds for. The second option allows you to search for another Action Network Group.
All Action Network Groups that are set up to take donations are searchable via this box, including organisations outside of the Green Party, so be careful when making a selection if raising funds for another Group.



11. Once you've selected the Group you want to raise funds for simply click on the ADD button.



12. Your Group will now be displayed as the recipient of any funds raised.



13. If you have the required permissions you'll see a checkbox marked Make email address optional for contributors. You should leave this box unchecked or you may have difficulty confirming who made a donation, and will be unable to send donation receipts.



14. Near the bottom of the page, you'll see a text box labelled Enter any disclaimer text you may have here (optional). You don't need to add anything to this box, but it's good practice to include information around permissible donors here.



15. On the right-hand side of the page you'll see a toggle switch labelled PROGRESS BAR. This will show publicly either the volume or amount of donations made via this Fundraiser. When first setting up a Fundraiser you may want to switch this off. You can always switch it back on later once some donations have been made.

If you don't set a target Action Network will generate one automatically, that updated as more donations are made. If you want to amend the target simply click on the word Edit next to the Goal text.



16. Beneath the Progress Bar you'll see a grey button marked ADD BANNER IMAGE. This is an optional step, but allows you to upload an image that will be shown prominently on your public-facing page. Simply click on the button, and select the image you want to upload.



17. Next, you need to add in the text that will be shown to your potential donors. You can use the formatting options at the top of the text editing box to add images, videos, or other formatting. If you've already prepared your donation ask text, simply copy and paste it into this box, and add any formatting you need.



18. Beneath this you'll see two fields. CREATED BY and SPONSORED BY. The CREATED BY field should be left blank, and the SPONSORED BY field will, in most cases, already show the correct Action Network Group. If it does need to be changed simply choose the correct Group from the drop-down list.



19. Once you're happy with everything on this page click on the button marked SAVE AND GO TO NEXT STEP.



The Thank You Page

Once you've set up your Fundraiser you'll be taken to an editable preview of the Thank You page your donors will see. It'll show three text areas that you can update to show messages to your donors, along with sharing options.

1. At the top of the page you'll see two boxes with some default thank you text. It's a good idea to amend these to show your own messages. You just need to click into the text area and edit the text as needed.



2. Beneath this you'll see a third text box, where you can add a further message. Just like on the main fundraising page you can use the text formating options to add links, images and videos, as well as any other formatting you want to apply.



Sharing Options

To the right of your Thank You messages, you'll see the sharing options for your Fundraiser. Making changes to the default sharing messages are optional, but it's a good idea to take a look and make any changes to maximise the likelihood of someone donating after seeing a sharing link on social media.
Action Network will generate sharing messages automatically based on the text you've added to your Fundraisers, but this can lead to confusing, or grammatically incorrect sharing messages being produced.

1. To get started click on the text Edit Sharing Options.



You'll see the link to your Fundraiser several times on this page. You shouldn't edit it as it will be automatically updated when the Fundraiser is published. However, if you're going to embed your action on your WordPress site, you can change the link to that of your fundraising page. For example  https://manchester.greenparty.org.uk/donate/.

2. Facebook: You should amend the Title and Description fields. Once you're happy with the text you can then select Choose Share Image to pick the image that will be shown on Facebook when the Fundraising link is shared.



The share image won't show until you've saved this page, so don't worry if it doesn't appear straight away.

3. Twitter: Here you can compose a Tweet that can be shared by donors. You can write whatever you like but make sure you add your local party Twitter handle into the Tweet to make sure your social media team can retweet or respond.



4. Email A Friend: You can include some email text for your donors to copy and paste to encourage their friends to donate to. Simply drop in a few lines of text. 



5. Once you're happy with all the sharing options, just click on the button marked SAVE AND CLOSE.



6. You're now ready to publish your Fundraiser. Click on the button marked SAVE & PUBLISH.



Final Steps

1. Before sharing your Fundraiser you should choose the Page Wrapper you want to use. Choose the Wrapper you want from the drop-down menu labelled Page Wrapper and the click on SAVE PAGE WRAPPER.


No page wrapper set up? Check out this guide:  How To Set Up A Basic Page Wrapper.

2. A URL will be created automatically based on the title of your Fundraiser. If you want to change this click on the button marked Edit URL. You can then enter your chosen URL text and click on SAVE PERMALINK.



3. The last step to take is to view your Fundraiser and make sure you're happy with how everything looks. Simply click on the button marked View Fundraiser.



If you want to see the Fundraiser created in this guide just head to  https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/digital-support-help-get-more-greens-elected.

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