Starter Guide
How to create a donation form with Gravity Forms
Making a donation form is an important step for a non-profit organization, foundation and individuals to receive financial support. A donation form is a way to simplify receiving online donations and make it more accessible to donors. In this article we describe in detail how you can create a donation form with Gravity Forms.
Gravity Forms for Nonprofits
The Gravity Forms plugin offers is an advanced and complete forms plugin for WordPress. You can create all kinds of forms with it. From registration forms for a newsletter, contact forms or donation forms. In addition, with all the add-ons it offers, it offers the possibility to link forms to various platforms. It is therefore an excellent plug-in that you can use as an organization within your website.
Why a donation form is important
A donation form is an important tool for collecting donations for a charity or organization. A well-designed form helps donors complete the donation process smoothly, which in turn increases the likelihood of them contributing. A donation form should be easy to fill out, secure and user-friendly. When creating a donation form, it is important to keep in mind that the form is the last step in the donation process. A poorly designed donation form can result in abandoned donations and a negative experience for the donor.
Determine your goals
To set up an effective donation form, it is important to determine what your goals are. A donation form for a temporary promotion can be set up differently than a form for ongoing donations to an organization. You can also determine how much money you want to collect. Questions like these can help you determine which fields to add to your form.
Payment providers
The combination of Gravity Forms and Pronamic Pay gives you as an organization the freedom to determine which payment provider you want to use. You can choose from 12 payment providers. If you still have to choose a payment provider, pay attention to the following aspects:
- Payment methods: Take a good look at which payment methods a provider offers. Please note that you want to offer payment methods that are widely used in the country of your donors.
- transaction costs: Every payment provider applies transaction costs per payment method. These may vary by provider. So do research on this.
- Currencies: Also check if payment providers can process payments in the currency you want to use.
- Support: Also pay attention to the support that a payment provider offers. You should be able to fall back on this at all times if necessary.
Payment methods
Offering the right payment methods in a donation form is important. Take into account the most commonly used payment methods in the country of the donors. You want to make it as easy as possible for donors to contribute.
Recurring payments are also very interesting for organizations. You provide periodic donations for your organization.
Together with payment provider Mollie, recurring payments are also supported with Gravity Forms via Pronamic Pay.
Sample donation form
In the manual below we will create the following effective donation form step-by-step.
Set up donation form
Before you can actually set up a donation form, there are two parts that you must first have in order.
Install Gravity Forms
Download and install the Gravity Form plugin. You need a license to use the plugin. You will receive this after purchasing the plugin.
Install Pronamic Pay
To set up the payment link, you must first install the Pronamic Pay plugin install and set up a configuration for the payment provider.
Create an effective donation form step-by-step
- Create a new donation form
The first step is to create a new form. You create this via the option 'New form'. Provide a clear title and description of the form.
- Form Settings: Payment Feed
To create the actual form, it is useful to first set up a payment feed. You do this via the Form settings and then the 'Pay' tab. Here you create a payment feed with the previously created configuration of your payment provider.
- Add contact fields
You can keep this simple by only asking for a name and email address. If you need more information from a donor, you can add fields for this.
- Add product field(s).
To receive payments you must use a 'Product' field.
You can add it as a multiple choice field with pre-populated amounts. Optionally, you can also add a free choice field, where you can enter an amount yourself.
- Add payment methods
For an effective way to pay, you must make it as easy as possible to select the desired payment method. Also make sure that you put the most used methods first.
- Confirmation of donation
Make sure that the donor also receives a confirmation on the website and/or via e-mail after a successful donation. They can, for example, use this as evidence for a deduction in the tax return. In the Gravity Forms – Form settings you can create a notification under 'Notifications' that will be sent after a payment has been successfully completed.
Frequently Asked Questions
The costs for receiving donations with Gravity Forms and Pronamic Pay consist of three parts.
First, you need a license to use Gravity Forms. The cheapest license is $59 per year. Second, you need a license of Pronamic Pay at €49 per year. Finally, you pay transaction costs to the payment provider used.
NB: If you use Mollie as a payment provider, you can use our free plugin 'Mollie for Gravity Forms' to use.
Yes, you can do this via payment provider Mollie. Pronamic Pay supports recurring payments for this. With which you can receive periodic donations based on an 'interval'. To set this up you can use the following manual consult.
Each submission is stored within Gravity Forms. You can therefore view all donations and also export them to Excel, for example. In addition, Pronamic Pay adds a 'Sales' tab to the form settings. Here you will find ready-made reports of the payments.
