How Do I Create a Pledge Form?

Virtuous Giving includes the ability to create multiple Giving and Pledge forms to publish on your website. Before you create your first Pledge form, you'll need to set up your Virtuous Giving account. Once that's done, navigate to the Forms page in Online Giving to get started.

To begin, give your pledge form a name. The name will be your only identifier for this form, so it needs to be unique. Instead of just calling it "pledge form," be as specific as possible, like "Main Page Pledge Form for 2023 Website Refresh." Or, heck, name it "Timmy" or "Sally Ann," if you want to. So long as the name is unique, you'll be good to go.

After naming your form, you'll have the option to select default values for a Project and Origin Segment. These values will be assigned to any Pledges made via this form. So, if this were going to be the general pledge form on your web page, you might assign an Origin Segment for "Online Giving" and set the Project as "General Fund." You can, however, skip assigning default values, if needed.

Note: In order to be used in a form, Projects must be set as "Active," "Public," and "Is Available Online." Any Projects that do not have all three options selected will not be available to use in an online form.

In addition, if you have multiple payment processors, you'll be required to select the processor you would like to use for this form.

Once you have named your new form and made the necessary default selections, click NEXT in the lower right to move on to the Build screen.

On the build screen, you'll see that a default form has already been configured, with the most commonly used and required fields already set.

• If you like, you can use the default form as-is; simply save and publish your form to use it in your site.
• If you'd like to make changes, you can click and drag to rearrange the form fields however you like. Click and drag any additional fields from the left side of the screen to add them to your form.
• Click on the trash can icon on any field to remove it from the form.
• Some fields, like Payment Configuration and Email Address, will not have a delete icon as they are required and cannot be removed.

• Many of the fields available should be familiar to Virtuous users, as they are used elsewhere in the system.
  • The "Heading" and "Paragraph" fields are specifically designed for donation-based forms, allowing for a title and a block of descriptive text to be used as part of the form.
  • You can use Contact, Individual, and Gift Custom Fields and even Custom Collections in Pledge Forms to track more complex data requests. 
    • Note: Pledge Custom Fields are not available to use in a Pledge Form.

Once added to the form, fields will show edit icons that can be used to bring up a series of options on the right side of the screen. These options may vary, depending on the selected field. Most fields support the five options shown below:

Use the "Label" field to customized the actual field label shown on-screen. For example, you may wish to Have the Address fields specify "Home Address." Some field labels, like those for credit card information, cannot be edited.

The "Placeholder" value allows you to display faint gray text in any field, as an example of the data required. Placeholders will display on a published form like this:

Use the "Default Value" to pre-fill any form field with a value of your choosing. This can be particularly useful when applied to custom fields that need to be captured with pledges from a specific form.

"Help text" will display below any form field in italics, as shown in the above example.

Some fields will have additional toggle options as well:

The "Check by default" option can be used on fields you would want selected by default. 

Use the "Field is required to submit form" option to make any field required. This will add an asterisk next to the Field Label.

The "Field is hidden" option can be used in conjunction with the "Check by default option" or
Default Value" option to make sure that pledges submitted via your form always have certain values set, even without your donor knowing it.

• For example, you may wish for all pledges made on a certain form to come through with the value "Fall Festival Sponsor" in a custom field called "Sponsorship Type." You don't want to run the risk of donors editing this value on the form when making a donation, so you pre-fill the field and make it hidden.

Of course, you'll have options for Pledges submitted.

Here, you'll be able to:

• Specify a default Pledge value.
• Allow donors to select a fulfillment date for their pledge, set the fulfillment date manually, or allow donors to define the number of payments which will automatically calculate a fulfillment date.
• Allow specific frequencies (or all of them).
• Allow the donor to set the start date (or not).

When creating a Pledge Form, Phone Number and Phone Consent are both added automatically.

• If you have the SMS functionality, keep in mind that Phone Consent is required if you want to capture Phone Number. If you attempt to remove Phone Consent and then save, you will be given an error message:
  
• If you do not have the SMS functionality, the Phone Consent checkbox is optional.
• Whether or not you have the SMS functionality, you will not be able to edit the text shown for Phone Consent - the default language is used to comply with legislation preventing SMS spam.

As you edit your form, you can click on the Actions menu in the upper right to save or view a preview of your donation form. Once you have finished editing, you will need to publish your form to make it available for use on your website. When you are ready, save your form and click Next to continue.

On the next screen, you'll be able to specify what your donor will see once they make a donation. You may choose to have a thank you message appear directly on-screen, in place of the donation form, or have them redirected to another page on your site. The thank you message should be brief; you will have an opportunity to send a receipt or thank you as part of your usual gift processing.

You can also select a confirmation email to send to the donor after they submit their information. You can even choose to have a user notified when a donor makes a submission.

Note: this confirmation email will only be generated if a Gift is submitted along with the Pledge Form. 

When you have configured your form, you are ready to move on the the final step.

Once your donation form has been published, you'll need to post it to your website. On the embed page, you'll have the option to either copy the code snippet to your clipboard so you can paste it into the correct page on your site, or you can send it directly to your web developer. It's really important to note that this embed needs to be put directly on your secure website and NOT in an iFrame. Forms do not work in iFrames due to the nature of how iFrames work. Be sure to speak with your webdeveloper on how to best achive this for your website.

Pledge Payments and Schedules

Once your donors have submitted the pledge form, if they added their payment information, Virtuous will essentially create a recurring gift with a final date and amount. Virtuous will charge the payment method based on the generated schedule. When generating the schedule, Virtuous will work backwards from the Expected Fulfillment Date to the Pledge Date, distributing the total amount pledged evenly among the payments at the specified frequency to fit into the time period between the pledge date and the expected fulfillment date.