How Do Gift Arrays Work?

How much should I ask for?

It's one of the most common questions in fundraising. Ask for too much and you risk alienating a donor; ask for too little, and you are leaving money on the table. Each donor is different, so making the same ask of everyone just doesn't work, especially for a responsive nonprofit.

That's where Standard Gift Arrays and Smart Gift Arrays come in. Below, learn the difference between Standard Gift Arrays and Smart Gift Arrays and how to use them. 

Standard Gift Array vs Smart Gift Array

Standard Gift Arrays and Smart Gift Arrays both give donors suggested Gift amounts on an online Giving Form or Page.

Standard Gift Arrays are typically used for unknown donors who are giving online to your organization for the first time. They will present the donor with preset amounts to contribute. All unknown donors will be presented with the same suggested amounts configured in the array.

Smart Gift Arrays work for known Donors and customize the suggested amount based on giving habits of the Donor. Smart Gift Arrays use the Responsive Listener to identify known Donors. Learn more about the Responsive Listener here.

Once the Listener has been deployed on your website, Virtuous will begin to identify your website visitors and connect them with existing Contact records. When this connection has been established, then Virtuous can use everything known about an existing donor to customize the Gift Array on a Virtuous Giving form. If a user is unknown and they make a donation via a Virtuous Giving form, then that user will be linked to Virtuous, so that the next time the same user visits your donation page, they will see a Smart Gift Array.

There are two ways to create a new Gift Array. You can manage Gift Arrays by navigating to the Forms tab under Online Giving in the Primary Navigation menu.

There, find Form Settings under the Actions button in the top right.

Alternatively, while editing a Giving Form, click on the edit icon for the Donation Amount field, and you'll see the same option to create a Gift Array.

Either option will bring up the form to create a new Gift Array.

Give your new Gift Array a unique name, like "General Web Form Array" or "Giving Tuesday," in order to save the array. To begin, set the values to be used for Standard Gift Arrays or instances when an unknown donor views your Giving Form. Under Unknown Donor, there is four Options boxes to enter a value to display the suggested amounts. The values can be modified to different amounts. Additionally, if you’d prefer to offer fewer than four suggested amounts, leave those boxes empty. You can set a Default Option, or a preselected amount, by selecting one of the four Option boxes at the top.

Then, if you are using Smart Arrays as well, ensure the option to "Use customized Gift Array when donor is known" is turned on (green toggle) to configure the Smart Gift Array.

Each Smart Array is based on one of two values:

After selecting a base value type, build your Array by entering a multiplier into each of the four boxes.

In the example above, the first amount is 1x the Virtuous Suggested Amount, the second, is 1.25x the Suggested Amount, the third is 1.5x the Suggested Amount, and the final value will be double the Suggested Amount.

To see how your Smart Gift Array will appear for various donors, enter an amount under "Preview Gift Array and then click on "Preview."

Once you have completed configuring your Smart Gift Array, click on "Save Gift Array" to add your new array and make it available for any Giving Form.

There are a few rules that apply when calculating Smart Arrays.

First, Smart Arrays have a minimum of $25 and a maximum of $1,000. This means that if the base amount is less than $25, the default values (those set for an unknown door) will be used instead. If the base value is $1,000 (maybe for a major donor), then then instead of an array, a donor will just see a text box to enter a custom amount.

In order to avoid displaying some odd or specific values, Smart Array calculations are set to round up or down, as needed. Values are rounded as follows:

Gift Array values are also subject to the Highlander rule, meaning that there can be only one of each value. So, if two values are rounded to the same amount, one will be hidden.

For example, let's say that the calculated values for a particular donor, before rounding, end up as: $36, $56, $64, $72. After rounding, this would generate array values of $35, $60, $60, $70. Since each value can appear only once, the second $60 would be omitted.

Gift Arrays and Currency Considerations

Gift Array amounts will show only in the default currency of your Database. To view the default currency set, navigate to Settings and Organization Settings.

Here, find the box labeled currency to identify the default currency set for your database.

Now that you know how Smart Gift Arrays work, go ahead and give them a try!