Contents - Index

Adding New Donors

To add new donors:

1. Click the Donors icon and choose Add/Edit Donors... or press F4. If this is the first time Donarius® is used, there are no donors and you will be asked to give each donor's personal information. Later on just click the Add New Donor button to add a new donor.

2. Fill in the name and address for each donor.  Some fields will be automatically set by looking at the last 10 donors to see which city, province/state, zip/postal code and donor type is the most common.

3. The name can be entered in either order: the first name followed by the surname (John Smith), or the surname then a comma followed by the first name (Smith, John).  (In Canada, the CRA has requested that all names include the middle initial.)  If an address has no street just type any character.    (Eg a dash or period)  If many of the donors do not have an address then you can set up Donarius® so that an address can be blank.  (Click here then scroll to the bottom of the page.)  You must enter both the first name and last name in the Name box.

The name entered can have foreign characters as well as Latin ones.  For example, Chinese or Korean.

A spouse's name can be entered in three ways: a) as part of the donor's name (Eg: John and Mary Smith), b) separately by clicking on the More Info ==> button or c) as a separate donor linked to their spouse using a relationship. (You need to purchase the Relationships & Families module to do this).  These other names will not appear on a tax receipt but will appear in a church/donor directory on the line below the donor's name.  You can use this to enter children's names in a church/donor directory.  If you have have the Relationships & Families module  you should add a relationship from the head of the family to each other member of the family.

4. Choose a Salutation if you wish.  For example, for the name you might put George Anderson and for the Salutation you might choose Mr.  When printing labels or envelopes it will then say: Mr. George Anderson.  If the salutation you want to use, is not in the list, then click <Add>.  Then type the new salutation and press TAB.  If 90% or more of the donors have a salutation, you will need to pick something for every donor. To have none in this case add None as a choice of salutation.  For common first names, the software will automatically choose Mr. or Ms.

5. Some people have initials at the end their name to indicate a degree or certification (i.e. Ph.D. or C.A.) These can be entered in the Name box or separately in the box between the name and street. It is also used for Jr/Sr.

6. To enter a person's title and/or company click on the More Info ==> button.  When you are entering an organization or company you may not have a person's name to enter.  In this case enter the organization's name where you would normally enter the person's name.

7. Indicate the donor type by choosing one in the Donor Type field. When you have the Relationships/Families module you will also be able to reecod the donor type of the spouse. If you don't have this module you can record their donor type, by clicking on the More Info ==> button. Then enter the spouse's name and type. An abbreviation for the donor type will be shown in a donor list and you have a choice whether or not it will appear in the church/donor directory.  When you have only one donor type, each new donor will automatically be assigned that type.

8. If you use donor characteristics choose an option in the Characteristics field.  Donor characteristics will be shown in a donor list list and you have a choice whether or not they will appear in the church/donor directory.

9. Give the envelope number, if the donor uses one. Leave the envelope number blank when entering donor types that never use envelopes (for example Visitors) For the donor types that usually use an envelope, you can leave the envelope number blank and the next available number will be shown.  (for example Members)  If the envelope number does not belong to the donor you are entering then change it. When the donor does not use numbered envelopes erase the one chosen by Donarius®.  If you will be giving new envelopes to the donor at the end of the year put 9999 for the envelope number. If your church needs envelope numbers larger than that, then you can increase this by clicking on the Re-assign Church Envelopes icon on the main window.  On the bottom right increase the Biggest envelope #.

10. Give the donor's birthdate, telephone number and email address.  You may leave them blank if you don't want to record them.  There is room for four phone numbers: home, work, cell and FAX.  (When entering a phone# you must enter at least 7 digits.)  You can also have three email addresses: home, work and another.  Hold the mouse over each field to see the order that you should enter them in.  You can change the meaning or order for the phone numbers and email addresses by clicking on their heading. When you put the cursor in the phone or email fields they will get bigger so you can enter several lines.  (Press Enter to add a new line at the end.)  When printing a donor list or a church/donor directory you have a choice of which phone numbers and email addresses to show.

11. When entering cell phone numbers to send text messages to you must also choose the company or provider that the donor uses. Double-click the cell phone number to choose a provider from the list. Or type an apostrophe (to the left of the 1 key on the keyboard) or a single quote (to the left of the Enter key) at the end of the cell phone number. An abbreviation of the provider will be added to the cell phone number. You may also want to use a bulk SMS service or program to send the text messages to some of your donors. (Text messaging is also called SMS.) For those donors, choose *Use bulk SMS service/program from the list of providers. You will be able to copy the cell phone numbers from Donarius® to your SMS service/program.

12. When you click on the More Info ==> button you will see a Membership Expires date. (For a charity that is not a church this will be shown beside the Donor Type). If you have a membership fee, click on the word Membership Expires to set up what the fee is, how often members must pay and which category will record the membership fee. When the fee is received, the Membership Expires date will be automatically advanced depending on the amount received.  For example, if your fee is $25.00 per month and the member gives $50.00 then the date will be advanced two months.  (If you have different types of memberships with different fees, leave the fee at zero and pick a category.  Whatever amount you enter for the fee, the software will advance the membership expiry date by the number of months you entered.)  When you first enter a new donor, you may have to adjust the Added date.  Donarius® assumes that if you start in a certain month that you have to pay the membership for that month.  For example, suppose you have a monthly fee and someone joins in Nov 2009. If you add the person into Donarius® in Nov 2009, the Added date will already be correct.  However, if you add them later or earlier, you should change the Added date to be sometime in Nov 2009. Then the first membership fee received will be for Nov 2009 and the expiry date will be set to Nov 30/2009. If the membership can expire in the middle of the month, then when you add someone you should set the Membership Expires date to one month earlier.

13. Both the Membership Expires and the Added boxes can be renamed to something else by clicking on the heading. For example, you could call them Date Removed and Date Joined. When you choose a reason for a donor being removed the date will be set to today's date.  You will not be able to enter donations for any donor who was removed after the donation date and you picked a reason for it. Also the reason abbreviation must be a digit or letter to hide the donor when entering donations.  If it is a symbol you can still enter donations for them.  This is a way to keep inactive donors in the files but not show up on the Donation Entry window.  (Sometimes you may not know the exact date that someone was added so you can enter just the year in the Added box.)

14. Other one time events can be recorded for each person.  You will see a box called Event Dates.  To add a new type of event, double-click on the last line in the list, where it says [Double-click here to add...].  Type the name of the event and the date.  To edit a previous event, double click that line.  (10 custom events are available per person)

15. Indicate the donor's preferred method of contact for email and mail.  What you choose here will determine what type of mailing a donor will be selected for.  Here is which donors will be selected for each type of mailing:
a) labels/envelopes => those who prefer mail or by hand
b) letters => those who prefer mail, by hand or FAX
c) emails => those who prefer  to be contacted by email (the email sent to will be the one you selected or any email address)

To change all donors to have the same method of contact, change one donor then choose All => ......  You will be asked if you want to change all donors, so answer Yes.  When you chose By hand it is the same as Mail except that you don't need a complete address.

You may want to contact most donors by email and use mail only for those without an email address.  You need to change the preference for those with an email address to None. You can set this manually for each or change them all in one step.  Do this by selecting All with Email => None in the mail preference box then clicking Yes to the confirmation message.

You may want to change only some of the donors with an email to None.  You can select only those with the same donor type and any of the donor characteristics.  Select Match+Email => None then click Yes to the confirmation message.

Those donors without a complete address can have mail be hand delivered or get no mail at all.  To set all donors without a complete address to not get mail, select All w/o Address => None then click Yes to the confirmation message.

16. Indicate when the donor wants their tax receipts.  You have a choice of yearly receipts or one receipt per donation. (If a donor does not want a tax receipt, choose No Receipt.) A donor can change the type of receipt they prefer partway through the year.  For example suppose a donor wants one receipt for a donation in January and then later asks to have a yearly receipt.  The yearly receipt will only have donations from February to December, since they were already given a receipt for the donation in January.  To change all donors to have the same type of receipt, change one donor then choose All => ......  You will be asked if you want to change all donors, so answer Yes.

17. Indicate whether the donor wants a paper copy of their tax receipt mailed to them or a PDF receipt emailed to them.  This choice is only available if you install one of the PDF printer drivers mentioned here.

18. When doing letters or emails you usually want it to say Dear <first name> at the beginning. The first name will automatically be shown. But when a full middle name is also entered it is included. For example, if the name is entered as Mary Jo Smith it will be addressed: Dear Mary Jo.  If you don't want this you need to replace the middle name with only the initial or type the first name in the Dear box.  Sometimes you will want to show a different first name.  For example, the person's name may be William Jones but you want your letter to say Dear Bill.  You should then put Bill in the Dear box. Click here for some examples of what the Salutation and Dear boxes do.

19. Click on the More Info ==> button to enter some optional information, such as the names of a spouse, children, title or company.  If you want each person's bank name and branch to appear on the bank deposit, then enter it here. You may hand deliver most of your mailings using a mail delivery code or a mailbox #. If so then enter a mail delivery code/mailbox# for each donor. Change the heading for this box by clicking on the heading. When doing mailings you will be able to sort it by this.  All the members of a family may use the same mailbox #. (i.e. mother, father and children)

20. If you are adding only one donor, click Add or press the Enter key to save the information.  If you are adding several donors, click the Add More... button to save the current one then add another one.

21. Whenever you add a new donor, Donarius® will check whether this donor has already been entered.  It will look for another donor with a similar name, the same street and the same postal or zip code.  This will prevent duplicate donors from being entered in.  You can prevent different donors at the same address by clicking on the Donors icon and choosing Check for Duplicate Donors....  Then click the button Street and postal/zip code.

22. The software will pick a donor number for the donor: the first three letters of the last name followed by a number.  Example: MCD 1 for McDonald, GRA 2 for Graham. For surnames such as van Fleet or de Grassi this works a bit differently.  If you enter a name as George van Fleet the donor# will be FLE 1 and the name will appear with other names starting with F.  If you want that name to have a donor# of VAN 1 and be with other names starting with V then enter it with an uppercase V, like this: George Van Fleet.





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