Feedback on Automated Donation Form Creation for Solicitation Messages

Hallie Guiseppe

I'm excited to share that we enabled Send Solicitation Messages as an engagement option for our Development Agent.

As we worked through the setup, I noticed a few things that may be helpful for others to keep an eye on.

When given the option to use either a Blackbaud donation form or an external donation URL, I selected the Blackbaud donation form. The system automatically generated a new donation form and displayed a confirmation message indicating that the form had been created.

After reviewing the form, I found that:

• The system created an Optimized Donation Form.
• The branding card selected for the form was our Annual Turkey Drive branding rather than our Hope Fund branding.
• The confirmation email contained generic placeholder content.
• A new fund designation called Development Agent Fund was automatically created and assigned to the form.
• A new appeal was also created.

I was able to update the branding card, confirmation email, and fund designation to align with our Hope Fund. I also added our standard hidden fields, including our Development Agent appeal tracking.

The creation of a new appeal makes sense to me from a tracking perspective. However, the automatic creation of a new fund is much more concerning. At our institution, funds represent donor intent and have financial and stewardship implications, so fund creation is a carefully managed process.

I've included screenshots showing the automatically generated fund and the branding card that was selected for the form.

@Stephen Churchill I'm not sure what the best long-term solution is, but it may be helpful if the setup process either:

1. Prompted users to select an existing fund, appeal, and branding card before generating the form, or
2. Included a reminder in the confirmation message that the generated form should be reviewed and updated before use.

Overall, we're excited to continue testing and learning, and I hope these observations help others as they begin exploring solicitation messages.