Understanding Appeals

Appeals are a powerful way of managing how your users donate to your organisation.

Each Appeal that you create will appear as an option for your users to give to. Examples of appeals could be: General Gifts, Building Project, or A Special Project.

Each appeal has it's own settings and can be paid out to specific bank accounts if required. Understanding your Appeal settings will help you maximise the power of EzyStream Giving.

How to Setup an Appeal

1. Click Appeals under Quick Actions on the top left of your Giving Dashboard.
2. Click Add Appeal
3. Fill in the form.
   1. Appeal Name: The name you give your Appeal will be visible to your users. This is the item people are giving to within your organisation.
   2. Appeal Bank Account: The account you have already loaded.
   3. Sites: Select the site(s) you'd like your appeal to be made available to. If you have a Google Calendar connected to your account, these are the sites you have already created. If you only have one site, please select this.
   4. Amount: Most Appeals don't fix an amount, and are free for the user to select how much they want to give. However, if you want to create an appeal for a purpose like collecting payment for an event, you can enter the amount a user should transact.
   5. Fee Type: Select whether you want your user to have the option to pay their transaction fee. See more about this below.
   6. Recurring transactions: Select whether this appeal should allow recurring transactions. Most Appeals are likely to, unless it is for an event or other purpose.
   7. Hide from users: If you are no longer using an appeal, or want to put it on hold, you can hide it from users. It will still show on your dashboard.
   8. Hide from dashboard: If you are no longer using an appeal, or don't want to have it so obvious on your dashboard, you can hide its total on your dashboard. This will NOT stop you getting data if someone makes a gift towards this appeal.
4. Click Submit.

Maximising the Power of Appeals

By understanding how Appeals can be configured, you can make EzySteam Giving very flexible.

Standard Configurations:

1. 1. General Donations: Generally available to all sites, with a variable amount, and able to accept recurring transactions.
   2. Projects/Special Purpose Gifts: Generally available to most sites, with a variable amount, and able to accept recurring transactions. (e.g. a Building Project)

Advanced Configurations:

1. 1. Collect payment for an event within your Non-Profit organisation: 
      
      1. Create an appeal with the name of your event.
      2. Set the amount of the appeal (e.g. $10).
      3. Force the user to pay the transaction fee if you require.
      4. Use a special URL for the Appeal and attach this to your Event system in whatever programme you use. When a user goes to this URL, the Appeal and its fixed amount will be automatically populated for the user.
         e.g. give.ezystream.com/to/yourorganisation/yourappeal (This URL can be copied from your Appeal List in Appeal Settings).
   2. Collect payment for a product (e.g. a coffee) within your Non-Profit organisation: 

1. 1. 1. Create an appeal with the name of your product (e.g. Coffee for one).
      2. Set the amount of the appeal (e.g. $3).
      3. Force the user to pay the transaction fee if you require.
      4. Set the confirmation email address for the Appeal appropriately. (e.g. in the case of a coffee, you may deliver this confirmation to the cafe so they can make it). 
         
         

Setting Email Notifications for Appeals

EzyStream Giving can notify a different email address for each appeal when a transaction is made.

This is very useful for:

• Allowing your CEO to be notified if a large donation is made,
• Notifying a particular person who is in charge of a specific appeal/event when incoming payments are made, event if they don't have access to the EzyStream dashboard,
• It could be as simple as notify the cafe or info desk when a transaction is made.

Understanding Fee Options

As with any Debit/Credit Card transactions, a transaction fee is incurred by our financial partners. Information on this was offered when you created your Giving Account. Your Appeal settings allow you to decide whether you, or your users cover this transaction cost.

Offer my users the option to cover their transaction fee

This option allows your user to decide whether they would like to add the transaction cost of their gift to their total gift amount. For example, when Giving $50, the user can either give a total of $50, or $50+ the transaction fee. This is a good option for organisations concerned about being transparent about the costs in taking the donation.

Force my users to cover their transaction fee

This option requires the user to add the transaction fee, and is most likely only used when collecting payment for something like an event.

Hide the transaction fee from my users

This option is our recommended option as it prevents the user having to make a choice about transaction fees. The transaction fee is dealt with within your Dashboard and is considered an administrative cost by most organisations. (In the same way that a merchant pays a fee to the bank when you use your credit card to buy lunch at a cafe).

An Example

You'd like people to contribute towards the cost of a breakfast you are running.

1. You create an appeal with a fixed amount.
2. Use the special URL for that Appeal to link to from your event. (eg. https://give.ezystream.com/to/myorganisation/breakfast
3. Once payments are received, you’ll then see all the income for that Appeal and you can code that income and receipt it accordingly.

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