Most campaign plans fail at the same spot: the appeal is written, the goal is approved, and then someone has to build it five times. Once for the website, once for the lobby kiosk, once for the mailer, once for the event, and once more when a typo turns up in three of the five.
This guide is a working checklist for running one appeal across every channel you own: your giving site, donation kiosks, printed QR codes, and staff devices at events. The organizing principle is simple. Build the campaign once, then decide where it appears.
Create the campaign once, assign it everywhere
In Donatefy, a campaign is one record, not a family of copies. The title, story, imagery, amount structure, recurring options, goal, and accounting coding all live in a single campaign builder entry. Putting that campaign on a channel is an assignment, not a duplication, which is how Donatefy runs one campaign on every channel.
That one record carries every decision a channel needs:
- Giving structure: open amounts with suggested presets, a single fixed gift, or per-unit giving such as sponsoring a set number of students at a set amount each.
- Recurring options: which frequencies donors can choose, whether an ongoing giving plan is offered, or a fixed pledge schedule the campaign enforces.
- Accounting coding: the ledger account, class, fund, and appeal mapped per campaign, so every gift arrives in your accounting software and CRM already coded.
- Distribution: a web visibility toggle, kiosk assignment, and device assignment for handhelds and the Mobile App.
Receipts need no campaign work at all. Your branded receipt, with your EIN and tax language, is configured once for the organization, and every new campaign inherits it automatically. Donor fields on kiosks are set per device, so a new campaign does not reopen those decisions either.
Pick channels by campaign type
Every channel is available to every campaign, but that does not mean every campaign should use every channel. Match the mix to how the appeal actually gets encountered.
Emergency relief
Speed decides everything. Publish the web page first and push the link through email and social so one announcement can reach phones directly. Assign the campaign to your lobby kiosks the same hour, and keep it to one-time gifts so nothing slows checkout.
Building fund
This is a long-horizon appeal, so recurring is the whole game. Configure a pledge schedule, put the campaign on the kiosk standing inside the building being improved, and show the goal meter. Because different campaigns can settle to different bank accounts, a restricted building fund can flow into its own account from day one.
Seasonal appeals
Year-end and holiday appeals live on the web and in the mail. Pair the campaign page with a QR code on the printed letter, and tune suggested amounts upward, because December donors arrive with different intent than March donors. Receipts go out automatically at gift time and year-end receipts cover the rest, so volume is not an operations problem.
Events
Events are an in-person channel first. Staff work the room with handheld readers or with the Mobile App on the phones already in their pockets, a kiosk covers the entrance, and a QR code sits on every program and projection slide. Presets should match the ask made from the stage.
Sponsorships
Per-unit campaigns, such as sponsoring students or meals, belong on the web, where donors choose a quantity and see the math. Print the QR code on the sponsorship brochure so the paper piece lands on the exact checkout, not a generic donate page.
The QR bridge from print to checkout
Print reaches people your email list never will, and the QR code is what keeps that reach measurable. Every campaign has its own page, so a code printed on a mailer, bulletin, poster, or table tent drops the donor onto the specific appeal, with the amounts and story already in front of them.
Three habits make print QR work:
- One campaign per code. A code that points at your homepage makes the donor hunt. A code that points at the campaign page finishes the job the print piece started.
- Test on paper, not on screen. Scan the actual printed proof under normal room light with more than one phone. Glossy stock and undersized codes are where scans fail.
- Caption every code. "Scan to give," plus a short printed URL as a fallback. Never assume the reader knows what the square does.
Suggested amounts are a channel decision
The same campaign should not show the same presets everywhere, because donors arrive with different amounts of attention.
Kiosks: a walk-up donor decides in seconds. Use a small set of rounded presets that a first-time visitor would recognize as normal, and make the first option the easiest yes in the building. The kiosk can also sign up a monthly donor on the spot with a card tap, so keep the recurring option visible rather than buried.
Web: the giving site can carry a wider range plus a custom amount, because donors there have time to consider. Wallet payments shorten the finish, and the fee coverage option lets donors choose to cover the costs so your organization keeps the full intended gift.
Event devices: the preset should mirror the ask in the room. If the speaker just named a giving level, the first preset on the handheld should be that level, not a default carried over from the web.
Goal meters and urgency that respects donors
A goal meter is information, not pressure, and that is exactly why it works. Show one when three things are true: the goal is real, the number updates as gifts arrive, and reaching it means something concrete a donor can picture.
Skip the meter for open-ended operating appeals. A bar frozen at a low percentage for months reads as a struggling campaign, and a bar that quietly resets reads worse.
Urgency deserves the same discipline. Real deadlines are legitimate and worth naming: a matching window with actual terms, a construction date, the night of the event. Manufactured countdowns and artificial scarcity buy a spike at the cost of the donor's trust in your next appeal.
The test for any urgency device: would you be comfortable explaining it to the donor after the campaign closed?
The launch-day checklist
Print this or paste it into the run-of-show, and give the whole list one owner. Every item assumes the campaign is already built.
- Proofread the live campaign page on a phone and a desktop: title, story, imagery, goal.
- Confirm the giving structure and preset amounts for each channel the campaign will run on.
- Confirm recurring options: the frequencies offered, and the pledge schedule if the appeal uses one.
- Verify accounting coding so the very first gift posts to the right account, class, fund, and appeal.
- Confirm the settlement account, especially if the campaign is a restricted fund.
- Assign the campaign to each kiosk and device, then physically walk to every kiosk and confirm it appears.
- Make a small real gift on the web and inspect the receipt: branding, EIN, tax language.
- Make a card tap at a kiosk and confirm the gift lands in the ledger attributed to that device.
- Scan every QR code from the actual printed material, not the PDF proof.
- Brief event staff on the handhelds and the Mobile App, including how to offer the recurring option.
- Open the dashboard, filter to the campaign, and confirm the test gifts show up per channel. Then refund them from the dashboard.
Measure by channel, then close the loop
Every donation carries its source, so the question is never "where did this gift come from." Filter reporting to the campaign, then break results out by channel: web, kiosk, event devices, offline entry. The gross and net views keep the board conversation honest.
Review weekly and move resources like inventory. If the lobby kiosk outperforms, assign the campaign to a second kiosk. If print scans are quiet, the placement is usually wrong before the code is. If the web page draws visits but small gifts, revisit the presets before rewriting the story.
When the campaign ends, the wrap is mostly already done. Every donor was receipted automatically at the moment of the gift, and year-end receipts pick up the rest, so there is no receipt backlog to work through. Thank-yous can start from the campaign's donor list the same day.
Two things outlive the campaign. The recurring donors it signed up keep giving after the page comes down, and because every gift settled directly into your organization's own Stripe account, already coded for your books, the financial close is a report, not a project.
That is the whole system: one campaign record, assigned everywhere, measured per channel, wrapped without a cleanup phase. The fastest way to evaluate it is not a feature list. It is watching a single appeal go from draft to live on every channel in one sitting.