Creating a giving opportunity

Raise funds and awareness for a nonprofit that you're passionate about by creating a giving opportunity in Benevity Donate. Giving opportunities are often used for disaster relief, holiday campaign drives, or company fundraising. Depending on your program, your employees can also create giving opportunities. 

Permissions

Depending on your site configuration, a Giving Opportunity can be created by you, the program manager, or by your people, if you’ve allowed them to do so through user-generated content. 

Creating a giving opportunity

This article describes how to create a giving opportunity, read on to learn more! You can also watch this short video.

 

To get started, hover over the Make a Donation tab on the top navigation bar and select Create a Giving Opportunity to open the creation form.
 

The following sections are included in the form. 

 

Basic Info

This is where you outline the goals and purpose of your giving opportunity. The more information you add, the easier it is to find your content. Include the following: 

• Giving Opportunity Name: enter an engaging name for your opportunity that attracts donors. 
• Summary: enter a one-line description of this opportunity. 100 characters max.
• Description: include the goal or purpose of this opportunity and why it is important. Give the maximum amount of detail with the least amount of words; appeal to people's interests and then tell them what you are asking them to do.
• Enable Rich Text: select this option to access additional formatting options, and add links and videos. 
• Custom Content Tags: tags are used to group and find content. You can search for tagged content by entering the tag in search filters and filtering reports. Hold down the control key (⌘ on Mac) to select multiple options.

If you don't see custom content tags, contact your Client Success Manager to turn them on. Once on, you can add and edit tags by going to Manage > Content > Giving Opportunity Tags.

 

Peer Matching

Peer Matching empowers your people to create a matching pool with coworkers to encourage even more donations! It's a simple way for everyone to get involved and multiply the impact, and they'll love the feeling they get from connecting and taking action as a team. 

Select Turn on Peer Matching for this Giving Opportunity and enter the maximum amount that you can match to get the ball rolling! This amount is displayed in the Peer Match pool on the giving opportunity. Others can see that a Peer Match pool is available on the opportunity and that they can add a match of their own to the pool. Learn more about Peer Matching.

Select Hide list of donors to keep the people who add to the peer match pool anonymous. 

 

Donation Progress

To track donations, add a Donation Goal to the Donation Progress section. First, select your currency, then input the total goal amount. 

The Donation Progress bar, similar to a thermometer, displays the total donations and appears when at least 1% of the goal is reached. For example, a giving opportunity with a goal of $1000 will not show the donation progress bar until at least $10 is donated.

You can not specify a goal by choosing to Exclude donation goal for this opportunity or show the goal without the amount raised by selecting the Hide total amount raised and number of donors checkbox.

Note: It is not possible to set both a donation goal and a peer match, so if you do not see this section, check to see if you have already added a peer match.

Attach nonprofits

You can attach one or more nonprofits to a giving opportunity. When someone donates, the amount is split equally between all organizations. 

First, filter by country/location and then enter the nonprofit name or keywords in the search bar to find relevant nonprofits. Select +Add next to the nonprofit name to add it to your giving opportunity. 

If Benevity One World is enabled, you can link nonprofits from various countries to your giving opportunities. However, if you include multiple nonprofits from more than one country, be aware that these donations won't qualify for tax benefits. Donors will get a donation acknowledgement instead of an official tax receipt.

Add Image

Images help draw attention to your opportunity, so be thoughtful and creative when considering images to promote your initiative.

New Improved Image Support

The Benevity platform's modernized interfaces feature larger, more prominent images to enhance the user experience and drive engagement. High-quality visuals create an emotional connection with content, inspiring participation in giving and volunteering programs. 

New modernized pages leverage responsive design to adapt page layouts to the user's screen size. This improvement will require program administrators who use graphic elements such as text within their images to consider the Safe Image Area.

The Opportunity Image is visible in event page and is the thumbnail people see when browsing Opportunities. 

• Recommended Image Size: 1920px x 1440px (4:3 ratio)
• Content Safe Zone: Keep critical elements (text, logos, faces) centred within the 1600px X 1120px safe zone to prevent cropping issues across different screen sizes.
• File Types: JPEG: Suitable for photographs due to its compression capabilities.
• Image Optimization: Compress images for web use to reduce file size and improve loading times.

The Community Impact Portal Image is only visible on the CI Portal if you choose to feature the opportunity there.

• Recommended Image Size: 1920px x 1440px (4:3 ratio)
• Content Safe Zone: Keep critical elements (text, logos, faces) centred within the 1600px X 1120px safe zone to prevent cropping issues across different screen sizes.
• File Types: JPEG: Suitable for photographs due to its compression capabilities.
• Image Optimization: Compress images for web use to reduce file size and improve loading times.

Consider the requirements for file and image size as well as allowable extensions before uploading an image. 

To upload an image: 

1. Select Choose File and locate the image file in your folders. 
2. Select Upload to upload the file and crop the image. 

Sharing  

You can include links to a website and social channels for donors to reference if they're looking for more information.

Interests 

You may decide to indicate which interests align with this opportunity. Simply select +See all interest tags and select all that apply. 

Users can filter opportunities on the search page based on the interests they've selected in their profile.  

Visibility

Determine if the opportunity will be available by invite only or visible to everyone Company-Wide. 

If By Invitation, only those who have received the shared URL of the published opportunity can access it.

Matching

Choose a match rate for this opportunity. The Default Match Rate is your annual match rate offered to users and is typically chosen for most opportunities. Learn more about setting a non-default match rate on a giving opportunity.

Contact our support team if your program uses custom budget tags and you want to set up an increased match within a giving opportunity, or if you would like to set up new matching rates.

Date and Time

You can set the start and end date for this opportunity. If there is no end date, the giving opportunity will remain open until it is closed by a user.

If you approve an opportunity to start on a future date, it is automatically published on the start date specified.

Admin Options 

The Admin Options section is for program administrators to manage approvals, publishing and featuring. 

• Source indicates if the opportunity has been created by the company or a user.  
• Approval Status indicates if the request has been Approved, Denied or Queued for administrator review.  
• Check the Publish box to make the giving opportunity visible to donors in your program.
• Check the Allow access to this opportunity on the Community Portal checkbox to display the opportunity on the Community Impact Portal. Your extended community (friends and family outside of the organization) can access it here. 
• Link a giving opportunity to an Associated Volunteer Opportunity you've created for cross-promotion within your program. Simply enter keywords into the search bar to find your opportunity.   

Featuring Content 

The Featured Content carousel is an excellent tool for spotlighting opportunities and enhancing discoverability and engagement. 

You can feature an opportunity to users on specific country experiences by selecting one or more countries. To highlight more than one, hold the "Command" or "Control" key as you select each country or field. 

You can also target specific demographic groups using Custom Classifications. These are set up for you during implementation and relate to user fields. If a field value is highlighted, users that have the value associated with their profile see the opportunity in the Featured Content carousel. You can select more than one value by holding the "Command" or "Control" key. Learn more about featuring content. 

Submit

Make sure that you review your new opportunity before you Submit! Depending on your process, the opportunity is either published immediately or sent for administrator review. 

Remember, you can come back and Edit or Unpublish the event whenever you like.

Here's what the opportunity will look like once it's been published...