♡Donations and members

In the Appeals & projects area, you describe what the money is needed for — renovating the clubhouse, a youth camp, new equipment.

The sentence that decides success: people are more likely to donate to a specific goal than in general. “New kitchen for the clubhouse, 4,800 euros” raises more than “Donations”.

A project is the undertaking itself, with a target amount and a progress bar. An appeal is an occasion for it — a sponsored run, an anniversary.

Visitors only see the project once you place it on a page as a block. The donation total in it then updates by itself.

This is the same structure as with forms: creating and embedding are two separate steps.

For money to actually come in, a payment method must be set up under “Donations”. Without it, the project is just text.

Under Settings, you define how people can donate — by bank transfer or card, for example. Without this, the donation form does not accept anything.

First step: set up the payment method and test with a small donation of your own whether it shows up in the list.

In the Donations area: every donation made through your website arrives there with amount, name and date. You see totals per period and can export the list.

The export is the usual route into the accounts, and it contains personal data, so it must be handled accordingly.

At the start of the year, you generate the receipt as a PDF for all donors of a year — in one go rather than one by one.

The prerequisite is complete details of your organisation in the “Legal” area: address, tax number, exemption notice (Freistellungsbescheid), purpose as laid down in the statutes. If anything is missing, the receipt is invalid — and an invalid donation receipt is worse than none, because the donor submits it to the tax office.

It replaces the Excel list: name, contact details, joining date and fee of your members in one place, accessible to everyone on the board.

That is the real gain: not the features, but that there is only one list instead of three versions in three mailboxes.

No — you can import existing members from a spreadsheet.

First step: create one member by hand to get to know the fields, and then import the rest. That way you see in advance which columns your spreadsheet should have.

Store the IBAN and annual fee, and you can then generate a SEPA file from them — the file your bank needs for the direct debit.

For this, you need a written mandate from the member. Without a mandate, the debit is not permitted, and the member can have the payment reversed — for up to 13 months.

Keep the mandates. They are the proof that is asked for in the event of a dispute.

It is personal data like any other — with two special features:

• Bank details are particularly sensitive. Access should be limited to those who need it.
• Membership itself can say something about a person that is nobody else’s business — for some associations, it is even specially protected.

In practice: grant accounts sparingly, do not send lists around by email, and delete members who have left once the tax retention periods have expired.

Concretely, with a figure and a picture. Three components that work together:

• What is needed — an object or an undertaking, not a general term.
• What it costs — a target amount people can picture.
• What happens once it is there.

People are more likely to donate to a specific goal than in general. “New kitchen for the clubhouse, 4,800 euros” is a goal. “Donations” is a wish.

The total so far compared with the target amount — and it updates by itself as soon as the project is placed on a page as a block.

A tip from practice: a bar sitting at zero tends to discourage rather than motivate. If the association itself or a sponsor makes the first contribution, the bar has something to show from the start.

Set up the payment method and test with a small donation of your own whether it shows up in the list.

Check the whole chain while you are at it: does the donation arrive? Does it appear in the overview with amount, name and date? Does the donor receive a confirmation? And are the details correct from which the donation receipt will later be generated?

That is half an hour’s work and saves you the embarrassing kind of query.

Do not delete them straight away: fee payments and bookings are subject to tax retention periods, and those apply regardless of whether someone is still a member.

The usual way is to record the departure and delete the record once the retention periods have expired. Decide how long that is and stick to it — this is part of a deletion policy.

Three things, in this order:

1. Mandates complete? No signed mandate, no debit — and the period for reversals is long.
2. Amounts checked? A wrong figure in a SEPA file hits all members at once.
3. Advance notice given? For direct debits, advance notification is customary and provided for in many statutes.

Only generate the file once these three points are settled. A returned direct debit costs fees and trust.