How to Design Public Donation Forms

The public donation form is the page your donors give through. You design it once and the same form serves your whole organization.

Opening the designer

Go to Fundraising > Public Donation Form. It is also listed under Our Public Interfaces.

The designer is split into six sections along the top. Pick a section, make your changes, and move to the next one. Your work is kept as you move between them, but nothing reaches the live form until you publish it.

The six sections of the designer.

Each section has its own short Show Me How To Use This Page video just below the title bar; click it to watch, and use its chapters to jump to the part you need.

Form Content

Use To Add A Headline Enter It Here to set the wording at the top of the form. Leave it empty and no headline shows at all.

Under the headline is a full editor for the rest of your wording, so you can explain what the gift pays for. Improve Body with AI will rework what you have written in the tone you pick beside it.

Form Content. The note under the headline box reminds you it only shows if you type something.

Choose Form Fields

Ask only for what you need. Every extra field costs you completed gifts. Set each contact field group to Hidden, Optional or Required:

• Mailing Address
• City, State, Zip
• Phone Number(s): Required means at least one valid phone number

A required field has to be filled in before the donor can pay. Two more are switches:

• Tribute Section: for gifts given in honor or memory of someone
• Solicited Section

Choose Form Fields. A donor's name and receipt email are always required, so they have no setting here.

Giving Amounts

These are the six buttons a donor sees before they reach the box where they type their own figure.

• Fill them in from Amount 1 upward, smallest first.
• Leave one blank and it keeps whatever is set now.
• Enter 0 to hide that button.
• A donor can always type their own amount instead, whatever you set here.

Giving Amounts.

Choose Form Colors

Set the form's colors to match your branding. Type a hex code, or click the dropper beside a box to pick a color.

• Headline and Icons each take one color.
• Amounts takes four: the amount buttons' color and text color, then Selected Color and Selected Font for the amount a donor has picked.
• Buttons takes three: the color, the color under the mouse, and the text color.

Choose Form Colors.

Form Banner Image

Display Hero Image turns the banner across the top of the form on and off. Below it you upload pictures and pick the one you want, and you can group them into folders to keep them straight.

Form Banner Image.

Share This Form

The Share This Form section holds the form's Public Link with a Copy button next to it, and a QR code you can save with Download PNG or Download SVG. It also tells you how many times the link has been opened, and you can switch the short link off. Turning it off makes that short link stop working everywhere it was shared, a printed QR code included. The card then shows, copies and draws its QR code from the form's full address instead, which keeps working, and goes back to the short link when you turn it on again.

Copy the link for email and social. Use the PNG of the QR code for everyday printing and the SVG for anything large, like a banner or a poster. Scan it yourself before it goes to the printer. The link and the QR code always open the published form, never your draft.

Drafts and publishing

Nothing you change in the designer reaches donors until you publish it. Your changes are kept as a draft, and the live form carries on unchanged until you click Publish.

The buttons sit in the title bar at the top and again at the foot of every section. The line under the title tells you where you are: Unsaved Changes while you have edits that are not saved yet, Draft Saved when your saved draft differs from the live form, or Published when the two match. When your draft is saved, it shows when.

• Save Draft saves your changes to the draft and keeps you on the page. The live form does not change.
• Preview Draft opens your saved draft in a private preview, with Phone and Desktop views. Payments are switched off in the preview, so nobody can give through it. If you have unsaved changes, the button reads Save Draft & Preview and saves them first.
• Publish puts the saved draft live, after you confirm. Donors see it right away. It is available once you have a saved draft that differs from the live form, so save first.
• Save Draft & Exit saves the draft and closes the designer. Exit on its own does not save.

The status under the title says whether your draft has been published.

Preview Draft shows the saved draft without taking real payments.

Published versions

Each time you publish, Argenta keeps that version under Published Versions, with when it was published and by whom. If the form donors see now is not already on that list, Argenta saves it too before replacing it, as a Previous live version captured row. That is why your first publish adds two rows.

• Restore to Draft on a version copies it into your draft, replacing the saved draft and any unsaved changes. Preview it, then publish it to put it back live.
• Reset Draft to Published throws away the saved draft and any unsaved changes and starts again from the form donors see now.

If the live form was changed somewhere else while you were working, the page says so and asks you to reset or restore before you publish, so you cannot overwrite that change by accident.

Published Versions, and the buttons at the foot of every section.

Best practices

• Ask for as little as possible. Address and phone are optional for a reason.
• Look at the form on a phone as well as a computer, since much giving happens on a phone.
• Set suggested amounts that match what your donors actually give.