Donations with HubSpot: How to Start, Accept, Track, and Manage

himanshurauthan · ‎Oct 18, 2022

This article will talk about how you can get donations and keep track of them.

Donations are crucial to non-profit organizations, charities, and government agencies.

If you want to accept donations on your website, you need to find a solution that works with HubSpot.

Let's start with the basics.

How to Get Started with Donations Using HubSpot?

You don’t need a complete suite of tools to start accepting donations on your website through HubSpot.

The only thing(s) you need to get started are:

A HubSpot account
Any HubSpot plan (either free or paid)

This solution can be implemented with either a free or paid HubSpot account. Once you have them, you can jump to the next step, which is…

How to accept donations with HubSpot?

While there are multiple ways to set up accessing donations within HubSpot, we’ll start with the easiest one. Which can be used by any business from startup to enterprise.

Let’s dive in:

1. Using a landing page with payment redirect

The first option is a manual method, where you can create a landing page using HubSpot CMS and add a HubSpot form that users can fill out.

Once the customer submits the form, it will redirect them to the payment page where they can complete their payment.

According to HubSpot, having a form with no more than 5 fields will result in a higher submission rate. With that in mind, keep your form short.

This method is good but can be tricky since you have to do it manually, which requires a decent amount of HubSpot expertise.

Option 1 In Summary:

Create a landing page using HubSpot CMS.
Add a form to the landing page with all the required details like fields, redirects, etc.
Create custom properties if required to store relevant information.

Note: Ensure you don’t add any info like CC info, HubSpot doesn’t authorize through forms.
Set up your payment method.
Test and publish the page.

2. Accept payment through HubSpot forms using an integration

The second method requires less HubSpot expertise, as it involves an integration—and can be done automatically. You can even use it if you’re new to the platform.

This method requires you to use a HubSpot payment integration to accept and track the donations you receive.

This method is my personal recommendation, as you can execute it without an expert.

Let’s get started. For this option, I’ll use the integration from Formpay by MakeWebBetter*

*Please note, this integration is created by MakeWebBetter, of whom @himanshurauthan is a founder.

With this integration, you can turn your basic HubSpot forms into payment forms, so you can accept payments directly through them.

Login to the Formpay app.
Connect your HubSpot portal with the app.
Then navigate to Gateways in the app and activate the payment gateways you want to use on your payment forms. You can add Amazon Pay, Stripe, PayPal, and Adyen to your HubSpot form.
Once done, navigate to Forms and click the Create New Form button to start creating a new HubSpot payment form.
Select the HubSpot form you wish to convert into a payment form. Tweak the form and update it. Update the changes once done.
Once your form is created, you’ll get an embed code. Embed the form on your website using that embed code, and the payment form will appear on your page.

Users will then be able to pay directly through the HubSpot form embedded on the page.

How to track donations with HubSpot?

Tracking your donations with HubSpot is fairly easy. You can use the HubSpot CRM to track your one-off as well as recurring donations.

Here’s how you can do it.

Whenever your HubSpot donation form is submitted, a few assets will be created in your HubSpot CRM including the contact who filled out the form, the deal based on the donation amount, and more.

To track these donations, you can create a report in your HubSpot CRM.

For that, navigate to the Reports > Reports section in your HubSpot CRM and create a new report to track your donations.

If you want to get a better understanding of the movements of your HubSpot donations, you can create a dedicated pipeline as well.

To create a pipeline, go to settings and navigate to Objects > Pipeline, then go to the Pipelines tab there.

Click on the dropdown there to create a new pipeline and configure it accordingly to track your donation progress.

How to manage your donations with HubSpot CRM?

By managing your HubSpot donations, I refer to the jobs of acting on your deals created by donations, sending payment reminders, communicating with the donors, etc.

Let’s see how you can manage all your donations using HubSpot.

Act on deals

There are several actions you can take on the deals that are created through donation forms.

For instance, you can create a task on HubSpot for follow-ups with all the necessary details so that in your unavailability, other reps can access all the necessary info about the user required to connect with them.
Send payment reminders

If you receive recurring donations, you can proactively remind contacts about their next payment. You can use tools like emails and workflows for this, which brings us to the next point.
Communicate with emails

Contacts who donate should also be considered as members of your contact ecosystem and treated as such. You should communicate with them and nurture them to keep them engaged on your website.

You can email them about your latest updates and other news to keep them informed about the happenings of your brand.

Benefits of Collecting Donations with HubSpot

Using HubSpot CRM helps you automate every aspect of the process for donations to diminish your workload and make the process easier than ever.

You can automate the donation collection, tracking, email marketing for donors, and more.

But apart from the automation, there are several other benefits of using HubSpot CRM for donations.

Here’s a quick glimpse of it:

1. Makes it easy to donate

Using the Formpay app for HubSpot helps you convert your HubSpot forms into payment forms. This eliminates all the unnecessary steps involved in your donation process and eventually improves donors' experience.

2. Raise your individual donation amount

With HubSpot CRM, you can create personalized landing pages your visitors can better relate to. And personalization can be a great way to push your donors to pay more than they planned to.

3. Aid you in donor management

With HubSpot CRM at your fingertips, you can better collect, manage, and visualize your donors’ data through the CRM.

4. Helps you with donor retention and acquisition

Using HubSpot CRM allows you to send automated and personalized emails as well as run social media campaigns. This will help you engage new donors to retain them while acquiring new donors as well.

What Organizations Ask for Donations?

Thousands of types of businesses are out there, requiring more funds to scale up.

But should all of them start asking for donations?

Absolutely not.

Not every business should ask for donations.

Organizations that are working towards a cause should only start fundraising campaigns.

Organizations like,

NGOs, orphanages, old age homes, animal shelters, etc.
Charities
Government organizations
Influencers (for the poor)
Trusts

These types of organizations can run their donation campaigns to collect money from people and fund their causes.

Start raising funds with HubSpot and Formpay

To conclude, I’d say fundraising can be a good idea to support your cause. And there are several ways to collect donations.

But if you want to keep it as easy as possible, using HubSpot CRM coupled with Formpay integration would be an apt choice for your fundraising campaigns.

This would not only make it easier for your donors to pay, but also provide you with easy reports to track your donations. A win-win.

So if you also use HubSpot CRM and are looking to simplify your donation process for you as well as your donors, better try Formpay by MakeWebBetter.

HubSpot Community Blog