DonorChase User Guide
DonorChase shows your team, donor by donor, what has been invoiced, what has been paid and what is still owed, then helps you chase it and keep a record of every conversation. Work through this guide in order if you're new, or jump to the part you need.
The guide
- Setting up DonorChase Periods, groups, dashboard settings, and putting new invoices on the right dashboard.
- How to operate DonorChase Finding your way around the dashboard and what each column means.
- Chasing donors Filters and colours, chasers, comments, automatic chasers and reminder emails.
- Individual donor pages Everything about one donor: statement, contacts, chasers and comments.
- Standing orders Seeing which standing orders have arrived, and which are dropping off.
- Multiple dashboards Keeping separate activities, such as fees and an appeal, apart.
- Your team and users Inviting people, administrators, assigning donors, and escalating to a second level.
- WhatsApp messages Drafting standard messages and sending them to a donor's contacts.
- Importing and exporting Uploading contacts and comments from a spreadsheet, and downloading a dashboard.
- Your login and account Logging in, text message codes, passwords, your profile and switching organisation.
Words DonorChase uses
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| School | DonorChase calls each organisation a school, whatever kind of organisation you are. You'll see this in a few places, such as Manage Schools. |
| Donor | A contact from your bookkeeping package. |
| Contact | A person you speak to about a donor, with a phone number and email. One donor can have several, for example both parents in a family. |
| Dashboard | The main table of donors and what they owe. Many organisations need only one. |
| Period (or term) | The stretch of time invoices are grouped into on a dashboard, such as a year or a school term. |
| Group | A section of a dashboard that sorts donors by how you deal with them, such as Standing orders or Do not chase. A donor is in one group per dashboard. |
| Tag | A label on a donor that you can filter by. A donor can have as many as you like. |
| Chaser | A dated reminder to contact a donor. Once done, it's completed with a note of what happened. |
| Comment | A note about a donor, with the date and who wrote it. |
| Team member | A DonorChase user. Each donor can have a Responsible Team Member who looks after them. |
Who can do what
Each user is either an administrator or a team member. Tick or untick Admin for a user on Settings → Users.
| Task | Team member | Administrator |
|---|---|---|
| See dashboards, donor pages and standing orders | Yes | Yes |
| Add chasers, comments, contacts and tags | Yes | Yes |
| Edit or delete a comment | Their own | Any |
| Complete a chaser | On donors they're responsible for | Any |
| Send WhatsApp messages and draft private ones | Yes | Yes |
| Draft shared WhatsApp messages | No | Yes |
| Escalate a donor (two level teams) | On donors they're Level 1 or Level 2 for | Any |
| Change a donor's team member, group, Standing Order or Gift Aid setting | No | Yes |
| Download a dashboard | No | Yes |
| Allocate invoices and upload contacts or comments | No | Yes |
| Manage users, team, dashboards, the Xero connection and billing | No | Yes |
Other help
- DonorChase and Xero: signing up, how data flows, managing the connection, and billing questions.
Need help?
Email info@donorchase.com or call 07570 013936. Support is included in every subscription and in your free trial, and we aim to reply within 24 hours.
