FirstGiving for Beginners

The Home Tab

• General overview of your FirstGiving activity

• Graph in center of the page may say "Data cannot be found" - just means you have not had any fundraising activity yet

• Contains links to other parts of the nonprofit account area

• You can access the Success Center from this screen

The Events Tab

• View all your events, add new events, and manage offline donations

• If your fundraisers receive offline donations (checks or cash), those can be entered from this tab - you can manage them by clicking the name of the relevant event and adding or confirming new donations.  For more info on offline donations, please check the Success Center!

• To add a new event, click the Create New Event button

The Events TabAdding an official event

The Events TabAdding an official event

The Nonprofit Page Tab• Set up and manage your

nonprofit start page• Edit your mission statement,

logo, YouTube video, and banner (appears on every fundraising page as well as your nonprofit start page) and the nonprofit page itself

• Text section: 4000 characters of text, images, and links

• Images section: up to 3 images down the right-hand side of the page 

• Options: up to 3 resource links to display under the "About" tab on your nonprofit page

The Reports Tab

• Information on your organization's fundraising activity on FirstGiving

• FirstGiving Charts: view graphs of your fundraising and compare events against one another or view their progress over time 

• Download an EFT Form: set up weekly electronic fund transfers if you'd like to switch from monthly check payments 

The Reports Tab

Shows all the official events you have set up as well as all the grassroots pages that have been created.

• Team details: this report will appear if you have teams turned on for an event 

• Participant details: this will apear if you are using custom registration for an event and will contain answers to registration questions, as well as fundraiser information

• Fundraiser details: this will show info on everyone who has made a fundraising page for this event

• Donor details: this will appear if the event or page has received donations and will show info on the donors

Fundraising Summary

The Reports Tab

• Information on all donations made outside of fundraising pages

• These donations can come in via the Donate button on your nonprofit start page or via the Online Donate Button you can install on your own website (we'll take a look at that later)

Direct donations

The Reports Tab

• Information on all the funds FirstGiving has sent to you

• Each payment will have its own line item, and you can click the Payment Details icon to see an in-depth breakdown of each donation that went into that payment

Payment summary

The Emails Tab

• Manage your communications with users --  send targeted emails to a specific group of people or handle the automated emails that come from FirstGiving when anyone donates

• Click "Auto-Email Settings" to edit your automated email message - this will be appended to the receipt sent to all donorso This message is a good

place to mention that donations are tax-deductible - if you do so, your donors can use this receipt as a tax receipt

Auto-email settings

The Emails Tab

• Clicking "Compose new email" allows you to send out emails to specific groups of people - you can select either Fundraisers (people who have created a fundraising page), Event Registrants, or Donors

• Filter these people further using the criteria dropdown menus - use as many filters as you need

• When composing the email, you can enter operators like [First Name], which will be replaced with the recipient's actual first name when you send the email

Compose new email

The Widgets Tab

• Buttons you can install on your own website to either accept donations or direct fundraisers to your FirstGiving start page

• Create an Online Donate Button to take donations without having to direct donors away from your website - all the reports will be accessible from your Direct Donations report

• Get a Fundraising Button, which is a link button to bring your supporters to your FirstGiving start page

The Widgets Tab

Multiple giving levels

Advanced Features:• pay the fee• recurring donations• donation notification emails (to

you, the nonprofit, as donors already receive an automated donation confirmation email)

• customized thank you email

Online Donate Button

The Widgets TabOnline Donate Button

Ways to install your button

• On your website• install it yourself or send it to someone else to install it for you

•On Facebook

•As a QR Code

The Settings Tab

• Manage the users who have administrative access to your nonprofit account

• Change your own account information and add or edit other users

• 3 levels of access: Admin, Standard, and Event Restrictedo Admin can do everythingo Standard can see everything

but not make changeso Event Restricted is the same

as Standard everywhere in the account except if you choose to give them access on a particular event - they will be the same as Admins for that event

Q & A

More burning questions? Visit the Success Center or email us at

learningcenter@firstgiving.com