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Nonprofit Gift Instructions

 

Overview of the Registration and Gift-Creation Process for Nonprofits:

 

The instructions on this page are just for nonprofits. If you are a school, click here. If you are a school teacher, coach, or band leader, click here.

 

1.

Register and submit info about your nonprofit at our nonprofit portal. Please refer to these instructions on registering.

 

2.

Create Charitable Gifts at the nonprofit portal. You can do this as soon as we approve your registration (it may take a day or two). It is important that you refer to the instructions below as you do.

 

3.

Go Live. We will notify you when your content is live. It may take a day or two.

 

4.

Return Later. You can always return to the nonprofit portal to update your info, add gifts, and see financial reports.

 

 

Here is the link to the nonprofit portal:  

https://changingthepresent.marketplaceadmin.com/reseller_admin

About Charitable Gifts

 

How Many Gifts Can a Nonprofit List?

You can list as many as 50 gifts.

 

Gifts are Not Merchandise

Gifts on this site are not merchandise, such as t-shirts or tote bags.


Rather, gifts are specific charitable opportunities to make a difference. Things like 'Preserve an Acre of the Rainforest' or 'Fund an Hour of Cancer Research. You might look at the thousands of charitable gifts already on our site for inspiration and ideas.

 

The most important thing is that the gifts have a meaningful story and a photo that makes the donation feel more rewarding to the giver and recipient than just $x or just "support our work." Gifts might be:

  • a good or service you deliver, such as "preserve an acre of the rain forest," or "fund an hour of cancer research," or "provide a child her first book"
  • a cost you incur, such as "host our website for a week"

 

If you cannot be that specific about what you can accomplish with $X, we encourage you to be as memorable and emotionally appealing as possible. Some nonprofits show gifts such as "Adopt a Polar Bear."

 

More Thoughts About Gifts

We recommend you define gifts that:

  • show the range of your activities
  • cover a range of price points from $5 to $2,000. Most donations through the site are from $20 to $200, with an average of $50, so provide more in that range. To cover a range of price points, you can offer different quantities of the same gift, such as a day of meals, a week of meals, or a month of meals. Your page will be more interesting if you use a different picture for each.

Instructions on Adding Charitable Gifts

The pages for adding gifts use language that is typical of traditional e-commerce, so please follow the instructions below.

 

 

 

Products = Charitable Gifts

 

In the nonprofit portal select the Charitable Gifts tab from the menu bar at the top of the page. If you have no products yet it will look like the image below.

 

Select + Create Product in the upper right-hand corner and a new page will open. That new page is explained below.

 

Yes, you would expect to enter the gift title first, but this app asks a few other questions, first. We will get to that in a moment.

 

Categories = Causes
 

You must check the box for ‘Gifts.’

 

In addition, please show what causes the gift addresses by checking the following if they are specifically relevant to the gift. You may check as many as:

  • two causes (they are organized in sections, such as Basic Needs, Health, Education, etc.)
  • one country if the gift serves people in another country
  • one religion if the gift pertains to a religious charity
  • one ethnic group if the gift serves a particular ethnic group in the U.S. (if it serves people in other countries, skip this and choose the country)

 

NOTE:

Some category groups have MANY causes, be sure to scroll down within each box to see all the available options.

 

Product Format

Please ignore this field  

 

 

Order Fulfillment

Select: 'Automatic Order Fulfilment'

 

 

Product Title = Gift Title

Descriptive titles make your donation gifts more discoverable and notable.

 

Do not use the same title for more than one gift.

 

In order to ensure a unique URL, please create titles composed of your nonprofit's name followed by the gift title you want to appear on the site.

 

For instance, if you create the gift title:

          Sierra Club Save an Acre of the Rainforest

Then the URL for the gift will be:

          ChangingThePresent.org/products/Sierra-Club-Save-an-Acre-of-the-Rainforest

 

The title on the gift page would appear as:

          Save an Acre of the Rainforest.

 

Please follow these guidelines:

  • Do not start the gift name with numerical digits or the word "A."
  • Capitalize the first letter of title words only
  • Do not use special characters (#, %, @, etc.)

 

Tip: Your gift title should be memorable and notable. It will be prominent on the gift page of the website, and it will appear on the greeting cards. The subtitle, which you will select below, can be more specific. Example:

  • Title: Save Babies' Lives
  • Subtitle: Provide Polio Vaccines for Ten Infants

About Gift Descriptions

The description of the gift should be in three parts:

  1. Problem - this explains the underlying problem you are addressing
  2. The Gift - this explains exactly what the visitor's donation will accomplish, and the beginning of it will appear on the index pages.
  3. Greeting Card Message - this is the message that will describe the gift on the printed greeting card.

Here is a sample gift to show what it looks like.  

 

 

Formatting

Be sure to format the descriptions and section titles "as described below so they appear properly.

 

Type or copy the desciption, including the Problem and Gift headings into the field provided. Please skip a line:

  • after each of those section headings
  • between the text describing the Problem and 'The Gift' title.

Do not format any of the text, except as follows (as shown above in the image below):

  • Highlight "Problem"
  • Select Format in the tool bar at the top of the description box. Then select Headers, then Header 4.
  • Then do the same to the title, "The Gift."

 

     

    In the same field, below the description of the gift, please type ###, followed by the description that should appear on the greeting card (it will appear only on the greeting card, and not on the web page). You do not need to re-ener the gift name, as we have that.

     

    That message for the card should be in the format shown below. For clarity, we show the standard type below in black and the part you can customize in red. You do not need to use colors or format this text. Please do not exceed 320 characters, including spaces (the sample below is 317 characters).

     

    A generous donation has been made in your name. With this gift, Friends of the World Food Program, Inc. will provide take-home food rations to girls in school for six months to help ease the economic burden on parents and convince families to keep their daughters in school. These young girls join us in thanking you.

     

    Photos

    Please upload 1 photo for this gift (ignore the suggestions on the page that you can add more). It will appear on the gift page, index pages, and the greeting card. High-quality photos attract more donations: in-focus, properly exposed, well-composed, and without a cluttered background.

    • Photos must be square.
    • The image cannot be larger than 1.5MB.
    • Photos must be at least 1400px X 1400px.
    • If you need to crop photos, and do not have PhotoShop, picmonkey.com and canva.com are free and easy ways to do it.

    Variants = Subtitle

    You will use the Variant field to create a subtitle, which will appear below the gift title, as they do on this sample gift page and this sample index page.

     

    Adjacent to "Enable Multiple Options," select the YES button. The section will expand to reveal more options as shown in the image below.

    • In the dropdown menu select Custom Option.
    • To the right of that, a box will initially say, "e.g. Color, Size, Material." Overwrite that with the word: Subtitle
    • In the space marked Option Values you have 50 characters to write a subtitle for your gift.

    Then press Create.

     

     

     

    When you click the Create button, the section will further expand. Your subtitle will appear on the far left of that section. As shown below, simply:

    • uncheck Requires Shipping
    • check Auto Fulfillment.

    Ignore the other fields in the Variants section.

    Price = Donation Amount

    Enter the donation amount of the gift. It should accurately reflect what it costs you to deliver that charitable gift or service.

     

    We currently do not use this tool to calculate the transaction fee on a gift so "Your Portion" should be the same as the priceyou set.

     

    Compare At Price

    Skip this field.

     

    Tags

    Ignore this field.

     

    Exclusive

    Ignore this field.

    Save

     

    That is it. Just hit the Save button!

     

    You will be taken to the 'Products' page, which shows all the gifts you have created. You can click the 'Create Product' button to add your next gift (maximum of 50 gifts).

      Approvals

       

      It takes us time to process each batch of gifts, so please wait until you have created all the gifts you intend to offer, for now, and then send us a note at the email address listed at the bottom of this page.

       

      We will review and approve the gifts, add your logo to each of the gift pages, create a matching greeting card for each, create your nonprofit page from the information you provided previously, and notify you when it all goes live. Depending on our work load, it may take a few days for us to do this.