Howdy Paul!

Certain payment processors, such as Authorize.net, allow you to put an account into test mode within NationBuilder. This can be done by an Admin under Settings > Bank Accounts > All Accounts > Edit.

Other payment processors, such as Paypal Payflow Pro, do no allow editing of test mode in NationBuilder. In this circumstances you will need to refer to the documentation of the payment provider and how it can be changed within your account settings on their site.

The best way I can see to track the GiftAid reclaims would be to use the tagging function.

1. Tag the people who are eligible for Gift Aid on the first eligible donation they make. (You can do this via the Liquid code on your donation page.)
2. When it comes to the end of the year, export the donations from those people.
3. Use Excel to filter out the ticket purchases from the donations

This will give you the people who have indicated they are eligible and the amounts they gave.

For information on working with profile tags in Liquid, see Signup page variables

While NationBuilder does not integrate directly with either Square or PayPal Here, it is possible to import donation history into your nation as a Comma Separated Values file from any third-party source.

To learn more about how to use Square for fundraising, click here. To learn more about PayPal Here, click here.

448 S. Hill St., Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

In order to make some pages on your nation visible to Members only, you'll need to update the settings on that page itself. Specifically, you'll want to update the "Who can view this page?" setting to "Member", as in the screenshot below.

One of the core benefits of using NationBuilder is the way that anyone who interacts with a form on your site will automatically be added to your nation's people database. If you use a third-party shopping cart, the best way to input the personal details of your customers into your people database would be by importing them manually.

To learn more about custom imports, click here.

It is possible to redirect anyone who donates from the donation page to another page on your site using the "After donating, what page should they land on next?" field in your Donation Settings. See below:

You are able to edit the require-ability of some donation fields, such as Employer and Occupation, by following the steps in this FAQ: Need to Edit Donation Fields

Phone number and email are not, however, optional fields.

There are 9 FEC codes that can be set for a given donation import. The following table correlates the NGP FEC codes, FEC code names, and FEC code IDs: 

There are 10 payment types that can be set for a given donation import. The following table correlates the NGP codes, payment types, and payment type IDs:

To connect your bank account from within the NationBuilder control panel, go to Settings > Bank accounts.

You have multiple options when it comes to getting your bank account hooked up, and we will continue to add more. Go to new account to choose from a list of payment processors that currently work with NationBuilder.

If you don't already have a payment processor and you are in the U.S. the easiest way to go is with Democracy Engine, which lets you enter all of your information and create an account with them right from the control panel. Democracy Engine is really good when it comes to processing donations for campaigns because they'll get you your money faster, and you won't have any problems when you receive an influx of donations at the end of your campaign. They charge 3.75% on every donation + a 20 cent transaction fee. 

Other payment processors are easy to set up as well, but they require you to create a merchant account, which you will have to get from your bank. Then you need to go to the individual payment processor's website and set up your account; for most you will need a login, api transaction key, and partner code for third parties. Once you select your third party payment processor in the control panel, enter the necessary information in order to get going.

If you want to use the recurring donation feature of paid memberships, you will need to use either PayPal or Authorize.net for that functionality.

You can set up as many payment processors and bank accounts as you want.

This video from NationBuilder Live walks you through the process and discusses available payment processors.

You can also watch "Setting up a bank account" in high definition on the NationBuilder YouTube channel.

If all of this seems way too confusing or if you are currently working with a different payment processor and think we should support it, please contact us.

Use recruiter_id (for NationBuilder ID number if known) or recruiter_name_or_email field in the donation import. Just set the recruiter, that is who fundraised for it, and it will be attached directly to the donation.

Yes. NationBuilder's donation pages are 100% secure. We don't store anyone's credit card information in our systems or databases either. We use CVV codes as an extra precaution, but using them is optional.

Most of the date fields in donation imports are there for credit card processing. Unlike dates in other imports, donation dates can have two digit years. (However, dates related to the signup record for the donation should still have four digit years.

NationBuilder supports four different dates for donations added to a nation via an import. The first three are aimed at credit card donations:

1. succeeded_at: the date the donation was processed successfully by the credit card processor
2. failed_at: the date the donation an unsuccessful attempt to process the donation was done by the credit card processor
3. canceled_at: the date the donation was canceled with the credit card processor

The fourth date attached to a donation is created_at. This is the date the donation record was created in NationBuilder. You could use this for DateReceived for your checks, but you would not be able to track when the donation was processed into your nation.

It is not recommended that you use the credit card dates for donations received by check. Doing this can cause confusion when sorting donations in the future.

Yes. NationBuilder supports multiple donation pages and separate bank accounts, where you can clearly mark whether a donation is tax deductible or not. NationBuilder also allows you to create separate public web sites on a single database, and to use database tags to denote whether a supporter is part of your C3 or C4. You can then run queries on those tags to see how many of the people in your database are within each type of organization.

If your legal department insists that your databases must be totally separate, you can use multiple NationBuilder accounts, but it is within standard non-profit practices to segment IDs within a single database. If we can be of help on this issue, please let us know.

Federal elections and many other jurisdictions allow maximum donations per election, which means an individual can max out in both the primary and general. With the NationBuilder political edition, you can set up election cycles and maximums under Settings > Political. NationBuilder will automatically split a donation over the primary limit into a primary and general contribution.

In this video from NationBuilder Live, Adriel Hampton shows how to customize your election settings including donation splitting, candidate information, election dates and more. 

"Customizing your election settings" can also be viewed in high definition on our YouTube page.

Transaction fees vary for each payment processor linked to your NationBuilder donation pages (more details on credit card transaction providers and fees). To get details of processing fees deducted from your donations, you'll need to log into your account with the individual processor.

NationBuilder is careful to make sure that donors know whether their contribution is tax deductible or not by displaying the information on the donation page itself.

If you are using the political edition, NationBuilder defaults to assuming donations are not tax deductible. If you are using the nonprofit edition, it will assume donations are tax deductible.

However, it is very easy to change this by adjusting the settings for the bank account you are using on that donation page. Go to Settings > Bank accounts in your control panel, then click the edit icon next to the account you want to change. You will then see a check box towards the top right of the page labeled "Transactions are taxed (not tax deductible)". Check this box and all pages associated to this bank account will change to let people know their contributions are not tax deductible.

For more on deleting donations, check out this public question on removing donor records.