How To Get More From Your Donation Form with Conditional Fields

Fundraising by Type

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Including custom fields on your donation form ensures you gather exactly the information you need, and better information means better engagement with your donors. You can take custom fields further by enabling conditional logic, so you only show certain fields to the people who need to see them. 

In this post, I’ll explain how conditional fields work and provide a few fundraising tips and tricks to show how you can use them on your donation forms. 

What are Conditional Fields, and Why Do They Matter? 

Conditional fields are custom fields with conditional logic enabled. Conditional logic means that the field will only appear if certain criteria on the form are met. 

For example, you can have a conditional field that only displays if a donor meets a particular donation threshold or answers “Yes” to another question.  

Conditional logic keeps your donation forms streamlined and uncluttered, whereas a form with too many fields can distract and overwhelm users.  

Simpler forms not only look nicer but also load more quickly, which makes donating faster for your constituents. 

Here’s an example of a form that could benefit from conditional fields: 

The "Additional Details" page of a multistep donation form. Purple boxes are drawn around fields labeled, "What areas interest you?" and "What's your phone number?" Arrows point to these fields with a note saying, "Making these two fields conditional would cut down the Additional Details your donors are asked to provide."

Two of the fields on this “Additional Details” page really aren’t relevant to donors who don’t check the boxes for “volunteer interest” or “text message opt-in.” With conditional logic, we can keep those fields hidden until a donor needs them!  

Using conditional fields also ensures that you gather the right information for the right donors.  

Check out some examples below, and for more donation form best practices, take a look at these 8 ways to make your donation form stand out!

How to Use Conditional Fields on Your Donation Form

With Qgiv’s redesigned donation forms, it’s really easy to apply conditional logic to your custom fields. In custom field display settings, you just have to define when you want the field to appear.  

The conditional fields won’t appear if the criteria aren’t met, so constituents won’t see fields that aren’t relevant to them.  

Here’s our example from earlier with conditional logic enabled: 

Gif demonstrating custom fields with conditional logic on a multistep donation form. The cursor checks a box for "volunteer interest," and a multi-selection field appears for volunteer areas. Then, the cursor checks a box for "text message opt-in," and a field to enter a phone number appears.

Take a look at some more ways you can use conditional fields to gather better information: 

Connect conditional fields to specific donation amounts

Brookhaven Animal Rescue League included an option to sponsor an engraved brick. Donors who selected the $50 donation amount were prompted to include what they wanted engraved. They further customized the field by specifying the number of lines and characters donors could include.

A donation form box outlined in blue with blue writing that says, "Engraved Brick $50: Let us know if you would like a brick with your name at the adoption center."
A text box outlined in grey with grey writing that says, "What do you want engraved on your brick? - Optional." Below the box it says, "14 characters on 2 lines" and "0/28."

Use custom fields to gather additional participant information

B.I.G. Love Cancer Care Services used conditional fields for an event registration. Registrants who selected a team package were promoted to fill in team member names and shirt sizes.

A donation form box outlined in blue with blue writing that says, "Frisbee Golf Team of Four $400: 4 tournament entries with 4 sway bags, Team Best Throw Scramble Format."
Two text boxes outlined in grey with grey writing. The first box says, "Teams - list players' names here (if applicable) - Optional." The second box contains the words "Team Shirt Sizes (if applicable) - Optional."

Use conditional logic to verify eligibility

The Girl Scouts of Orange County have a special membership level for younger donors. To verify that “Go-Getter” donors meet the criteria, the conditional field prompts them to input their dates of birth.

A donation form box outlined in green with green writing that says, "Go-Getter Member $312" at the top. The rest of the text explains the membership level, including criteria for membership: "Must be 12th grade Girl Scout Ambassadors or 18-30yrs Alum."
A Date of Birth field outlined in grey with grey writing. Below the box, in grey writing, are the words, "You must be between the ages of 18 and 30 to be recognized as a Go-Getter."

Find out how your constituents want to help

Hemophilia Association of the Capital Area asks donors if they want to volunteer, and if they say “yes,” another field lets them choose what aspect of volunteering appeals to them.

The "Additional Details" page of a multistep donation form. A dropdown field outlined in red asks, "Are you interesting in volunteering?" The selection in the box is "Yes, sign me up!" Under the dropdown, "How would you like to help?" is written in grey, following by checkboxes for "Virtual games" and "Calling donors."

If you use Qgiv’s service integrations, you can also map data from custom fields to your CRM!

Takeaways

Custom fields are a great way to personalize your donation forms and ensure you gather exactly the information you need from your constituents. Adding conditional logic to custom fields keeps your forms streamlined by displaying fields only to the people who need to see them. That way, your forms remain beautiful, load faster, and don’t overwhelm your donors.  

Want to learn more? 

Check out our interactive donation form templates to see what else you can do with Qgiv’s redesigned donation forms.

If you’re ready to see how it all works, schedule a demo today!

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