Here, we’ll highlight some of the best things you can do to optimize your campaign for success.

Campaign Goal

Setting a goal that is too ambitious will turn people away. People have an expectation of how much things should cost, and don’t want to contribute to a campaign that is collecting more than they feel is necessary. Similarly, people want to be part of a success, and seeing that a campaign has collected $500 and has $150,000 left to go, doesn’t instill them with much confidence.

Try to elaborate on how you arrived at the campaign goal, and what the money will be going for. For example, “the surgery costs $75,000, and since insurance doesn’t cover it, I have to pay out-of-pocket”.

Campaign Title

The title of your campaign is the first thing people see, and it often is the factor that can convince them to read further. So it’s imperative that you create a compelling title that is clear and convincing.

Avoid generic phrases like “Please Save Me”, and make them as personal and specific as possible, for example, “Save 8-Year-Old Moshe’s Life” or “Abuse Victim is About to be Homeless!”
Keep your titles consice. They should be similar to a news article length. 5 to 10 words is a good guideline, anything longer and people will lose interest.

Campaign Description

People connect to stories, so make your campaign description as vivid as possible.

A vague description like “I’m facing some terrible challenges” will get a lot less response than including specific details.

You’re asking people to give you their hard earned money, and the more they connect emotionally to your cause, the more likely they are to give.

For example, if you have a medical condition, write what it is and briefly describe how it affects your life. If you are having financial trouble, elaborate on your expenses and what sources of income you do have (elaborating, if necessary, on how that’s not enough).

If you’re concerned about divulging personal information, you can use a pseudonym, but don’t hold back from being as personal as possible in your writing.

Finally, once again, keep your description brief and concise. 3 paragraphs is a good general guide – there is no need to fluff things up with extra sentences, people have short attention spans and just want to get to the point.

Use a Real Image

A campaign that has a photo associated with it is far more compelling. Whenever possible, use an actual picture of the individuals who are related to the cause. Even blurring the faces if necessary will still communicate to donors that there are real people who are being affected here.

If a real photo is not possible, a stock photo is still a better option than no photo at all, and you can search Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay for free stock photos that illustrate your point.

There are many factors that contribute to a successful campaign, but setting up the actual page properly is an important first step towards an effective crowdfunding experience.

The post Creating an Effective UpGiv Campaign appeared first on UpGiv.

In total, there may be a 14 to 21 day delay before the funds reach your bank.
The precise timetable for a given donation to be ready for payout is as follows: 10 business days must elapse from the time of a donation for it to be paid out. Thus, if a donation was made 9 business days before the current Monday, another week would need to pass before the funds will be paid out.

Why is this delay necessary?
In part, the delay is to protect Stripe (the credit card processor) and you as the fundraiser from fraudulent charges and disputed donations.

You can view the status of your payouts from your dashboard by visiting the “Payouts” tab in the left-hand menu.

The post Payouts: How Long Will it Take For Funds to Reach My Bank? appeared first on UpGiv.

And you got an error message.

Never a pleasant experience.

We’ve written this guide to help you decipher what exactly is going on with your card. In general, the best things to do when you get an error is to double check that all the information is correct, and if that doesn’t help, to try a different card.

If neither of those things work, we’re probably looking at a bigger issue here, that lots of other people are experiencing as well. Which isn’t fun either, but at least you know you’ve done nothing wrong. At that point, the best thing is to let us know about it and our engineers will look into the issue.

That said, knowing what the specific error messages mean when they come up on the screen, can help you understand what might be going wrong, and potentially take steps to correct it.

The List of Errors and What They Mean

Do Not Honor – some credit card processors just don’t like certain cards being used on crowdfunding sites. The best thing to do is try a different card.

Decline CVV2/ CID Fail – The card numbers didn’t match. Double check that everything is correct; if the problem persists, maybe try a different card.

Generic Decline – some random thing went wrong, and we don’t even have specifics! Best thing is to double check the numbers and maybe try another card.

{“verification_value”=>[“should be 4 digits”]} – this usually happens when you use an AMEX card but only enter three digits. Make sure to use the four digits from the front of the card.

Restricted Card – Fraud AVS Filtering Service – This usually means the credit card numbers didn’t match, double check that everything was entered properly.

Invalid Transaction – This usually means there are insufficient funds on the card, so double check that. It’s also worth check that all the card numbers were submitted accurately.

No such issuer – the processor couldn’t recognize your credit card number, this usually means that something was entered incorrectly. Double check and try again.

Invalid Account Number – here too, there seems to be an issue with how the number was entered. We recommend trying again or using a different card

Your card was declined – generally this means that you have insufficient funds on your card. Either free up some credit on it or try a different card.

Exceeds number of PIN entries – for better or worse, you’ve tried this card too many times, and trying again probably won’t help. Best to try a different card.

The post The Credit Card Error Guide appeared first on UpGiv.

All transactions on the site occur on SSL secure web pages, as can be seen with the little lock that appears to the left of the website URL in your browser window.

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us and we never sell or provide access to your personal info or email to any 3rd party who is not part of The UpGiv or the direct campaign you donated to.

If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to discuss them with our support team.

The post The UpGiv Security and Privacy appeared first on UpGiv.

A: We allow fundraisers for the following categories: Medical Expenses, Memorials & Funerals, Emergencies & Disasters, Adoption, Kids & Family, Neighbors & Community, Education & Schools, Sports & Teams, Pets & Animals, Volunteer & Service Projects, Nonprofits, Mission Trips, and Veterans. If you have a question for us about your campaign, please contact us at support@upgiv.com

Q: What kind of fundraising campaigns are not allowed on the TCF site?

A: We do not allow legal fundraisers for bail bonds, legal defense or criminal litigation, civil lawsuits, divorce or custody issues, or other legal matters, with the exception of regular and ordinary legal work for the processing of adoptions; nor do we allow fundraisers involving military conflicts. We reserve the right to remove any Fundraiser that you create that falls into one of these areas, at any time and with no notice to you.

The post The UpGiv Policies – Acceptable Campaigns appeared first on UpGiv.

Is The UpGiv a non-profit organization? No. We are a business with staff, a tremendous amount of work goes into maintaining the site, developing new features, and executing campaigns. We want to help as many people as possible, so we offer our basic service for free and anyone may benefit from it.

Is The UpGiv really free? Yes. Aside from the 2.9%+30 cents, credit card processing fee, there are no fees on our basic plan.

What is the tip box? On our free plan, we give an option to donors to give a voluntary tip. This optional tip helps us continue to service hundreds of individuals and organizations that utilize our basic plan, this voluntary tip does not come from the funds donated to the fundraiser.

Are tips tax deductible? No. The UpGiv is not a non-profit organization.

What is our premium plan? The UpGiv also has a paid plan. There is a 3% platform fee.

What are the features of the premium plan?

· Team pages with individualized goals
· Removing the tip jar solicitation
· Option for donors to cover the credit card processing fees.
· White labeled page, organization branding featured at the top of the page
· Subscriptions
· Automated phone line (Coming Soon)

What is the purpose having a set goal amount? When a campaign has a specific goal they want to reach, it gives context to the fundraiser. This will motivate donors and fundraisers to reach the target. People love to be a part of something where success is defined and achievable, as they see the page closing in on its goal, they are motivated and are more likely to give more

Timed campaigns VS opened ended campaigns? Campaigns that have a countdown clock (24 hours to 3 days) will generally have a more productive campaign, as the fundraisers will be “locked in” during that time frame. Open ended campaigns are more appropriate for long term fundraisers or for organizations that haven’t yet built up a donor base.

Do I need to have a list of contacts or donor base? An organization that doesn’t have a list of contacts or donor base will have trouble fundraising online. Effective fundraising is achieved through relationships. If a potential donor doesn’t know what the mission of the organization, hasn’t been moved or affected by the organization, it is highly unlikely he will be making a donation. If the campaign is for a community tragedy, that is something that doesn’t require a prior donor base, as the community will organically rally together.

Matching campaigns? Matching campaign is popular kind of fundraising for organizations. All donations are “matched” by a generous donor. So if a campaign is X2, a $100 donation appears as $200. If it is X3, $100 donations appear as $300. Etc.. This is a strong tool campaigns can use to motivate people to donate as they see their donation dollars being maximized.

U.S Tax Receipts: All U.S non-profits can have the tax receipts automated via email through our site.

Canadian Receipts: Because of CRA regulations, we can’t automate tax receipts. But a Canadian non-profit can issue these receipts.

Offline donations: If a campaign receives a donation via cash, check or any other means, they can easily add the donations through our “manual donations” tab to reflect the progress toward the goal.

Ad tracking: It is common for fundraisers to spend money on advertising to get the word out. We want to make sure that those funds are being put to good use. We have tracking links that will keep track of all donations generated through the ad.

Non-profit account Vs Individual bank account? It is better to use a non-profit bank account if applicable. This will allow the campaign to issue tax receipts.

Does The UpGiv issue 1099s? If more than $20,000 is transferred to a personal bank account in a calendar year, a 1099 will be issued.

The post Frequently Asked Questions – Fundraisers appeared first on UpGiv.

Causes

This is the main page of your dashboard, allowing you to view a list of all your campaigns. Here you can edit a campaign, turn it on or off, and view stats about the performance of individual campaigns.

Donations

The donations page allows you to see a list off all the donations that have been made to your account from all campaigns. You can sort the list by date, name, the specific cause the donation came from, or the donation amount.

This is the page you’d come to if you wanted to export a list of all your donations into your accounting software. Clicking on an individual donation allows you to take further action, like changing the name, making it anonymous, resending receipts, and refunding the donation.

Donors

This page shows you a list of all the donors who have contributed to any of your causes. This would be where you went to export your donors to a CRM or email list. Clicking on an individual donor’s name allows you to see all the donations they’ve ever made to you. This makes it easy to see who your best donors are based off total donation amounts or frequency of donations.

Subscriptions

The subscriptions page allows you to see a list of all the subscriptions you have on your site. It makes it easy for you to see the monthly donation amount as well as the total amount can expect to receive. It is here that you’d go if you needed to cancel a subscription for a donor.

Settings

This is where you’d manage your account-level settings. Things like your organization info, your personal info, your logo, and links to your other accounts get defined here.

In addition, it is from here that you’ll set up your merchant account settings when you first create an organization account on The Chesed Fund. Finally, you can use the settings page to send invites to additional account managers who will be able to access your account and manage your campaigns for you.

The post Using The UpGiv Dashboard appeared first on UpGiv.

UpGiv.com provides an easy, online platform for anyone to crowdfund. Crowdfunding is a method of fundraising where many people donate small amounts making it faster to raise funds than otherwise possible. We provide all the tools you need to help others and partake in the mitzvah of chesed.

Anyone can create a campaign, where you tell your story and set a funding goal. You can use UpGiv.com to create your campaign, share it with your network, engage readers, track information about contributors, and collect money. UpGiv.com provides excellent customer service for creating your campaigns and collecting money.

We started UpGiv.com to propel chesed forward. We know there are a lot of people with great needs in the Jewish community and we are ecstatic to be the conduit to further chesed in the global Jewish community.

UpGiv.com is open for anyone to use and is totally free to use with any type of campaign – creative, cause-related, or entrepreneurial.

The post What is The UpGiv? appeared first on UpGiv.

This process of charging cards, has the potential to be manipulated via fraud, deception, or money laundering. Which is why the entire credit card industry is regulated by the federal government, and why when you apply to a credit card processor to become a merchant, you actually have to go through an underwriting process where they asses whether they will take you on as a client.

Every card processor does this, including huge names like Stripe. A few of them, such as Stripe, allow you to begin processing cards immediately, but behind the scenes, they continue running background checks to make sure everything is legit.

At The UpGiv, we do the same – you can generally start processing right away, but our credit card processor needs to keep looking into things to make sure everything is above board. They are the first line of liability if a client charges back or complains illicit behavior. Therefore, it is incumbent upon them to protect themselves and fulfill federal regulations.

This is where your social security number comes in. Every credit card processor will ask for this as part of the process of signing you up. It’s part of linking the person signing virtually online with a real human with a real history and address. It allows the processing company to run checks to make sure the applicant is a trustworthy individual.

Rest assured, The UpGiv keeps no record of your personal info. We collect the information on a secure page and pass it directly to the processing company, which has advanced security measures in place to keep your information as secure as possible.

Thank you for working with the UpGiv to make chesed a safe, easy, and secure process for others.

The post Why We Need Your Social Security Number appeared first on UpGiv.

Stripe charges 3.5% for each transaction.

The post How Much Does it Cost? appeared first on UpGiv.