Donations

[Alan Jones]

I work for a charity. We'd like our webshop to accept donations from users, ideally of any amount, without them having to buy any products.

Is there a way to do this?

[asbrins]

Alan,

I also work for a charity and would love Actinic to be able to do this. Unfortunately, it is not possible for it to work when specifying any amount. The only way you can do it is to make the donations products and then have various fixed amounts for each. You can switch off p&p so they only donate the money specified.

We had to use another solution which involved script writting to get the any amount option.

I think I am right is saying all this, unless some one from Actinic can correct me?

Regards, Andy.

[jont]

Just quick thought - if you set the product price to £1.00 and then alter the product template so the "quantity" field reads "amount to be donated" and remove the price field this would then allow the visitor to donate say 30.00 which would translate to £30.00 - this would show a little funny in the cart but the amount would be correct and with a little careful phrasing of the "product" name could be made to work for you.

[pinbrook]

Can't you have a product which costs a pound, have quantity on product page and allow the donator to key in the number of pounds?

[jont]

OK - just found a similar workaround in the Advanced User Guide - page 54

[asbrins]

The problem with the solution in the adv guide is that it is intended for donations only on your site. If you want to sell products as well (as we do) it causes problems as you are altering the templates.

[jont]

The problem with the solution in the adv guide is that it is intended for donations only on your site. If you want to sell products as well (as we do) it causes problems as you are altering the templates.

You can specify the modified "donation template" against just the donation product and keep the rest of the purchasable products using the same original template. I would hardcode the text suggestions in the Advanced Guide direct into the donation template and leave the original settings in Actinic as they are.

[asbrins]

Yes, that's a good thought. I am about to upgrade our store to V7 and might play around with that to see if it works for us. Would I be right in saying that donations would have to be a separate product section? i.e. you couldn't include a donation option in with the main products.

What would be nice would be if a function could be built-in so that when purchasers are directed to the first checkout page they could then add an amount to donate e.g. if their purchase came to £17 they could add an extra £3 to make it a round £20 which is often the case with our mail-order side of things.

[jont]

You can get the above suggestions to work in v6 (I had a similar need and hardcoded a link to the product in the Act_Primary template so visitors could get to it from anywhere in the site.

v7 would allow you to create duplicates so you could create the master donation product in its own section for instance and then copy duplicates anywhere you need it to appear.

As for rounding the monies up to the nearest "full" amount that would be a little more tricky - there is a facility to set up discount and surcharges which works along the lines of "spend another £2.31 and save 10 percent" etc. which features at the check-out stage - not sure if that could be adapted to work a similar function

[Alan Jones]

We had to use another solution which involved script writting to get the any amount option.

Regards, Andy.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response. I'd be really interested to find out more about your script-writing solution if possible.

Alan

[Alan Jones]

Donations

Thanks for the responses guys.

Any more help & suggestions much appreciated!

[jont]

Have a word with Norman at www.drillpine.biz as I am sure he has created a script to allow for any amounts to be added

[wheesh]

Donations to Lavender trust

With a modified Act_productline template I created http://www.wheesh.com/acatalog/Lavender_Trust.html which allows variable donations (in round pounds) which is linked from the checkout.
The donation just had to be put into a separate section with its own template.
No fiddling with scripts

[jont]

Hi Mike - it is the the ability to add pounds and pence to the donation that requires the script changes

[Alan Jones]

Donation problem

Hello all,

I implemented the suggestions above (thanks everyone) and they've been working fine, and created a text box where users can explain their reasons for donating.

It's defaulted to say, "Prefer not to say" because it goes wrong if there's no text entered.

I've just realised that whatever you type in reverts to "Prefer not to say" when you clikc 'add to basket', and that's what goes through checkout and appears on our paper work.

So unless the user types their reason in twice, we never get to know it.

Does anyone know a way to make Actiniv (v7) remember the text?