Audience1st allows you to manually record donations that you receive in person or by telephone or mail, receive donations online, and receive donations made while purchasing tickets or subscriptions.

Reports make it easy to tabulate donations made to different funds or during multiple fundraising campaigns, and you can easily view any patron’s donation history. Audience1st also can track which donors are still owed an acknowledgement letter or tax receipt. See the donation reporting article for reporting capabilities and how to track pending acknowledgement letters.

Although your theater can accept donations directly via Venmo or PayPal or other services, there are significant advantages to directing all donations through Audience1st instead. Donations made through Audience1st will appear in donation reports, revenue reports, and patron history. When donations are made through Audience1st, it is easy to, for example, get a list of everyone who donated between $100 and $249 last year. Also, Audience1st tracks for you which donors are still owed an acknowledgement.

Manually Recording Donations

You can manually enter into the system a donation that is received in person or by telephone or mail. The donation can be in the form of cash, check or credit card.

First, look up or add the patron who is making the donation. While acting on behalf of this patron, click on the New Donation button in the yellow user navigation area.

Enter the amount of the donation, which fund (account code) the donation is  to go to, optional comments, and the date of the donation. Select the payment method for the donation. If the donation is in the form of a check, you may wish to enter the check number in the comments field. If you select credit card for the payment method, the usual credit card fields will appear.

When you finish entering the details of the donation, be sure to click the Record button.

Accepting Donations Online

See this article for how to create links that you can use in fundraising emails or “Donate Now” buttons on your theater’s website. When a patron clicks one of these links, they will be able to enter a dollar amount and credit card information in order to make a donation to your theater. The link specifies which account code the donation will go into.

When theater staff already logged into Audience1st use one of these links, they can record a donation made by credit card, cash, or check. Regular patrons can donate by credit card only.

You may create as many account codes for separate donation accounts or fundraising campaigns as you wish. You can add as many “Donate Now” buttons to your theater’s website or email campaigns as you wish to direct patrons into Audience1st to donate to your theater.

Note that a donor does not need to create an Audience1st account to donate using one of these donation links.

Accepting Donations During Purchases

The regular ticket and subscription sales flow includes an option to add a donation to credit-card self-purchases. You can control which account code receives these donations by selecting the desired account codes on the Options tab.

Editing Donations After the Fact

Any donation, whether made by a patron online or entered manually by staff, can be edited at any time in the future. This could be necessary, for example, to add a comment about how the donation should be used, or to properly backdate a donation that was entered many days after the check was written. See the article on donation reporting for how to look up and edit specific donations.