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Overview

Platforms is how your charity's pages for giving and fundraising are built and run: the donation pages a donor gives through, and the fundraising pages and crowdfunders a supporter raises money on.

If your website is built with N3O, these pages are already part of it. The same building blocks — the donation forms, buttons and crowdfunding elements, together called Platforms JS — can also be embedded on a site N3O did not build. Those building blocks are the platform's Elements.

The two home pages​

Every page Platforms builds sits under one of two "home" pages, one for each thing a visitor might come to do.

  • /donate is for "I want to give." It lists your campaigns and offers general-fund giving.
  • /fundraising is for "I want to raise money for you." It introduces crowdfunding and lists the campaigns currently open for it.

One campaign can have a page on each side. A donor gives to the clean-water appeal on its donation page at /donate/clean-water; a supporter starts their own crowdfunder for the very same appeal from its fundraising page at /fundraising/clean-water. Everything beneath each home is generated for you from what you enter once.

/donateDonation page/donate/clean-waterOffering page/donate/clean-water/build-a-well/fundraisingFundraising page/fundraising/clean-waterCrowdfunder/fundraising/clean-water/…same campaign“I want to give”“I want to raise money”
DiagramThe two branches. A campaign's donation page and its offering pages live under /donate, for donors; its fundraising page and the crowdfunders beneath it live under /fundraising.

The words we use​

These terms mean specific things in Platforms:

  • Campaign — a fundraising appeal, such as an emergency response or an annual collection.
  • Offering — one specific way to give within a campaign (build a well, a food parcel, a month of water). A campaign has many offerings; each offering belongs to one campaign.
  • Donation page and offering page — the donor-facing pages under /donate, each at its own web address: a campaign's donation page at /donate/<campaign>, and each offering's page beneath it.
  • Fundraising page — a campaign's page under /fundraising, at /fundraising/<campaign>. It exists once crowdfunding is switched on for the campaign, and it is where someone gives directly or starts their own crowdfunder.
  • Crowdfunder — one supporter's own page beneath a campaign's fundraising page.
note

Engage uses a few of these words for unrelated things — an analytics "campaign", a call-centre "campaign", an allocation "fundraiser". Those are not the Platforms pages described here.

Where to go next​

  • Campaigns and offerings — what a campaign and an offering are, and the pages each produces.
  • Elements — the donation form, buttons and other widgets you can place on your pages, or anywhere on your site.
  • Crowdfunding — the `/fundraising` side, and how it differs from `/donate`.
  • Link Builder — tagged links for adverts, emails, social posts and QR codes, so each donation records where it came from.