Online donations: Encourage your audience to give back this holiday season

Online donations: Encourage your audience to give back this holiday season

Hello fellow form builders,

The holiday season isn't just about shopping and festivities. There's a special zeal to give back to the community as a gesture of gratitude. While donation boxes are still around, many businesses are focused on their online presence. That means you can use online donations and reach a larger audience for more donations. In this post, we'll show you how to design online donation forms and increase the collection amount for your cause. 

Designing an effective donation form

A successful donation form is one that your donation goal. That may be shopping for underprivileged kids during the holidays, or throwing a Christmas party at a retirement home so the seniors don't feel lonely while they're away from their family. To collect more, you need to have an effective form in a place where people notice it. 

Keep it simple

Choose a simplistic design for your donation form, with your cause clearly stated on your form or the page where you host it. If you have a brick and mortar store, you can place the QR code for your form around your store with a call to action to root for your cause and donate. Clear, crisp design and the minimum amount of fields will make the whole experience delightful for your customers.

Put your thank you(s) in place

Set up automated tax receipts and thank you notes for your audience. This can keep them updated about their donations and does away with any hassle that they may face while filing their taxes. Email notification or SMS updates can also help you to give your donors a special note of thanks, along with a receipt for their donation. 

Place online payment option

Configure an online payment field so that your respondents can pay on the go as they fill their form. As more people move to cashless and contactless transactions, having an online payment gateway configured is a huge plus. You can also suggest a donation amount by prefilling the payment field. This can increase your average donation amount, compared to leaving the field empty for donors to choose the amount. 

Sharing your donation forms

People are much more likely to give in public than in private. Having said that, the placement of your donation form plays a major role in how successful your campaign is. If your store gets a lot of foot traffic, you could place a device with the form at check out counters or place the QR code for the form around your store. If you run an online business, you can choose to share your donation form on social media, send it as an email campaign, or even create a donation page and embed your form there. 

Donations are an important part of the holiday season. People love to give as much as they receive. With simple tweaks to the way you collect, you can help your cause even more. This holiday, create stunning online forms and move one step closer to fulfilling your cause. 

If you have any questions or feedback to share, feel free to comment below or drop us an email at support@zohoforms.com

    • Sticky Posts

    • 5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  Social distancing measures are being woven into the fabric of daily business practices, ending many forms of direct-contact business. To adapt to this, businesses might want to change their business practices, adding necessary

    • Online donations: Encourage your audience to give back this holiday season

      Hello fellow form builders, The holiday season isn't just about shopping and festivities. There's a special zeal to give back to the community as a gesture of gratitude. While donation boxes are still around, many businesses are focused on their online

    • Getting your forms ready for the holidays

      Hello fellow form builders! With the holidays coming up, we've all started to get the hang of the new normal as people get ready for all the festivity around. This year is different from others in the past, which means businesses are trying out new ways

    • 5 Ways to pull off holiday events like a pro using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders, This is the fifth post of the five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Holiday events are suppose to be fun, and so is hosting them. So if you are overwhelmed and it seems like your event organizing is all over the place, then something has gone wrong. Yet, sweat not - we've got you!   The entire event planning process can be made easy by automating

    • 5 ways to improve your holiday fundraising with online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  This is part four of our five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Asking for money isn't easy, yet it's a crucial step for any fundraising group or organization. During this holiday season, make collecting donations fun and more effective with our list of the top five ways to improve your overall fundraising process. Let's dive in. 1. Create

      • Recent Topics

      • Passing the CRM

        Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

      • Capture Stripe’s Customer ID

        Does anyone know of a way to capture Stripe’s customer ID that is created when the form/payment is processed? I would like to have the customer ID stored in our CRM so we could utilize in some custom functions down the road.

      • Shortcut to fill a range of cells

        Good evening: I'm writing because I haven't been able to find a feature that allows you to select a range of cells, type in one of them, and then use a key combination to type in all of them. In Excel, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Enter. I haven't found

      • External User onboarding for zoho connect is not really intuitive.

        So the external user is sent an invite, which has a button that directs them to login to zoho to view the invite, but if they don't have a zoho account, they cannot access that invite, which seems kinda silly, as there is not real way on for them to create

      • Playback and Management Enhancements for Zoho Quartz Recordings

        Hello Zoho Team, We hope you're all doing well. We would like to submit a feature request related to Zoho Quartz, the tool used to record and share browser sessions with Zoho Support. 🎯 Current Functionality As of now, Zoho Quartz allows users to record

      • Bigin Android app update: Zoho Books integration

        Hello everyone! We’re excited to introduce Zoho Books integration on the Bigin Android App. Once the integration is completed in the web(bigin.zoho.com), the Zoho Books tab will be visible in detail View of Contacts, Companies, and Pipeline records. The

      • IMAP Migration from Gmail

        I have been trying to import my email from a Gmail server and keep receiving the following error. I have reduced the security, activated imap and no improvement. The link to the Google support item has not helped. Unable to connect to your account. Please

      • Your Incoming has been blocked and the emails will not be fetched in your Zoho account and POP Accounts Click here to get unblocked.

        When entering my account, this error is thrown at me, and I deleted a good part of my deleted messages, but I still can not unblock it, I would appreciate your help. reservas@lineasperutravel.com

      • Email login error

        Login successfully but email page error

      • I want to add my other zoho account in same pc

        why does zoho restrict me doing many things as i also want to add my second mail account bit its not allowing me to do that

      • Request for Creating Multiple Email Accounts on One Mobile Number

        Dear Zoho Team, I am planning to shift all my work-related communication to Zoho Mail because of its reliability and features. For my work, I need to create 3–4 separate email accounts for different purposes. Could you please confirm if it is possible

      • Automatically Add Recurring Zoho Meeting Events to Zoho Calendar / Zoho Meeting Calendar

        Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement regarding recurring meetings created inside Zoho Meeting. At the moment, when we schedule a recurring meeting in Zoho Meeting, it does not appear in Zoho Calendar

      • Signature issue

        Problem: The signature does not appear when replying or forwarding an email. solve issue: settintgs/Signature Check option place a signature above the content with quotation marks

      • Unable to Receive Emails on Zoho Mail After Office 365 Coexistence Setup – Error: 553 Relaying Disallowed

        Hello, My domain name is bigniter.com, and I’ve been using Zoho Mail as my email service provider without any issues. Recently, I followed the steps outlined in the Zoho documentation to enable Coexistence with Office 365: 🔗 https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/coexistence-with-office365.html#multi-server

      • mail admin not loading

        i am trying to login to mailadmin ... gears keeps rotating forever... its not a password issue whats so ever ... not cookies issues whatsoever from android app i can login but there so few things to do from there .. i changed ip address the same... i

      • Unify All Zoho Video Meeting Experiences into One Standardized Platform

        Hi Zoho Team, We would like to share an important user experience concern regarding the current state of video meeting functionality across the Zoho ecosystem. The Problem Within Zoho, there are multiple ways to initiate or schedule a video meeting: Zoho

      • Unify All Zoho Video Meeting Experiences into One Standardized Platform

        Hi Zoho Team, We would like to share an important user experience concern regarding the current state of video meeting functionality across the Zoho ecosystem. The Problem Within Zoho, there are multiple ways to initiate or schedule a video meeting: Zoho

      • Unify Overlapping Functionalities Across Zoho Products

        Hi Zoho One Team, We would like to raise a concern about the current overlap of core functionalities across various Zoho applications. While Zoho offers a rich suite of tools, many applications include similar or identical features—such as shift management,

      • Zoho One Backup of entire account

        Hello, When using Zoho one is there a way to backup your entire account of all apps that you are using \ activively using in a single step or do you have to backup each applications data individually? Thanks,

      • CRM Mobile reports

        When our engineers finish a job they like to email the customer a job report. This is best done todate as an email template but we can find no way to include an image field from that module. Is there any other options?

      • why cant i access my email account. it keeps asking me for reverifiying my account by entering my password.

        I cant access my account. it keeps asking me for reverifcaton by entering my password. once its entered it asks for it over and over.

      • Issue with “CC” and “Subject Details” of the initial mail when reply / replied all / forward using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App)

        It is observed that when I reply / reply all / forward a mail using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App), the “CC” and “Subject Details” are omitted from the mail which was replied/forwarded. However this is not the case with outlook mail

      • Unable to send Emails - 452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error

        Whene ever i request smtp server to send the email (without attachment). i recieve error "452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error"

      • I can't receive email

        I cannot receive any email sent to my Zoho email after the free upgrade plan trial is finished.

      • Help for the alisa adding

        Sorry, I would like to add a paypal alias on my domain email address. However, the system blocked it. How can I do it?

      • Problem with Writer and Workdrive

        Hi team, I’m the super admin for our Zoho One org. WorkDrive is active, and Zoho Docs is deprecated for our org. However, Zoho Writer cannot connect to WorkDrive at all — we’ve cleared cache, tried incognito, and restarted several times. I was able to

      • Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ?

        Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ? I can't attach over 25mb files, and can't receive mails has attached files over 25mb too

      • How to change a BAS that has been filed

        I have discovered that a group of expense transactions were accidentally placed in a asset account rather than an expense account. As a result I need to adjust the transaction and consequently most of my BAS to correct the error. Because the BAS have

      • Zoho Books | Product updates | August 2025

        Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From the right sidebar where you can manage all your widgets, to integrating Zoho Payments feeds in Zoho Books, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience.

      • Closing Accounting Periods - Invoice/Posting dates

        Hi, I have seen in another thread but I'm unsure on how the 'transaction locking' works with regards to new and old transactions. When producing monthly accounts if I close December 24 accounts on 8th Jan 25 will transaction locking prevent me from posting

      • Feature Request: Email Follow-Up Sequences Similar to Zoho CRM

        I’m wondering if Zoho Recruit is planning to introduce a feature similar to the Email Automation – Follow-Up Sequences that is available in Zoho CRM. In CRM, this allows users to send a series of timed follow-up emails triggered by specific actions (for

      • Zoho Projects - Visual improvement to parent and sub-task relationship

        Hi Projects Team, My feature request is to improve sub-task visibility. Please see screenshot below. I really think parent child relationships could be visually improved. Even if the first letter of the parent task was inline with other same level tasks

      • Zoho Projects - Task Owner filter at Project level

        Hi Projects Team, The feature requests I would like to raise is the ability to create a custom view at the project level for projects with tasks owned by a user or users. For example "Ashley's Projects" custom view might contain a list of project in which

      • Good news! Calendar in Zoho CRM gets a face lift

        Dear Customers, We are delighted to unveil the revamped calendar UI in Zoho CRM. With a complete visual overhaul aligned with CRM for Everyone, the calendar now offers a more intuitive and flexible scheduling experience. What’s new? Distinguish activities

      • Create an Eye-Catching Announcement Widget for Your Help Center

        Hello Everyone! In this week’s edition, let’s explore how to keep your customers updated with exciting news in the Help Center. See how ZylkerMobile wowed their customers by bringing updates right to their portal. ZylkerMobile, the renowned brand for

      • Option to Customize Career Site URL Without “/jobs/Careers”

        Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you are doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Career Site URL structure in Zoho Recruit. In the old version of the career site, our URL was simply: 👉 https://jobs.domain.com However, after moving to

      • API Pagination Error: 'from' Parameter Limit

        Hello, I am encountering an error while paging through the Zoho Desk API results: Status code: 422 - {"errorCode":"UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","message":"The value passed for field 'from' exceeds the range of '0-4999'."} Is 5000 the maximum number of records

      • Changing Account in Quote form does not update address information.

        I am trying to update the address information in a quote I've created. I corrected the address in the "Account" but that did not change in the quote. If I re-enter the Account Name in the Quote form, nothing updates. How do I fix this?

      • Old vs New Value for Deleted Lookup Values

        Suppose the following scenario, where a value in a lookup is deleted: 1. User has countries form 2. Form A has a lookup to countries form 3. User selects Italy in Form A and saves it with the Italy ID 4. Form A report shows Italy 5. Italy is inadvertently

      • Send mass email using my secondary email

        Hello, When I send an email to just one person from Zoho CRM, a complete email editor appears, where I can choose which of my email addresses I want to use in the From field. When I send a mass email, there is not such option. I can only select the email template. When I configure an email template, I can choose who is in the From field, but I can't set it to use my secondary address. The only way to send a mass email using my secondary address that I can think of is swapping my two addresses in

      • Next Page