In this article:

1. Creating a community form on desktop or mobile
2. Adding details to your form
3. Finding your community form
4. Fundraising with your community form
5. Your fundraising statistics
6. Downloading community form data

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A community form is a fundraising page you can make and share with your circles to raise money on behalf of groups you care about. Community forms are a great way to take action for candidates and causes you support. 

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Creating a Community Form on Desktop or Mobile

Having an ActBlue Express account makes it easy to create community forms. Log in to your ActBlue Express account or create an account. 

Click “Fundraising” in the left navigation bar.

 

On the Fundraising page is a list of your supporter and community forms. 

Click “Create form.”

 

 

A pop-up will open where you can enter the details of your form. You can always edit your form's title later.

The web address should be a unique phrase at the end of your URL. If another form uses it, you will see “Not available” under the web address field.

Click “Start fundraising” to land on your Fundraising page.

 

 

To open and edit your form from the Fundraising page, click the dropdown next to your form’s title and select “Edit and Preview.” When your form opens, click the blue “Edit” button to make changes.

 

You can also create a community form on your phone. After logging into your ActBlue account, select “Fundraise” in the menu. 

 

Press the “Create form” button in the middle of your screen and fill out the form in the pop-up.

 

 

You can also create a community form directly from our search function. 

After logging in, use the search bar at the top left of your screen to find a specific candidate or organization by name. You can also filter by upcoming elections, state or territory, the office a candidate is running for, committee type, fund type (like nominee funds and draft funds), or nonprofit issue area.

 

 

From the dropdown, select "Create a community form."

 

 

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Adding Details To Your Form

You can use the form editor to customize your form. Below are the elements we recommend editing to best connect with other grassroots donors. 

1. Title, ask, and URL

From the "Title, ask, and URL" tab, edit the Donation Ask to explain why someone should donate to the group or cause. 

 

 

You can add basic formatting like bullet points and bold text. To add HTML, click the “</>” button before typing your code.

In the same tab, you can add videos and livestreams to a contribution form by clicking “Video URL” and turning on “Feature video.” On forms with a featured video, supporters can watch and donate simultaneously. This tool is great for hosting a virtual fundraising event.

Click “Publish” and exit the form editor to preview your form.

 

 

2. Preset donation amounts

Choose what contribution buttons appear on your form from the “Preset donation amounts” tab. Doing so makes it easy for donors to quickly select an amount. Donors always have the option to type in an amount, but it’s best if the amounts listed on the form make sense for the people you’ll ask to give.

 

 

Donors will always have the option to type in their own amount, but it’s a good idea to make sure the amounts listed on the form make sense for the people you’ll ask to give.

3. Social share

You can also customize your form’s social share, which is the image and text that appear on Facebook and Twitter when someone shares your form on social media. Keep image vetting and consent best practices in mind when choosing images. 

Here’s an example:

 

 

Open the “Social share and promote” tab in the form editor and fill in the fields. You can save reusable and default settings.

 

 

If you update your social share settings but don’t see the change immediately, try clearing your browser’s cache and cookies. You can do this from your internet browser’s preferences.

4. Recipients

You can add multiple groups to your community form in the “Recipients” tab, turning it into a Tandem form.

When donors land on a Tandem form, they can split one contribution between the groups listed on the form.

You can also change your form’s settings to ask donors whether they want to share their contact information with the recipient(s). By default, recipients receive donor information for all contributions. 

To change this setting, switch the “Show email list permissions pop-up?” setting at the bottom of the “Recipients” tab to “Yes.”

 

 

Changing this setting will show donors a pop-up box asking them to share their information after donating. The pop-up looks like this:

 

 

To preview your pop-up, click the “Preview permissions pop-up” button in the form editor.

Community form creators always receive contact information for donors who give on their forms, regardless of whether they’ve chosen to share it with the recipient(s). However, form creators cannot see which donors opted in or out of sharing their contact information with the recipient(s).

5. Form customization: Spanish language option

In the “Form customization” tab, you can change standard ActBlue-provided text on your form to Spanish with a single click. If you’ve been writing your form title and ask in Spanish, you can create a user-friendly and unified form in one easy step.

Under “Language,” select “Spanish / Español” from the “Form language” dropdown.

 

 

Here’s what a translated community form looks like:

 

 

Learn more about what is and is not translated.

Click the “Publish” button to save any changes you made to your form.

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Finding Your Community Form

To see your list of forms, log in to your ActBlue account and click “Fundraising” in the left navigation bar.

 

At the top, you will see the number of contributions, dollars raised, and average contribution size across all your contribution forms. Next is a list of all your contribution forms, the dollars raised, and the number of contributions for each form. Click “Actions” to copy your form link, edit and preview your form, view your form’s statistics, duplicate it, or delete it. 

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Fundraising With Your Community Form

With your form editor closed, click "Copy link" to share your form via email, social media, or anywhere else you’d like to fundraise. 

You can also download a QR code that links to your form. Click “Download QR code” at the top of the page.

 

Click “Save.”

 

 

Your downloaded QR Code should look something like this:

 

You can upload your QR code to any document that allows you to upload images. To test the code, open your phone’s camera and point it at the code. You should see a link pop up. Tap on the link to land on your contribution form. 

Click the “More” dropdown menu and then “Promote” for promotion options, such as refcodes.

 

 

 

Refcodes are URL parameters you can add to your form links to collect data about where your donations are coming from. Type a keyword into the “Refcode” box to generate a new refcode. 

You can share that link and track its performance on your form’s Statistics page.

You could create refcodes for tweets, Facebook posts, and your website to track which platform brings in the most contributions. You can also create refcodes for friends who share your form to track their progress, like in this example:

 

 

If the group you are fundraising for has pre-set recurring enabled, you will also see a “Recurring” field in the Promote pop-up. Pre-set recurring forms allow you to direct people to a form with the recurring option pre-selected. ActBlue's policy requires that pre-set recurring forms explicitly ask donors for recurring contributions before the donor contributes. 

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Your Fundraising Statistics

To see your form’s fundraising statistics, log in to your ActBlue account, click “Account” in the top right corner, and select “Fundraising.” 

 

 

Click on the title of your form.

 

 

You will see detailed information on your form’s performance, beginning with a bar graph that shows how your form has done in the past seven days. You can customize the time frame using the dropdown in the top right corner of the graph.

 

 

Next is a series of modules that dive deeper into your fundraising numbers. 

• Conversion Rate: the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors to your form. For example, if your form receives 200 visitors in a month and has 50 donations, the conversion rate would be 50 divided by 200, or 25%. For the strongest data, we don’t recommend donating to your form while logged in. Doing so can affect the accuracy of your conversion rate. 
• Total form visits: the total number of people who visited your form. If you visit your own form while logged into your ActBlue Express account, the “Total form visits” number will remain unaffected.
• Progress: your progress toward your goal. If you haven’t set a goal, you will see a prompt to do so.

Next is a list of the most recent form contributions. Click “View all contributions” to see the full list or download a report. 

 

 

The last module has links to additional tools, including Refcode Statistics, A/B Testing, Email Alerts, and Promote. 

 

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Downloading Community Form data

To download data on your form, enter your form editor from the Fundraising page by selecting “Edit and preview” from the dropdown next to your form’s name. Click “Stats” at the top of the form editor. 

 

 

You’ll see a statistics table on your form’s performance, organized by refcode. Data points include:

1. Count: Number of contributions made
2. Visits: Number of people who landed on your form
3. Conversion Rate: Percent of people who landed on your form who donated (count divided by visits)
4. Mobile: Percent of contributions made on mobile devices
5. Total (avg.): Total dollars raised, followed by the average contribution size in parentheses
6. Recur #: Number of recurring contributions made, followed by the percent of contributions made that are recurring contributions in parentheses
7. Recur: Total dollars raised from recurring contributions

Select “Export all contributions” in the top right to download a spreadsheet of your contribution data (including donor names and email addresses).

 

Our Customer Service Team is here to help. Contact us with any questions about using ActBlue.