ActBlue user roles and permissions dictate what users can do on our platform. If the tools or features in this article are unavailable to you, speak to your entity Admin first about updating your permissions.
In this article:
- Creating a merchandise form
- Adding items to your merchandise form
- Customizing your merchandise form
- Navigating the Fulfillment page
Selling merchandise is a great way to engage supporters — they get to represent causes they care about, and you get to promote your work and establish an additional fundraising channel. ActBlue makes selling merchandise easy, and donors can use the same payment methods they use on regular contribution forms, including their debit/credit card, the saved card in their ActBlue Express account, PayPal™, Google Pay™, Apple Pay®, and Venmo™.
Creating a Merchandise Form
Navigate to your Dashboard. Clicking “Create form” will lead you to the “Choose a form type” page.
Click “Merchandise Form” and fill in your form's basic information.
First, give your form a title. Then, finish the web address for your form by typing a simple word in the “Form link” box. This word or phrase will be part of your form's unique web address and name in your Dashboard. Pick a short word or phrase and make a note of it so you can locate your form on your Contribution Forms page quickly.
Enter the email address and phone number your supporters should contact for customer service. These appear on the merchandise form and in receipts so donors can get in touch with any merchandise fulfillment issues.
Finally, you’ll need to go to the “Shipping timeframe” section and estimate when donors can expect their items to arrive. It’s important to have a fulfillment plan before you start selling items so you can make an accurate estimate here. You don’t want your donors to get frustrated with longer-than-expected wait times. This field is set to “within 24 hours” by default, but you can choose from 3-7 days, 1-2 weeks, 2-4 weeks, 4-6 weeks, and 6-8 weeks.
You can always go to the form’s “Title, ask, and URL” and “Contact and shipping” tabs to make any edits to this basic information later.
Once you publish your form, you'll land on the “Success, your form was published!” page. You can copy the link to your form or navigate to the form editor by clicking “Edit your form."
In the “Title, ask, and URL” tab, you can edit your form’s title and add a description or message in the “Donation ask” section.
Adding Items To Your Merchandise Form
Go to the “Items” tab to add your merchandise. The first step is to click the “Add item” button and add merchandise in the pop-up. You can add an item’s name, description, price, and image so donors know what they’re buying. Images should be as high-resolution as possible, and you can upload your image by either clicking the “Upload an image” button or dragging the image file into the upload area. Keep image vetting and consent best practices in mind.
If you have a limited supply of an item, uncheck the “Unlimited” box and enter the number of items you have available in “Stock.” The item will disappear from your live merchandise form when you sell out.
Next, you can add merchandise variations, such as different sizes, colors, or other options, by clicking the “Add variation” button. Name the variation and add all its options (i.e. The variation name would be Size, and the options would be Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large). More information on variations is available if you click the blue “Information” button.
After entering item information in the pop-up, click the “Done” button, and you'll see the preview of your form. In the “Items” tab, you can drag and drop items to change the order they appear on the form and hide specific items from the live form so supporters can’t buy them.
Click the “Publish” button at the top of the form.
Customizing Your Merchandise Form
Return to the main menu of the form editor to add a branding or customize your form in other ways. Once you’ve published all changes, your merchandise page will be all set. Here’s an example of what a basic merchandise form with no branding might look like:
Donors can also donate in addition to the cost of the merchandise.
Navigating the Fulfillment Page
To simplify the fulfillment process, we provide a CSV of all the orders your form receives. You can view your orders and download an itemized CSV on your form’s Fulfillment page. When viewing your form, click the “More” button on the form navigation bar at the top of your screen. Click “Fulfillment” in the dropdown menu.
Some important notes to keep in mind when selling merchandise:
- You are solely responsible for producing and shipping any items you offer through your merchandise page.
- Your merchandise item is considered a gift in exchange for contributing to your campaign or organization, so you’ll need to report these contributions as usual.
The amount of support that the ActBlue Customer Service Team can provide is dependent on the permissions that you have. Check with your entity Admin about your assigned role.
If you have any questions, please contact our support team using the email address you use to access your ActBlue account.
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