Fundraising campaigns

A fundraising campaign gives you one record to measure a goal-bearing effort against: a dollar target, a gift count, or both. You create it under Fundraising, then attach the audiences you are targeting and attribute the transactions that count toward the goal.

Fundraising campaigns need your account's Giving module and Donor management both switched on. If either is off, opening Fundraising sends you back to the Mercleo home.

Creating a campaign

On the Fundraising page, click New campaign to open the create panel. It asks for the following:

• Name: required. The campaign's display name (for example, Spring Appeal 2026).
• Key: required. A stable identifier for the campaign, shown in monospace under the name in the list. It must match the pattern ^[a-z][a-z0-9_]*$: start with a letter, then lowercase letters, digits, and underscores only. A key has to be unique within your account; reusing one returns "A campaign with key "<key>" already exists for this account."
• Description: optional. A short note about what the campaign is for; it appears in an About section on the campaign's Overview tab.
• Status: one of Draft, Active, Paused, Completed, or Archived. New campaigns default to Draft.
• Attribution: one of Last touch, First touch, Even split, or Manual, defaulting to Last touch. The value is recorded and displayed on the campaign, but in the current release every transaction is attributed by hand regardless of which mode you pick (see Attributing transactions below).
• Goal: optional, and you can set either or both halves. The amount field takes a dollar value with a currency picker (USD, CAD, EUR, or GBP, defaulting to USD); the count field (labelled Goal count, e.g. donors) takes a whole number of transactions to reach.
• Starts / Ends: optional calendar dates. Leave either blank to skip that boundary.

Click Create campaign to save. The new campaign appears in the list, where each row links to its detail page.

Goals are optional. With no amount goal, the Overview tab shows "No amount goal set." With no count goal, it shows "No count goal set" alongside the running attributed-transaction count, and no progress bar is drawn for that goal.

The campaign detail page

Opening a campaign shows three tabs in the left nav: Overview, Audiences, and Transactions. The Audiences and Transactions tabs carry a count badge showing how many are linked.

The Overview tab shows goal progress: an Amount raised bar reading attributed-of-goal in the goal currency, and an Attributed transactions bar reading count-of-target. Below them, an Attributed by currency breakdown lists a separate total per currency. The right rail repeats the campaign's status, attribution mode, goal, dates, key, and the running totals.

To change any campaign field, click Edit in the header. The edit panel exposes the same fields as the create panel (name, description, status, attribution, goal, and dates) and saves with Save changes.

Targeting audiences

On the Audiences tab, linked audiences appear in a table with their name, member count, and an unlink control. Two buttons add audiences: Capture from list to create a new audience from a contacts list, and Attach audience to link one that already exists.

Click Attach audience to link an audience that already exists in your account. The picker lists each audience by name with its member count and excludes any audience already linked to this campaign. Select one and click Attach. If nothing is selected, the dialog warns "Select an audience to attach."

Click Capture from list to snapshot the current membership of a contacts list into a new audience. The dialog asks for the List to snapshot, an Audience name, and an optional Description. Click Capture audience to create the audience. The new audience then becomes available in the Attach audience picker, where you link it to this campaign.

If you have no audiences or lists to draw from, both dialogs link out to Build a list in Contacts. To unlink, hover the audience row and click the X, which confirms "Remove audience \"<name>\" from this campaign?" Unlinking removes the campaign link only; the audience itself is untouched.

Attributing transactions

Attribution is manual. On the Transactions tab, click Attribute transaction and pick a gift from the dropdown. The picker shows your most recent transactions that are not already attributed to this campaign, each labelled with its amount, donor (or Anonymous), and date. Select one and click Attribute.

Attributed transactions list in a table showing the Amount, Currency, Type, and Occurred date, each with an unlink X. Removing one prompts "Remove transaction from this campaign?" and drops it from the rollup.

There is one automatic path onto a campaign's totals: setting a donation product's Fundraising campaign field, when you build a donation page, attributes every gift through that page to the campaign automatically. See Donation pages. Every other gift needs the manual step above.

How totals are counted

Each campaign rolls up the count of attributed transactions, the number of linked audiences, the combined audience member total, and an amount total per currency. Amounts are never summed across currencies. A campaign with a USD goal that also receives CAD gifts shows each currency in its own bucket; the Amount raised bar counts only gifts in the goal currency.

Archiving a campaign

Click Archive in the campaign header to hide it from the active list. The confirmation reads "Archive campaign \"<name>\"? It is hidden from the active list. Attributed transactions and audience links are kept." Archiving keeps every linked transaction and audience; it removes the campaign from the default Fundraising list rather than deleting it.