Donorfy is a UK-based CRM that Access acquired in November 2024. It has a large number of great features but isn't as customisable as Beacon, where you'll want to use the guide below to help you transition your data across.

Setting up

Import your Constituents (Individuals, Organisations & Funds)

Import Tags (Constituent Tags)

Import Campaigns

Import Subscriptions (Stripe)

Frequently asked questions

There are 2 ways to get at your data in Donorfy - the easiest is to go into a Record type i.e. "Campaigns" or "Individuals" and select the download button:

Through using this method, Donorfy will include some but not all of the information when you do this via the record types (you'll only get one Mailing Address for instance).

As such, we recommend using the Donorfy list system and have created our templates to match this in this file structure.
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To create a list, hover over the "Add" button in the top left of the content area:
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Then select the data you would like to export from the list section:
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Beacon supports importing all of these data types from Donorfy, so feel free to choose from there! 🎉

Give your list a name, where if you've selected Constituents we recommend a name such as "All-Constituents-Donorfy".

To exactly match our Donorfy Import templates (which would definitely speed up this transfer process), you'll need to ensure you open the Columns area and "Select All":

Once you're ready, click on the "Save List and Fetch the Results" button in the top right:
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Once processed by Donorfy, you'll see your results in the table below. Double-check that any filters that you might have applied worked as expected, where from there you're free to download the file, selecting the download icon on the left hand side:

You'll want to make sure everything is off and then click on "Prepare Download".

Following this, you'll need to scroll to the top of the page where you'll see a new alert, where you should click on "Click here for status" to view the download in progress:

This can take a little while, where you can always to go the Download section to retrieve this later on and keep click once it is complete.

Congratulations, you've downloaded your first piece of Donorfy Data! 🎉
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Now that's done - you'll want to do the repeat this process for all of the types of Donorfy data that you want to bring into Beacon.

On Beacon's side, we've added a number of Donorfy specific import templates to get the majority of your data across as seamlessly as possible.

On the left-hand sidebar of Beacon, you'll want to open up the "Import Data" section and select "Manage Templates" from the options presented:
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From there, click on the "Create Template" button in the top right, clicking on the "Create from Blank Template" dropdown, and selecting Donorfy.
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This will open up a folder of the templates you need, where to speed things up, you'll see the option to scroll to the bottom of that list and click on the "Install All" button 🙌

Alternatively you can choose which you want to add and what name to give them by selecting them individually.

Congratulations you're now ready to upload your CSVs 👏.

In Beacon, we call Individuals "People" and these are separate from Organisations & Funds. You will be using the "All Constituent" list download for this process, where our Import Template is designed to just look at importing "People/Individuals".

By default, you can use the template by going to "Run Import" and selecting the CSV file you got from Donorfy. This will include:

Note, for addresses we combine some of the data, as Beacon uses Royal Mails address format:

In terms of ordering, we use "Preferred" for Primary, and for ordering secondary it is:

If there are other fields you would like to import, you can go into the Template and map these over.

Note that we do not recommend using this CSV for importing Tags or Activities (see details below)

In Beacon, we also have Organisations, so you are able to import by default. When importing it is the same file as the individuals, and we filter out "Individuals" and "Funds" from the CSV.

By default, you can use the template by going to "Run Import" and selecting the CSV file you got from Donorfy. This will include:

In terms of ordering, we use "Preferred" for Primary, and for ordering secondary it is:

In Beacon, we do not have a direct system like Tags where these can often get out of hand. Nevertheless, the tags in Donorfy often hold lots of useful information where to get these into Beacon, you'll want to follow the steps below.

For any Tag Categories you want to store, go into a Person record on Beacon, and click the Customise cog option on the top right hand side. (You'll need to be an admin to edit the database, so good to reach out to your admin if you don't have these permissions!)
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From there, you'll need to click on a card on the record, click to "Create a new field" and select the "Dropdown" field type. This newly created field would be there you would add in the names of the Tags that you still want to store.
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More on adding drop down options is run through in our guide article here, so good to check this out if need a hand there!

If you're using our template to import data (recommended), you'll want to ensure the values are the same as in the Donorfy UI:
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i.e. "Baking" and not what you'll see in the CSVs i.e. "Interests and Hobbies_Baking".

As per the guide above, you'll want to hover over the Add button and select "Constituent Tag List", to ensure all columns are included and downloaded as normal.

Once you have the Donorfy Tag Template in your Import Templates in Beacon, you'll need to edit it.

Scroll to the far right of the spreadsheet to get to the Smart Field we have created called "SmartInterestAndHobbies". Click on Edit this, and you'll see the Formula that we have created there.

For each Tag Category, you'll want to copy this Formula, create a new Smart Field, paste the Formula and change the text i.e. "Interests and hobbies" to the value in the Tag Category area.

You'll then want to map each of these Smart Fields to the Custom Field that you created above.

All that is left to do, is to save your changes to the template, go to Run Import, and upload your CSV. Done!

Campaigns are very simple in Donorfy. As such, you can just go into the Campaign List in Donorfy and upload it in Beacon using the Donorfy Campaign template.

Things to note:

Subscriptions in Donorfy are handled differently to Beacon. At Beacon, we use Stripes built in Subscription model, which makes it easier to see all your subscriptions in Stripe, make more granual changes and also if you ever want to leave Beacon its much less work.

To import Subscriptions into Beacon, we have a few steps to do:

Download a new Recurring Payment Instruction List (see above guide for downloading lists)

Ensure you select all fields.

To ensure you don't get people charged double, turn off the subscriptions in Donorfy (You already downloaded which ones are active).

If you haven't created a Product in Stripe already for your subscriptions, you will need to do this now:

https://docs.stripe.com/products-prices/getting-started?locale=en-GB

Make sure you set it to Flat-rate pricing and Recurring.

First, you'll want to filter on those that are relevant:

To do this, change the headers using the table below:

You'll also need to create the following new Columns with the following data:

Go through the flow here:

https://dashboard.stripe.com/test/billing/migrations

Now that you have created the Subscription in Stripe, you'll want to create the objects in Beacon so that all future subscriptions are attached to them.

You can import them using this guide here:

https://guide.beaconcrm.org/en/articles/5720142-importing-recurring-payments-memberships#stripe

You've now migrated your Stripe migrations over

Yes, we are actively working on improving this guide at the moment.

You can use the Column "Active Tags", however, because this includes the Tag Category, and it isn't easy to consistently data clean this, we don't have a guide or import template for this at the moment. We recommend using either Excel's or Beacon's Smart Filters to help with this - Try using Beacon AI!

Tags, like Labels, have a bad reputation for becoming unwieldy as you add more and more to them. Instead, we allow you to create Custom Fields on all Record Types, so you can ensure you get the exact data models that you need for your particular Charities needs.

Unfortunately, there are only 2 ways to get your files from Donorfy:

We will be adding a template and guide for Donorfy files in the future, but you can do this manually using the Zip file upload and their CSV with mapping over. You will need an import template per associated record type though.