Localgiving is a fundraising platform for charities, community groups, and non-profit companies. Organisations can receive one-time and monthly donations, raise funds for an unlimited number of projects and deliver crowdfunding campaigns. Individuals have the ability to set up fundraising pages for their favourite organisations.
Beacon makes it easy to import the donor data and transaction information into your account, aiding reporting, donor insights, and financial reconciliation.
Data that will be imported
By using our Localgiving import templates, each time you import data the following records may be created or updated:
People (Payers) - for the individuals making donations
People (Fundraisers) - for the individuals hosting fundraising pages
Payments - for each donation
Subscriptions - for regular payments
Fundraising pages
Events - that are linked to the fundraising pages
Preparing your account to import Localgiving Data
To get the most benefit of our import templates the following should be configured before the templates are installed.
Prepare the fields on the record types
Install the import templates
Review the import template setup
Details for each of these steps are provided in the following sections.
Prepare the fields on the record types
The following fields should be added/configured if not already done so. It is helpful to make these adjustments before installing the templates so that the field mappings are automatically applied.
If you make these changes after the import templates are created, you will need to manually map the fields, or delete and recreate the import templates.
Fundraising pages
Add a new dropdown option to the ‘Source’ field for ‘Localgiving’
Payments
Add a new dropdown option to the ‘Source’ field for ‘Localgiving’
Subscriptions
Add a new dropdown option to the ‘Source’ field for ‘Localgiving’
Install the import templates
Go to your Settings > Import templates area of Beacon.
Click the Install from library button to select the Localgiving templates. There are three templates to import.
Review and configure the import templates setup
We have by default made the following decisions which you may need to review/configure. In the following sections we have described how each data type will be imported and a few options you may want to consider.
By default the Localgiving Supporter ID is mapped to ‘Previous Database ID’; if you have created a custom field for this you will need to update the template in four places:
Supporter template:
Adjust the field that Supporter Id is mapped to
Fundraisers template:
Adjust the field that Supporter Id is mapped to
Adjust the deduplication field for People (Fundraiser)
Donations template:
Adjust the field that Supporter Id is mapped to
Adjust the field that Subscription Supporter Id is mapped to
Adjust the deduplication field for People (Payer)
Adjust the deduplication field for People (Subscription > Payer)
How the data will be imported
This section explains how records will be created/updated for each record type if the default import template settings are used:
How People data will be imported (Donors)
If a person with that email address does not already exist in Beacon, we will create them.
The following fields will be populated:
Name (first name, last name)
Email address
Contact consent (email)
Previous Database Id (with Localgiving Supporter ID)
Type (Donor)
If the name is listed as ‘Local Giving’ then the supporter will not be imported.
How People data will be imported (Fundraisers)
Anyone with a Fundraising page will have ‘Fundraiser’ added to the type on their Person record that was created on the supporter import.
How Fundraising pages data will be imported
If a Fundraising page with that URL does not already exist in Beacon, we will create it:
The following fields will be populated:
Page URL
Title
Fundraiser
Start date
Target
External ID
Notes (with information from the page description)
Event
How Events data will be imported
If an Fundraising page is related to an event, we will link it to that event and if the event does not exist - create one.
The following fields will be populated:
Event name
External ID
How Payments data will be imported
Payments will be created with the following fields populated:
Payer (Person)
Donation date
Payment amounts and fees amounts
Total donation amount (as the sum of the donation amount, contribution amount and gift aid)
Covered fees
Total fees
External ID
Subscription
Source (Localgiving)
Type (Donation)
Gift Aid allowed (False - see below)
Note (with donor comment)
Fundraising Page (if applicable)
How Subscriptions will be imported
Subscriptions will be created with the following fields populated:
Payer (Person)
Payment amount
External ID
Source (Localgiving)
Payment type (Regular donation)
Autocreate payments (False)
Gift Aid allowed (False - see below)
📝 A note on Gift Aid
When a supporter chooses a charity to support through Localgiving, the donation is made to the Localgiving Foundation which is registered with HMRC to claim Gift Aid.
As such these donations are marked as not eligible for Gift Aid when they reach the Beacon system so that they are excluded from future claims.
Exporting data from Localgiving
Use the following steps to export your data from Localgiving.
Navigate to CRM integrations
2. Select the provider ‘Beacon’
3. Select the record type(s) and date range to export
4. Generate the report and download when it is ready
Running the imports in Beacon
Once you have your import templates installed, each time you run the imports you should (in this order):
Export all three files from Localgiving
Import the supporters.csv file with the template Localgiving (1): Supporters
Import the fundraisers.csv file with the template Localgiving (2): Fundraisers
Import the donations.csv file with the template Localgiving (3): Donations