JustGiving app

Automatically importing your data with the JustGiving app for Beacon

Updated over a week ago


JustGiving is one of the most popular peer-to-peer fundraising platforms and is ideal for challenge events, allowing donors to sponsor their friends and family.

With the JustGiving app for Beacon, you can rest assured that all of your data is automatically imported into your Beacon database, structured and stored in the way that's right for you.

Contents


Features

Fundraisers import

When a supporter creates a new fundraising page for you in JustGiving, Beacon will automatically add them and their page as records in your account.

Donations import

When someone makes a donation in JustGiving, Beacon will automatically add the donation as a Payment in Beacon.

If the donor allowed JustGiving to pass their data to your organisation, then the donor will automatically be added as a Person in Beacon, allowing you to see the history of all of their payments in your database:

Additionally, Beacon can import the fundraiser responsible for each donation, setting them in the 'Fundraiser' field on the payment record. Helpfully, this allows you to quickly see how much a person has fundraised for you when viewing their person record:


Events & appeals

When importing fundraising pages and donations, Beacon will create events in your database for the JustGiving events that don't already exist in Beacon:

Beacon will also create a campaign in your database for each appeal you have in JustGiving, allowing you to easily keep track of the donations made across each one:


Install guide

Note: You need access to JustGiving's API feature to connect JustGiving with Beacon. For UK customers, this is only available on their paid plan.

Installing JustGiving takes a little longer to set up than other Beacon apps. This is because JustGiving requires you to:

  1. Create an "app" in their developer portal

  2. Get your app "upgraded" by the JustGiving data API

  3. Add your details into Beacon

1. Create a JustGiving app

Note: This is different to your regular JustGiving login.

Once you've created an account and verified your email, head to My Account > Applications.


You'll see that JustGiving has created an app already for you:

Woohoo! We're not done yet though...

2. Get your app approved by JustGiving

For this app to be used with Beacon, it needs to have it's "plan" changed by the JustGiving developer team to allow access to JustGiving's API.

Open your app, and then click Review/Change:

This should open a popup. Then click the Beacon CRM integration link on the left hand side, and then scroll down and click Request plan change.


After you've requested a "plan change" with JustGiving, the JustGiving developer team will review your request, and should grant you access within a few working days. You'll be notified by email when this happens.

3. Add your details into Beacon

Now you have your approved JustGiving app, you can connect with Beacon! Head over to Apps > Directory and click Install on the JustGiving app.

You'll immediately be prompted to connect with JustGiving:

When connecting, you will need to add your Charity ID (can be found in your regular JustGiving account Settings > Edit Charity Details):

You'll also be asked to provide your "App ID". This is for the developer app you just created, and can be found in your list of JustGiving developer applications:

The email and password fields are the usual details that you use to login to JustGiving with (not the developer details).

Important: JustGiving have recently required linking your JustGiving login to a Blackbaud login. After linking, some customers are experiencing problems connecting Beacon to their JustGiving account.

JustGiving have requested any customers facing this issue to contact them at [email protected].

Once you've entered all of the details, click Connect. Review the settings and then click Save integration.

Nicely done! JustGiving is now connected to your Beacon account!


Frequently asked questions

Does Beacon import all of my JustGiving data, or just donations that happen in the future?

Our JustGiving app is forward-looking. It only imports donations that are made after the JustGiving app is installed, and only imports fundraisers for fundraising pages that are created after the JustGiving app is installed.

You can use our CSV import template to import your existing data.

How quickly is new data from JustGiving added to Beacon?

Most JustGiving information usually appears in your account within 24 hours (but often much quicker!).

Payout information may have a longer delay from JustGiving - it can be a few days after a payout is made before that Payout record is created in Beacon.

How is Gift Aid handled?

At the moment, we assume that any donations marked as "Gift Aid Eligible" in JustGiving have their Gift Aid claimed by JustGiving. These payments will be imported into Beacon marked as "Gift Aid claimed", so won't be added to claims in Beacon.

How is contact consent set?

If a donor or fundraiser opts-in to provide their data to you in JustGiving, the data will be available for Beacon to import. We allow you to choose how to set contact consent for imported donors and fundraisers (which depends on your consent statements in JustGiving):

Does Beacon import individual fundraising pages?

Yes! To import fundraising pages and have donations linked to them, make sure you enable 'Import fundraising pages?' and have selected 'Fundraising pages' in the 'Import related information?' dropdown of the donations section of the JustGiving app settings in Beacon.


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Does Beacon import team pages?

No. It's not possible to donate directly to a team page in JustGiving, only to an individual page. Since team pages can't receive donations, they won't be created in Beacon.

What happens if I change my JustGiving password?

Note: This is for your regular JustGiving account and not the developer account that you used during the setup process

If you change the password of the JustGiving account associated with your Beacon account then you will need to update these details in Beacon. To do this you will need to disconnect the JustGiving app in Beacon by removing the connected account...

...and then clicking Save integration:

Once you've saved, reconnect your JustGiving app as normal and all your configuration settings will be restored!

Does Beacon support JustGiving's "custom codes"?

Not currently. Custom codes are most often used to set Funds and Campaigns. These can be managed within Beacon using workflows or bulk updates. If you have other uses for custom codes, please let us know more!

How should I handle Gift Aid paid out from JustGiving?

Beacon does not create any separate payment or payout records for Gift Aid amounts that JustGiving has claimed on your behalf. We suggest reconciling these outside of Beacon as there is often not a need to connect those Gift Aid amounts to the original payments. If you'd like to report within Beacon on Gift Aid raised we've got some suggestions with for smart-fields here. Reach out to us in support if you've got some more complex processes for how you manage Gift Aid allocation.

How does Beacon deduplicate records brought in through JustGiving integration?

Beacon will deduplicate records in the following ways:

  • Event - Event's name

  • Fundraising page - ID

  • Payment - ID

  • Person - Name & Email

JustGiving subscriptions don't have an ID available in the API so we'll create IDs from scratch for these!

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