How do I connect Raisely to Zoho CRM?
Here’s the order I do it in:
- Decide what a gift looks like in Zoho. Amount, date, appeal, campaign, payment method and whether it’s one-off or monthly.
- Bring your history across. Export your people and donations from Raisely as spreadsheets, tidy them, and import them into Zoho once.
- Turn on the live feed. Use Raisely’s webhooks, or the Raisely app on Zapier, to send each new donation to your automation tool.
- Find or create the supporter. Look them up in Zoho by email. If they’re there, use that record. If not, create one.
- Create the gift. Link it to the supporter and to the right appeal.
- Handle monthly giving. Treat a new monthly gift as a regular giving record, not just a one-off donation.
- Handle refunds. When Raisely refunds a donation, mark the gift as refunded in Zoho.
- Test it with a real small donation before you tell the team it’s live.
Which Raisely events should go to Zoho?
Raisely sends a webhook for each of these events. These are the ones worth sending to Zoho CRM:
| Raisely event | What it should do in Zoho CRM |
|---|---|
donation.succeeded |
Create the gift, and the supporter if they’re new |
donation.refunded |
Mark the gift as refunded |
subscription.created |
Start a regular giving record |
subscription.failed |
Flag the regular gift for a follow-up call |
subscription.cancelled |
Mark the regular gift as stopped |
profile.created |
Tag the supporter as a fundraiser |
Raisely’s own description of donation.succeeded is that it fires when an online donation is successfully charged. That’s the one to build the gift from, rather than donation.created, so you don’t record donations that never went through.
Should I use Zapier or Make?
Either works.
- Zapier has a ready-made Raisely app, with triggers such as a new online donation or a new person. It’s the quickest to set up.
- Make takes Raisely’s webhooks directly, which gives you more control over matching and error handling.
Both charge by how much they run, so the cost depends on how many donations you get. I’ll set it up in whichever your charity already pays for.
How do I stop duplicate supporters?
- Match on email first. Most online donors give an email, and it’s the most reliable match.
- Then check name and postcode for anyone without an email.
- Turn on Zoho’s duplicate check so staff can’t create the same person by hand.
- Clean your history before importing it. It’s much easier to merge duplicates in a spreadsheet than after they’re in the system.
What about receipts?
Send receipts from one place only. If Raisely already emails a receipt when someone donates, don’t send a second one from Zoho. If you’d rather receipt from Zoho, so receipts match your other gifts, turn Raisely’s receipt off first. Either way, record in Zoho what was sent and when.
How long does it take?
A live Raisely feed is part of the Connected donor system, which I build in two weeks. If you already have Zoho CRM and just want the Raisely feed added, tell me what you’ve got and I’ll quote it as a fixed job.