Gift Giving

[brendan.johnson]

We are a non-profit arm of our city zoo, and sell memberships as well as other types of donations. One of the big marketing incentives we use is to give a membership as a gift. Or sponsor an animal for someone. Or buy a memorial plaque in someone's honor. So we need to let people buy these things as a gift for someone else.
We essentially need to end up with a contact record created for the recipient as well as the purchaser, and the two to be linked in some way for our records. The membership should be attached to the recipient, not the purchaser. Does that make sense? Is it possible using profile and relationship features of civiCRM?
We asked this question of a commercial software solution and they weren't even sure how to go about that in their software, so I know it's not an "easy" thing. But it is necessary for us. Any thoughts?

[Dave Greenberg]

For plaques, animal sponsorships and other "hard-goods" - I think the built-in "Honoree" feature available both in back-office and online contribution pages would work for you. We do create contact records for both the donor and honoree and they are linked via the contribution record.

You could use the "Premiums" feature to create a list of "things you can give" - with minimum required donation amounts for each selection. The selected premium is also stored w/ the contribution record.

You could handle memberships in the same way - but some custom code would need to be handled if you want to use the full CiviMember membership component functionality. The available functionality allows for self-service membership signup - but not as a gift for someone else - and not as a premium. If you want to pursue this further - read about and try CiviMember features - then post back here with more details about your membership process / requirements.

[brendan.johnson]

Thanks for your prompt reply. I'll investigate and let you know. I noticed another forum post where you suggested modifying the honoree code to allow for more fields (address, etc). I am capable of doing that, but I do that as little as possible So we'll see what happens.

[brendan.johnson]

OOOOOK,
So in order to purchase a membership or donation/premiums for someone else, honoree is the key (if I read you right). It is the only feature in this process that creates a second record. So I would need to collect more than just name and email for the honoree. I'd also need to collect address. Do I need to modify the scripts for that? If so, which one(s)?
I tried doing to searching through the scripts but this is quite a labyrinth of code for me. "honoree" shows up in a lot of places.

Thanks!

[Donald Lobo]

CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/*.php
templates/CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/*.tpl

are the set of files you need to modify and add more fields to the form and processing logic to store the information

ping us on IRC (http://embed.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%23civicrm&forcePrompt=true) if you need any help

lobo

[ethanwilde]

We also are investigating the possibility of supporting the purchase of gift memberships with the same use case as Brendan, which raises a few specific questions we'd love some help with:

1) What kind of changes would we need to make to the files referenced:
CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/*.php
templates/CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/*.tpl

2) How would we get the "honoree" (person for whom the membership is being purchased) to be recognized as a member by CiviMember? Would the envisioned code changes handle this, or would human admin tasks be needed to update the contact records of the honoree?

3) How would the membership levels available be selected by the end user making the transaction and how would the levels be imparted to the "honoree" contact record?

We've got to spec out the steps to pull this capability off (code changes or human admin tasks) soon so any guidance would be most appreciated!

[Donald Lobo]

1. you will need to add form fields to collect honoree information

2. you will need to modify the code to associate the membership with the honoree

3. you might want to create a relationship to record who created this honoree membership, since that might affect renewal

ping us on IRC if u need more information

lobo

[ethanwilde]

Thanks for the quick response!

Can you refer me to the API documentation that covers the relevant code additions?

- associating membership with honoree
- associating purchaser with membership to enable purchaser to renew a gift membership (is this feasible?)

[Donald Lobo]

1. IRC is probably a better option for this

2. I dont think there are any APIs that you can use here, you'll be modifying the code to do the needful

lobo

[Vicki Kyriakakis]

Hi there,

My issue is related, so I thought I'd post it in this thread.

We're a not-for-profit environment group, and have set up a simple give a gift donation page for people to donate online on behalf of someone.

http://www.environmentvictoria.org.au/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=6

What I'd like to know is, is there a way to generate an automatic second email (other than the donation receipt) that can be sent to the donor to send to the person they are donating on behalf of?

Many thanks!