INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS > Importing Donors and Donations from CanadaHelps

If you use the CanadaHelps service to accept online donations, they have an option to export data files for importing into other programs.

You can import that one file with the Database ⇒ Import ⇒ Donors and Donations menu option, in order to import both donors and donations that are included on the same lines of the file.

Please first read the Help topic Importing Donors and Donations from One File to understand the general issues about doing this type of activity. What follows are the specifics for CanadaHelps. This page will not repeat the details from that overall instruction page.

Here is a table of some sample data exported from CanadaHelps as of mid-2020, using its default export columns. Please note that they could change the list of fields at any time, and then you would have to adjust the details below!

We have actually turned the data sideways to make it understandable (and fit on a page!). So if this was in Excel, the rows would be columns and vice-versa. We added a first column to the table below to count the field numbers. What I have listed as Field 1 is really Column A in Excel, Field 2 is Column B, etc. The 2nd column of the table below is the row of headings from the data, and the 3rd column is a made-up sample data row.

Field #	Heading	Data
1	TRANSACTION NUMBER	TRxxxxx
2	PAYMENT METHOD	Credit Card
3	RECEIPT #
4	DONOR TITLE	Ms.
5	DONOR FIRST NAME	Anne
6	DONOR LAST NAME	Andrews
7	DONOR COMPANY NAME
8	DONOR ADDRESS 1	1 Main St.
9	DONOR ADDRESS 2
10	DONOR CITY	Toronto
11	DONOR PROVINCE/STATE	ON
12	DONOR POSTAL/ZIP CODE	M1M 1M1
13	DONOR COUNTRY	CA
14	DONOR PHONE NUMBER
15	DONOR EMAIL ADDRESS	anne.andrews@mailservice.com
16	DONOR EMAIL OPT IN	N/A
17	DONOR LANGUAGE	ENGLISH
18	CHARITY LEGAL NAME	MY CHARITY
19	CHARITY BN#	12345…
20	FUND DESIGNATION	E- General
21	AMOUNT	20
22	RECEIPTABLE AMOUNT	20
23	DONATION DATE	01/01/2020
24	DONATION TIME	5:59 AM
25	FEE	0.7
26	DISBURSEMENT STATUS	Disbursement confirmed
27	TOTAL DISBURSED	19.3
28	IN HONOUR OF	FALSE
29	HONOUREE
30	IN MEMORY OF	FALSE
31	ECARD SENT	NO
32	CARD REQUESTED	FALSE
33	CARD NAME
34	CARD ADDRESS 1
35	CARD CITY
36	CARD PROVINCE/STATE
37	CARD COUNTRY
38	CARD POSTAL/ZIP CODE
39	CARD ADDRESS 2
40	CARD SIGNED AS
41	CARD SPECIAL MESSAGE
42	MESSAGE TO CHARITY

There are more columns beyond that, but we do not current see a use for them in this importing.

Based on this, the following list of columns would be selected in the Fields to Import list of the Database ⇒ Import ⇒ Donors and Donations window:

•Skip 3 Columns

•Title

•First Name

•Last Name

•Business Name
Note: in our examination of the data, this often showed up as the first name plus the last name, so it might be better to use Skip 1 Column here!

•Addr1

•Addr2

•Addr3 (Merge 2 Fields)
This merges the DONOR CITY and DONOR PROVINCE/STATE fields into one field.

•Postal Code

•Skip 1 Column

•Phone

•Email

•Skip 4 Columns

•Category

•Total Amount

•Eligible Amount

•Date Received

•Skip 18 Columns

•Description

The rest of the columns are irrelevant, so we will ignore them. When importing donors and donations, if there are extra columns at the end of each row you will be warned about that, but given an option to just ignore them, so we don't need to have a big "Skip ... Columns" at the end to skip them.

Import that possibly edited file now, with the following other settings:

•1 header row

•Email Address as the unique identifier for donors

•either Update existing donors from data in matching rows from the file or Ignore rows from the file matching existing donors (whichever you prefer)

•In Section 5, choose Pre-Receipted.

The reason for that last selection is that CanadaHelps.org issues tax receipts itself. So we need "Pre-Receipted" to be entered into the Cheque # / Paid By field, to ensure that we don't send a receipt too for these donations.

Warning: CanadaHelps allows anonymous donations. In that case, "ANON" will be put into many of the fields, including the EMAIL field. Since that is not a valid email address, it will cause the file to be rejected, with an appropriate error displayed. To fix that, you will have to load the file into Excel, find any instances of "ANON" in the EMAIL field (Column O in the current version of that file), and change it to something importable into a new anonymous donor record, perhaps "anon@anon.com". You will also want to find that donor record after it is imported the first time, and set it to be non-receiptable.

Saving the Settings

You can repeat these imports each time you download a new file from CanadaHelps, using the same settings, which the program remembers for you unless you do other different imports with this window in between, that get memorized in place of these settings. To be sure you can get back to these settings, we recommend using the Save Settings button and saving them with the name "CanadaHelps", without the quotes. Then if you have used this same window for some different importing, you can get back to these PayPal settings with the Load Setting button.

This topic was last edited on Feb 17, 2023