Onboarding wizard

The onboarding wizard opens automatically after you activate GiveFlow. Until you finish or skip it, GiveFlow sends you back to it from every admin screen except the WordPress Plugins and Updates screens, so you can always deactivate the plugin if you need to. It walks you through five steps to configure your fundraising setup and create your first campaign.

Every step shows a “Step X of 5” counter. Until the last step, you can leave the wizard with the Skip for now link at the top of the screen.

Step 1: What are you fundraising for?

Pick who is fundraising. You have four options:

• Nonprofit or charity
• Community or faith group
• Individual fundraiser
• Just exploring

Then pick a cause area from the dropdown, such as education and schools, health and medical, or animals and wildlife. Both fields are required before you can continue. Your answers shape the suggested goal amounts and default copy later in the wizard.

What “Just exploring” does

Selecting Just exploring turns on org-wide test mode when you finish the wizard. In test mode, no real payments are processed and a sandbox gateway becomes available, so you can try out every feature without risk. It also lets you skip the address fields on the next step.

You can turn off test mode later in GiveFlow > Settings > Payments when you are ready to accept real donations.

Step 2: Where are you based?

Enter your organization name and contact email, then pick your country. If you pick the United States, Canada, or Australia, a second dropdown appears for the state or province. Unless you chose “Just exploring”, you also need a street address, city, postal code, and the state or province where one is offered, because these appear on receipts.

The last section on this step is Currency. GiveFlow fills it in from the country you picked where it recognizes one, and you can change it to any supported currency. This is your organization’s default currency, which all reporting rolls up to.

Your organization name appears on donation receipts, and GiveFlow uses it to name the campaign it creates for you at the end of the wizard.

Step 3: Set your fundraising goal

Choose how your first campaign tracks progress. You have two options:

• Single target: Set a specific fundraising goal. GiveFlow suggests four amounts based on your cause area, and you can type a custom amount instead. Your campaign page displays a progress bar showing how close you are to reaching it.
• Ongoing collection: Accept donations with no target. GiveFlow counts every donation toward the campaign total, and you can add a target later.

Step 4: Pick a starting look

Choose one of four brand presets for your donation forms:

• Classic: friendly, rounded, indigo.
• Bold: deep navy, strong type, dramatic shadow.
• Quiet: minimal lines, lots of white space.
• Use my theme: inherits styles from your site theme. This option is unavailable when GiveFlow cannot detect a theme palette.

A live preview of a sample donation form sits below the presets and updates as you switch between them. You can edit colors and typography at any time afterwards in GiveFlow > Settings > Brand.

Click Finish setup to save your choices. GiveFlow then creates three things for you:

1. Your first campaign, published, with the goal you selected.
2. A WordPress page for that campaign, with starter blocks already in place.
3. A default donation form attached to the campaign. It starts as a draft, and the form editor offers you a template the first time you open it.

The campaign page stays a draft until that form is published, so donors never land on a page whose form cannot take a donation.

Step 5: You’re set up

The final step is a short get-started checklist with two links:

• Connect a payment gateway, which opens the payment settings.
• Build your first form, which opens the form editor for the donation form GiveFlow just created.

There is also a Skip for now link to your dashboard. Nothing redirects you automatically, so you choose where to go next.

Next steps

• Learn about the dashboard to monitor your fundraising progress.
• Read Create your first campaign to understand campaigns in detail.
• Connect a payment gateway in GiveFlow > Settings > Payments to start accepting real donations.