PURLs: Donation Personalized URLs

PURLs: Donation PURLs

Personalized donation experiences can make a measurable difference in an appeal’s response rate—especially when you’re speaking to warm supporters. Donation PURLs help you deliver that experience at scale by sending each supporter to a donation page that already recognises them and reflects the ask you want them to see.

This article walks you through how to create and manage Donation PURLs in Funraisin—how to prepare your data, import it, choose the right PURL mode, manage individual records, and report on campaign performance. Everything is designed to help you build personalized giving journeys without technical setup or custom URLs.

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What are PURLs?

PURLs (Personalized URLs) are unique, supporter-specific links generated through a PURL campaign. Each link contains a secure hash that allows Funraisin to prefill selected supporter data—such as name, email, and donation amounts—directly into a donation or appeal page.

When a supporter clicks their PURL, the platform reads the hash, loads the assigned donation page, and applies the personalized data to the appropriate form fields. This reduces friction, supports personalized ask strategies, and helps track conversions back to individual supporters.

How do PURLs work?

A PURL is generated by combining a supporter’s data with a unique, encrypted hash created during the PURL import process. This hash acts as a secure lookup key that Funraisin uses to retrieve the correct supporter record.

Here’s what happens behind the scenes:

1. You upload supporter data into a PURL campaign (for example: name, email, suggested donation amounts).
2. Funraisin creates a unique hash for each row of data. This hash becomes part of the personalized URL. e.g a580fe022c9388a8c966f162eed31e65
3. When a supporter clicks their PURL, the platform reads the hash and uses it to pull the matching record from the campaign.
4. Funraisin then prefills the donation or appeal page with any personalized fields you included – such as first name, email, or donation amount.
5. If persistent mode is enabled, the hash can be reused until it expires; otherwise, it becomes inactive after a successful donation.

This workflow keeps supporter data secure, reduces the information a donor needs to enter, and helps you track each donation back to the individual PURL that generated it.

How can PURLs be used?

In addition to Donation PURLs, PURLs can be used across other parts of the Funraisin platform, depending on the experience you want to create.

Incomplete Registration PURLs are used to re-engage people who’ve started but not completed an event registration. These PURLs streamline the sign-up process by prefilling the registration form with the entrant’s existing details, helping reduce friction and improve completion rates.

Engagement PURLs can direct supporters to a tailored end-of-campaign experience. Unlike Donation and Registration PURLs, which focus on conversion, Engagement PURLs are designed for recognition, motivation, and long-term engagement.

Donation PURLs and Incomplete Registration PURLs can be created and managed directly within your platform admin. Engagement PURLs, however, are standalone, custom-built projects. If you’re interested in exploring this option, please submit a support ticket via your platform admin for further information.

For more information on PURLs and how they can be used, see our support articles:

• PURLs: Introduction to PURLs
• PURLs: Incomplete Registration

Types of Donation PURLs

Donation PURLs can be created in two formats, depending on how you want the personalized link to behave once it’s used. Both types use the same import and support the same personalized fields—the difference is how long the link remains active.

• One-time PURLs (default)

One-time PURLs expire automatically after a supporter completes a donation. This is the original PURL behaviour and is ideal for campaigns where each link should only be used once.

Best for:

• Direct mail appeals
• One-off solicitations
• When each supporter should have a single-use link
• Appeals requiring strict attribution

How they behave:

• The PURL deactivates immediately after a donation
• Reusing the link loads the donation page without prefilled data
• No expiry date is required

• Persistent PURLs

Persistent PURLs remain active even after a supporter donates, allowing the same personalized link to be reused throughout your appeal window. Because these links stay active, you’ll need to set an expiry date—up to 6 months in the future, with the option to extend it for another 6 months each time you update the campaign.

Best for:

• Multi-touch appeal journeys
• Follow-up reminders
• Appeals with multiple giving moments (e.g., end-of-year campaigns)

How they behave:

• The PURL continues to work after the first donation
• Supporters can click the link multiple times until the expiry date
• Expiry ensures privacy and compliance
• Each donation is still individually tracked and attributed to the PURL

When a one-time PURL has been used—or when a persistent PURL reaches its expiry date—the link will still load your donation page, but no personalized data will be applied.

If the supporter is logged out, they’ll simply see the standard, non-prefilled version of the form.

Import fields glossary

The first step in creating a new PURL campaign is to prepare your data. Start by downloading the PURL import template, which includes example dummy data to help you understand the required format.

When preparing your import file, the following fields are available. Only First Name and Last Name are mandatory for donation PURLs. All other fields are optional and can be included based on the level of personalization you want to apply.

You only need to populate the fields that support your appeal strategy. PURLs will prefill any personalization tags that exist on your donation or appeal page, so include only the data you intend to use.

If your donation form collects details like address, email, or phone number and you’ve included those fields in your PURL import, they will automatically prepopulate for the supporter. If those fields aren’t present on the form, the data is simply stored against the PURL record and won’t be displayed.

This gives you full control over how personalised each appeal should be—without requiring you to provide every possible field.

Preparing Import Data

Donation PURLs are generated in bulk from within the Donations module. Each row in your import file becomes its own personalised link, with campaign settings controlling how those links behave.

To create a new import:

1

Go to Fundraising > Donations in your admin

2

Open Advanced options

3

Select Manage PURLs

4

Along the top, click the Import list tab

5

Download the CSV template (Blue button in the Import Fields section)

6

Add your data to your template:

• Include Donation Amount (column T) if you want a specific donation amount to be pre-selected when the supporter lands on the page.
• Important: The amount you enter must match one of the personalised dollar handle amounts you’ve provided in the spreadsheet. If it doesn’t match, no amount will be pre-selected.
• Include Dollar Handle Amounts 1–4 (columns W, X, Y, and Z) to personalise the suggested amounts shown to each supporter. These values will override the default dollar handles on your donation form, as long as the form contains the same number of handles.
• Note: If you enter a value of 0 for any dollar handle position, the form will fall back to the default handle for that position. For example:
• Default handles: 10, 20, 30, 40
• Imported PURL values: 100, 0, 150, 200
• Displayed on the page: 100, 20, 150, 200

7

Save the file as a CSV

Creating a New PURL Campaign

1

Go to Fundraising > Donations in your admin

2

Open Advanced options

3

Select Manage PURLs

4

Along the top, click the Import list tab

5

Choose Create new campaign

6

Name your campaign and add an optional description (helpful for tracking appeal waves or segments)

7

Assign the donation or appeal page your PURLs should link to

• You can choose any platform donation page or any event-specific donation page
• This removes the need to manually build URL/hash combinations

8

Select your PURL mode:

• One-time (default) — expires after one donation
• Persistent — stays active until the expiry date

8

Select your PURL mode:

• One-time (default) — expires after one donation
• Persistent — stays active until the expiry date

9

If you select persistent mode, set an expiry date (up to 6 months; extendable if needed)

10

Click Choose File to upload your completed csv spreadsheet

• During the import, Funraisin will:
• Generate a unique hash for each row
• Validate email addresses (ensuring duplicates aren’t processed twice within the same campaign)
• Create a personalised URL for each successful record

11

Review the import results, fix any flagged issues if needed, and click Complete import

Once complete, your new campaign will display:

• Total number of PURLs created
• A searchable list of individual PURLs
• Tools to edit supporter details (excluding the hash and personalised link, which are uneditable. The personalised link will only be visible if a donation or appeal page was assigned to the campaign.)
• Options to download the full PURL list

Managing an existing PURL campaign

Once your PURL campaign has been created, you can manage it directly from the same area in the Donations module. The updated PURL tools give you clearer visibility and more flexibility—making it easier to monitor campaign performance, correct data issues, and adjust settings without needing to re-upload your file.

To manage an existing PURL campaign:

• Go to Fundraising > Donations in your admin.
• Click Advanced options in the central white navigation.
• Select Manage PURLs.

From here, you’ll see a full overview of your campaign and have access to the following tools:

Update campaign settings

You can adjust key settings without affecting any existing PURLs:

• Switch between One-time or Persistent mode
• Change the assigned donation page
• Update the expiry date (persistent mode only)

These changes take effect immediately for all PURLs within the campaign.

Searching For PURLs

Instead of downloading a CSV to find individual supporters, you can now search directly within the campaign using the quick find search field. You can search using any of the following:

• Name
• Email (if provided)
• CRM ID
• Hash ID

This saves significant time for large campaigns and helps quickly locate individual supporters.

Edit individual PURL records

You can click into any PURL record to edit supporter details. Editable fields include:

• First name
• Last name
• Email
• Ask amounts
• Address fields
• Custom segmentation fields

The hash and generated PURL link cannot be edited, but you can copy the link with one click using the clipboard icon.

This allows you to correct typos or update supporter information without re-importing the entire campaign—especially helpful for campaigns with thousands of records.

Downloading a PURL Campaign

If you’d like to review or export all generated PURLs, you can download the full file at any time. The export includes:

• Supporter data
• The generated PURL link
• Each PURL’s unique hash