ApproveThis manages your Fundraise Up Integration approvals.

When Fundraising Meets Approval Automation

Let's get real: Nonprofits have better things to do than play email tag about whether to accept a $5,000 donation from someone named "Anonymous McCash." That's where ApproveThis and Fundraise Up come in - like peanut butter and jelly for your donation operations.

Fundraise Up handles the donor experience - slick donation pages, recurring gifts, all that good stuff. ApproveThis handles the internal chaos - who needs to sign off on large donations, vet new major donors, or validate recurring payment setups. Connect them through Zapier, and you've got a system where money flows in faster than your finance team can say "Where's the gift agreement?"

Why This Combo Works for Teams That Hate Paperwork

Nonprofits running 50-5,000 person operations usually have three problems: Too many hands in the donation cookie jar, compliance nightmares, and development directors who'd rather be cultivating donors than chasing internal approvals.

Here's what changes when you connect these tools:

• No more license juggling: Board members approving big gifts? External legal counsel? They approve via email - no new software logins needed.
• Automatic paper trails: Every approval decision gets timestamped and attached to the donor record automatically.

Real-World Uses That Actually Make Sense

1. Large Donation Vetting Without the Panic

Scenario: A $50k donation hits your Fundraise Up portal at 2 AM. Normally, this would trigger 17 Slack messages, three "URGENT" emails, and someone CC'ing the entire board by accident.

With the integration:
- Zapier creates an ApproveThis request automatically
- Finance gets notified if it's over $10k
- Legal gets looped in if the donor's from a restricted country
- ED approves via email while boarding a plane
- Fundraise Up updates the donor record once approved

Ideal for: Orgs with complex gift acceptance policies or international donors.

2. Major Donor Onboarding That Doesn't Suck

When a new high-capacity donor appears in Fundraise Up, ApproveThis can:

- Trigger a prospect review with the development committee
- Check if the donor exists in your CRM (via calculated fields)
- Automatically escalate to leadership if giving history suggests major gift potential

Bonus: Use approval thresholds to auto-approve donors below certain giving levels, so you only manually review the big fish.

3. Recurring Donation Audits That Prevent Embarrassment

Problem: A monthly donor changes their payment method, but your system doesn't flag it for review. Cue the failed charges and awkward "We lost your credit card" emails.

Solution: Set ApproveThis to automatically:
- Flag recurring gifts over $1k/month for finance review
- Require dual approval for payment method changes
- Pause subscriptions if approvals aren't completed by the renewal date

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

Here's the 2-step process even your least techy board member could handle:

1. In Zapier, choose "New Donation" in Fundraise Up as your trigger
2. Select "Create Approval Request" in ApproveThis as your action

Pro tip: Use ApproveThis' conditional logic to:
- Auto-approve donations under $500
- Route international gifts to legal first
- Add 24-hour SLA reminders for urgent requests

Who Actually Benefits From This?

Development Teams

Stop being the middleman between donors and finance. When major gifts auto-trigger approval workflows, you get notified once everything's cleared - no more herding cats.

Finance Departments

Configure rules like:
- Any donation over 5% of annual budget requires board notification
- Gifts from new corporate sponsors need tax docs attached
- International wires get extra scrutiny

Leadership

Get visibility into the approval pipeline without micromanaging. The dashboard shows pending requests, average approval times, and bottlenecks. Plus, vacation delegation means approvals don't stall when someone's at a conference.

The Nuts and Bolts You Care About

ApproveThis plays nice with Fundraise Up's API through Zapier, meaning:

- Approvers don't need Fundraise Up logins (massive win for external board members)
- All approval data syncs back to donor records automatically
- You can set dollar amount thresholds that auto-approve or escalate requests
- Multi-step approvals happen in sequence or parallel

Why This Isn't Just Another Integration

Most approval tools treat all requests the same. ApproveThis adds nonprofit-specific layers:

- Donor intent validation: Flag gifts where designation doesn't match any existing programs
- Compliance checks: Auto-attach IRS docs based on donation type
- Stewardship triggers: Start drafting thank you notes while approvals are pending

Time to Stop Losing Donations to Bureaucracy

Let's be clear - this isn't about adding more process. It's about making existing processes invisible to donors while keeping your team compliant.

The best part? You can start small:
1. Auto-approve 90% of routine donations
2. Only manually review exceptions
3. Gradually add rules as you scale

Nonprofits using both tools report closing gifts 40% faster and reducing finance team headaches by about... well, let's just say "a lot."

Book a demo to see how approval automation works, or start a free trial if you're ready to stop being your team's approval secretary.