Manually Create A Giver Profile (Person Record)

While Nucleus Giving is first and foremost a platform to take in and manage online donations/transactions, we also offer the ability to keep track and manage offline donations as well. In order to accommodate this, Nucleus Giving also allows you to manually create a Giver in your database for those people you know will never donate online and create their own person record that way.

Let’s explore how easy it is to create a Giver in your Nucleus Giving database!

Note: Before moving on, it’s important to understand how people records and profiles are created in Nucleus Giving, so if you haven’t yet read our guide on that, we recommend checking that out here.


Note: Certain admin access levels and permissions will prevent you from being able to create a Giver. Particularly, if you have View Only admin access to Nucleus Giving, it doesn’t matter that you have View, Edit & Create permissions; you will be unable to create a Giver. All other admin access levels will allow you to create a Giver as long as you have View, Edit & Create permissions for the people database. To learn more about admin access levels and permissions, click here.

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Manually Created People Records = Offline People Records

While this information is covered in How People Records (Giver Profiles) Are Created, it’s important to reiterate that manually created people records are offline people records.

Offline people records have no logins associated with them, nor can you create a login/password for an offline record later down the road. This means the real person associated with an offline record cannot login to My Nucleus and access their giving records.

So it’s always best to make sure that, before you begin manually creating a bunch of Givers in Nucleus Giving, to follow our guide to Introduce Nucleus Giving To Your Church. Prompt your congregation to create their own person records with unique logins, and to leave manually creating offline records for those people you know will never donate digitally through your GivingFlow.

Manually Create A Giver

Rather than manually creating a Giver in your Nucleus Giving People list, creating a Giver takes place in your Transactions Panel. This is because you would only be creating a Giver in your Nucleus Giving database in the context that you need to keep track of offline donations for that particular person.

So to begin, go to your Transactions Panel in Nucleus Giving. Click here for a quick link.

Next, click on the + Add New button.

You’ll be prompted to start typing for a name that already exists in your People database. Instead, click the + Add A New Person button.

Here, you’ll be able to add in the person’s basic profile information including:

  • First, middle, and last name
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Postal address
  • Connection Type

The only two pieces of information required to create an offline person record is their first and last name. If you don’t know any additional information, you can always add those details to their profile later.

Once you have at least the first and last name entered, you’ll see a section below appear to begin adding an offline donation that will be associated with this person. (Again, there’s no need to manually create a Giver if there is no donation to associate with them.)

Enter the details about the donation, including:

  • Dollar amount
  • Date given
  • Fund
  • Method
  • Memo (optional)

Once satisfied with all the details you’ve entered, click Save Changes.

Below, you’ll see the latest manual donation entries, including the one you just input.

Now, the next time you go to manually add a donation, you’ll be able to type their name and select them from your database.

Manage A Giver’s Person Record

Once you’ve created a Giver, they exist in your overall Nucleus People database. But specifically, let’s explore the people database in Nucleus Giving.

To begin, go to your People Panel in Nucleus Giving. Click here for a quick link.

Find the person you just created and select View Profile. (To learn more about how to navigate your People Panel, click here.)

Here, you can edit and augment this person’s profile information.

There are also tabs to view this person’s giving history, to view their annual giving statements, and to manually enter new donations.

Click here to learn more about the specifics on how to manage a Giver’s person record.

Admin Access & People Database Permissions

Because people records are available in most products, there are various levels of permission every admin can be granted, regardless of what products they have access to:

  • View
  • View & Edit
  • View, Edit, & Create

On top of this, if an admin has the highest level of people database permissions (View, Edit & Create) you can also give them the permission to hide people records.

If you don’t have the ability to manipulate a person record, it’s likely because you haven’t been granted the permission to do so.

Alternatively, you might also not have the correct admin access level in Nucleus Giving. There are four different admin access levels:

  • Manager - Access to view and manage everything
  • Pastoral - Access to view and manage everything but cannot see any personal Giver data
  • Assistant - Access to view and manage everything, except admins and settings
  • View Only - View only access, no access to admins/settings

If you are set to the Pastoral admin access level, you will be able to access the list of Givers in Nucleus Giving, but you won’t be able to see any donation information associated with their person records. (You will also be unable to view profile information attached to any gift throughout Nucleus Giving.)

If you are set to the View Only admin access level, you will be able to see and access the list of Givers in Nucleus Giving (as well as any personal Giver data elsewhere in Nucleus Giving), but you will be unable to manipulate or edit any information you see.

If you believe you should have greater access to view and/or edit people records, you’ll need to request additional permissions and/or admin access, which a higher level admin (or account owner of your Nucleus) can do. (If you’re the account owner, you can make this change to your own account.)

Note: If you’re also subscribed to Nucleus People, the permissions referenced above are different from general admin access to Nucleus People. Nucleus People is a product within your Nucleus Dashboard, but viewing and/or adjusting people database records can be done at some level in most Nucleus products. To learn how to invite people to access Nucleus People, click here.

No Need To Import Records

While other platforms may allow you to import people records, Nucleus does not for the following reasons:

  1. Importing records would leave you with a bunch of manually created records that are disconnected from a real person’s My Nucleus account or login. So even if someone were to later digitally create a record, it would be a completely separate record, leaving you with duplicates to manage in your database.
  2. Because each church system interprets information differently, usually imported people records require a bunch of manual edits afterwards, cross referencing the information in the old ChMS with what’s now populated in your Nucleus Giving database, to ensure the data is accurate. This often eats into time and energy admins can be using in more productive ways when setting up their Nucleus account.
  3. It’s rarely (if ever) a good experience for admins or your congregation. For example, some other church software might allow you to import your old person records. However, if you want them attached and activated with real people, it then requires your congregation to follow a set of instructions to accept invitations and create logins in order to convert those offline records into digital ones. And since not everyone will follow those instructions and will create new digital records, you’ll be in the same situation as Point #1, where you have duplicate records to manage. Or you have a lot of chasing down of people to do, which we’ve experienced personally and it’s a real headache for everyone involved - staff and congregation and causes a lot of friction.

In short, it always seems like importing records is an amazing shortcut, but the reality is rarely so smooth and often the work is just hidden. So, instead of importing a bunch of manually created records and dealing with all the issues that come along with that, it’s best to start fresh and let people records populate automatically as you need them. (Which means letting people create their own records by donating through the GivingFlow - or any other type of Flow you might have set up if you’re subscribed to other Nucleus products.)

To help populate your people database in Nucleus Giving organically (i.e. instead of creating a bunch of unnecessary manual people records), we’ve put together a guide on how to Introduce Nucleus Giving To Your Church. This includes both transitioning from one online giving platform to Nucleus, or introducing online giving for the first time.

If you’re coming from another online giving platform and you’re wondering how to manage two different platform’s annual giving statements:

  1. You can simply provide people with two giving statements next year: one from your previous online giving platform, and one from Nucleus Giving.
  2. Depending on when you transition to Nucleus Giving (or how many donations you take in throughout the year), it might be feasible to manually add donations to each person’s record as offline donations, to account for all the donations given via your old online giving platform.

From our experience, people are usually pretty understanding that, if you transition from one giving platform to another, they’ll be receiving two separate annual giving statements the following year 😊

What Next?

Nucleus Giving is a fantastic platform to keep track of all your donations - both online and offline. But we would be remiss if you couldn’t also manage Giver profiles and people records well either. Click below to learn more about the People database in Nucleus Giving.

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