Scan the donation and membership forms that came back in the post and the donor list updates itself: name, address, gift amount, whether it is one-off or recurring, the appeal it responded to, the consent boxes ticked, and any tax declaration. Acknowledgment letters go out the same week instead of at the end of the quarter.
The app embedded on this page is the Quick Apps Lead Capture, a real Taskade Genesis build you can submit to right now. It captures a supporter and their details into a row, which is the donor record without the mailed-in paper. Click "Use this app" to clone it in about ten seconds, add the amount, consent, and receipt columns, then put a File field, the reading step, and the extraction in front of it.
The build is sized for a small charity office. A Donors Project holds one row per supporter and a Gifts Project holds one row per donation, kept as connected records so a donor who gives four times a year is still one donor. A staff form takes the appeal, the batch date, and a File field that accepts several scanned forms in one go. The Convert File to Text step reads each page, which is what makes handwritten forms workable at all. An Ask Agent step returns donor name, address, email, phone, gift amount and currency, one-off or recurring, payment method, appeal code, the consent options ticked, and any tax declaration such as gift aid. Consent fields are treated carefully: anything ambiguous comes back blank and flagged, because a wrongly recorded consent is a compliance problem rather than a typo.
The supporter picture reads where fundraising works:
- Table view for the full donor register with gift totals and consents
- Board view to move new supporters through Thanked, Welcomed, and Nurtured
- Calendar view for recurring gift dates and appeal timings
- Plus List, Mind Map, Gantt, and Org Chart across the 7 project views
Automations get the thank you out. With Taskade automations, a new gift creates an acknowledgment task the same day, a recurring gift sets up its schedule, and a form with a missing consent is queued for a staff check before the record is used for anything. Across 100+ bidirectional integrations, forms pull scans in while Gmail and Google Sheets push acknowledgments and reporting out. The AI agents inside the app carry 34 built-in tools with persistent memory, so an agent can draft an appeal report from your own gift data.
Batch discipline is what keeps this clean: one submission per post batch, with the date and the appeal recorded, so a query about a specific day has an obvious answer. Decide before you start what you will do with an ambiguous consent tick, and write that rule down, because consistency matters more than the particular choice you make. Keep the acknowledgment task attached to the gift rather than to the donor, so a supporter who gives twice gets thanked twice. Small offices see the biggest gain here, since the work being removed is exactly the work that was being done in evenings.
Clone the app, invite the fundraising team, and the donors, the forms, and the consent rules are yours.
Read the upload path in File Uploads in Your App, the pattern in Build a Document Intake App, and the format list in Read Scanned Paperwork and Photos. Browse live builds in the Community Gallery, explore automations, or start from the templates library. Pair this with Turn Permission Slips Into a Live Class Roster if you run community events too, and Read Bank Statements Into a Working Ledger to reconcile gifts against the bank.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can it read handwritten donation forms?
Yes, that is the main case. Printed capitals in boxes read best. Anything ambiguous, especially an amount or a consent box, comes back blank and flagged so a person checks one field rather than the whole batch.
How are consent options handled?
Conservatively, and deliberately so. A tick the reading step is not confident about is treated as unknown, not as consent. Staff confirm from the scanned form, which stays attached to the record.
Can a batch of forms go in at once?
Yes. Attach several scans in one submission with the batch date and appeal, and the extraction produces one gift row per form while keeping the batch reference on each.
Does it match a repeat donor to their existing record?
Ask for a match on name plus postcode or email before creating a record, and mark a probable match for confirmation rather than merging automatically. Merging the wrong supporters is harder to unpick than confirming a handful.
What about tax declarations?
Ask for the declaration as its own field and store the date it was signed. The scanned form remains attached, which is what you will be asked for if the declaration is ever audited.
Are the paper forms kept?
Yes. Each scan attaches to the gift row and lands in your workspace Media tab, so the original stays with the record it created.
Can we run this on a small budget?
Build and test it on Free, which includes 6,000 one-time AI credits, 3 Taskade Genesis apps, and 10 flow runs in total. Running the acknowledgment automations continuously needs a paid plan, and Pro is $10 per month billed annually.
Can it handle a form where the donor writes an amount but pays differently?
Ask for stated amount and payment method as separate fields and treat the bank as the source of truth for what was actually received. Reconciling the two is what catches the gap between intention and payment, which is a real and common gap.
