Donor Management

A Guide for Archivists and Administrators

What is it?

The AHG Donor Manage plugin is a high-performance browse and management interface for donor authority records in AtoM/Heratio. It replaces the legacy donor browse with a Laravel Query Builder–backed listing and provides theme-compatible view, create, edit, and delete screens, along with a donor autocomplete service used by other parts of the system. Donor records are treated as sensitive: viewing, creating, editing, and deleting all require an authenticated user, and create/edit/delete require the administrator or editor group.

Key features

• Donor browse powered by Laravel Query Builder, with pagination via the theme-compatible SimplePager.
• Sorting by name (alphabetic), date modified, or identifier, with sensible defaults for logged-in versus anonymous behaviour.
• Inline keyword search against the authorized form of name (a query/subquery parameter is supported, so global-search hand-offs work).
• View a single donor with its authorized form of name and contact details.
• Create and edit donors, including a contact block (contact person, address, city, region, postal code, country, telephone, fax, email, website, note).
• Delete a donor, which also removes its Elasticsearch document.
• Autocomplete endpoint returning matching donors for type-ahead fields.
• Primary contact JSON endpoint exposing a donor's primary contact information.

How to use it

The browse and management screens live under the /donor path. Single-record screens use the record's slug.

• Browse donors: /donor/browse
• Add a new donor: /donor/add
• View a donor: /donor/:slug
• Edit a donor: /donor/:slug/edit
• Delete a donor: /donor/:slug/delete

When you add a donor, the only mandatory field is the authorized form of name; you may also fill in a contact block on the same form. On save you are redirected to the new donor's view page. Editing updates the name and saves the first contact record (creating one if none exists). Deleting is confirmed via a form and returns you to the donor browse.

Administration / settings

This plugin has no dedicated settings screen and creates no database tables of its own — it works directly against AtoM's existing actor/donor and contact-information tables. Behaviour such as hits-per-page and default sort follows the global AtoM settings (app_hits_per_page, app_sort_browser_user, app_sort_browser_anonymous). Access control is enforced through the standard administrator/editor groups.

Tips & FAQ

• Why can't an anonymous visitor see donors? By design — all donor screens require authentication, and creating/editing/deleting requires editor or administrator membership.
• Search not finding a donor? Search matches the authorized form of name; check spelling and culture.
• Autocomplete is intended for use in other forms (it powers type-ahead donor pickers) rather than as a page you visit directly.
• A deleted donor still appears in search briefly? Deletion also removes the Elasticsearch document, but if that step fails the database delete still completes; a reindex resolves any lingering entries.