Hi everyone! I need help with connecting Classy fundraising data to my Airtable base through Zapier automation. I have participant records in Airtable with basic info like names, contact details, shirt sizes, and most importantly their Total Fundraising Amount. The challenge is making sure this amount updates automatically when someone gets a new donation on their Classy fundraising page. This is crucial because we use these totals to check if people hit their minimum goals and what reward tier they qualify for. I’m getting stuck on the Zapier workflow setup and can’t figure out the right trigger and action combination. Anyone have experience linking these three platforms together? Would love to hear how you solved similar automation challenges.
the classy-zapier connection is finicky as hell. I switched to the ‘new team member’ trigger instead of donation triggers - way more reliable for tracking fundraising totals. Set up a zapier filter so it only updates records when the fundraising amount actually changes. this cuts down on pointless api calls. and make sure your airtable lookup uses unique identifiers, not names - you’ll get duplicates otherwise.
I dealt with this exact setup six months ago for our nonprofit’s walkathon. The biggest mistake I made? Starting with the ‘New Donation’ trigger - it created duplicate entries every time someone donated multiple times. What actually worked: Classy’s ‘Updated Fundraiser’ trigger. It fires whenever someone’s page total changes. For Airtable, use ‘Update Record’ and match participants by email address. The field mapping is crucial - your Classy fundraising total needs to map directly to your Airtable amount column. Here’s something that’ll save you headaches: Classy has delays updating totals sometimes. I added a 5-minute delay in the Zapier workflow to fix this. Test everything with small donations first. Once real money’s flowing, troubleshooting becomes a nightmare.
We hit the same problem during our charity marathon last year. The game-changer was figuring out that Zapier’s default settings can’t handle the data sync properly. Don’t rely on basic triggers - you need a two-step process. First, use Classy’s webhook to catch donations instantly. Then query the updated total and push everything to Airtable. Here’s what trips people up: Classy sometimes batches payments, so your timing gets wonky. We found that using Airtable’s API directly through Zapier’s webhook action works way better than their standard integration. And definitely build in error handling for when API calls fail - trust me, systems crash during donation rushes.