The donations module: getting started and features

What it does

• Create donation pages and hubs to receive donations online.
• Donors can give one time OR monthly, weekly, or yearly.
• They can pay with credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or ACH
• Make donation pages that allow donors to direct the fund or sub entity to which they want to direct their donation.

A walkthrough video

How to get going

1. Connect one or many Stripe accounts. You can have just one Stripe account if you want all the money to flow into you. OR, you can have many Stripe accounts if you want to raise money for your sub entities like camps, churches, departments, chapters, etc and you want the money to go right into their account.
2. Then you set up one "cause/fund". A cause is just an umbrella term for a fund or sub entity like a: camp, chapter, department, church, etc.
3. Create a donation page.
4. Create donation hubs if you want. Hubs are collections of pages.

The donations center homepage

• See recent pages and hubs.
• See a snapshot of the last 30 days.
• "Online donations" gives you a pulse of the what's happening now.
• All time stats gives you stats all time.

Donation pages

This is the biggest part of the system. Create donation pages and take donations online.
On the back end fill out the form. See a demo donation page here. You can run test transactions through it.

• A donation page can have one or MANY "causes". Let's say you want to have ONE page that allows donors to direct their donation to any of your camps or any of your churches. You would link many causes to that one form.
• And again, each "cause" can have their own Stripe account if you want and it will put the money into their account.
• In the simplest way though you need JUST ONE "cause". That could be your organization.
• You can make an infinite number of pages and hubs.
• Use the "QR codes" functionality to get a QR code link to your page or hub.

Donation hubs

Collections of donation pages. Let's say you have a number of donation pages that are similar. Put them in a hub.

Causes

About transaction fees

The donations module is free for you to use. Your donors cover the fees. When they donate, they are able to cover the processing fees. These are the Stripe fees which are usually 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction. By default, this option is turned off. If this is left on, you will receive 100% of the donation.

Then, there is the platform fee. This is the fee that goes to Brick River to cover the expense of the donations system. There are two options here: tipping or a 3% fee. The donor pays this. You receive 100% of the donation. On the donation page, you choose whether you want to allow tipping or if you just want to have the system add 3% onto the donation.

Donors

• The donors page allows you to see donors and the total amount they have donated.
• Donors can be ANY contact type in your database: people or organizations. There is a relationship field called "donations" on all contacts that links to their donation transactions.

Online donations or as we call them "donation registrations"

When someone donates online, that creates a "donation registration" record in your database. This is also where their recurring donation subscription is stored.

A donation registration can have ONE or MANY "donation transactions". If a person gives once, then there will be one transaction.

If a person gives recurringly, then there will be a transaction for every recurrence.

Donation transactions

These are the payments or refunds. If they have come in online, they will have associated Stripe information. Donation transactions, or simply "donations", can be hand entered too.

Anomalies

This page lets you see either pending ACH verifications or failed payments.

• People can pay via ACH. When they do, Stripe makes them verify their bank account by making small deposits. If their verification has gone too long, you can see them and nudge the donor.
• Failed payments will show failed payments. :-)