Frequently asked questions

DonorFinch is online giving plus a donor database for small and mid-sized nonprofits. You get donation forms for your website (or a hosted page if you don't have one), automatic tax receipts, recurring gifts, donor records with history, year-end statements, reports, and a QuickBooks Online sync. Money goes straight to your own Stripe account. There's no monthly fee; see What DonorFinch costs.

US nonprofits that want online giving and a donor database without a big system or a monthly bill: churches, schools and PTAs, food banks, animal rescues, arts groups, community foundations, and the bookkeepers who serve them. If you take gifts in US dollars and have (or can open) a Stripe account, it will work for you. Larger organizations with complex grant management or event ticketing needs may want a more specialized tool alongside.

About an hour if you have your EIN and bank details handy. Create an account (2 minutes), enter your organization details (5), connect Stripe (10–15, longer if Stripe asks for documents), customize a form (10), and add it to your website (10–20 depending on your platform). Importing an existing donor list is a separate, optional step. The six-step setup guide walks through it.

No. Every form has a hosted page at app.donorfinch.com/give/your-org/form that you can link from emails, social media, texts and printed QR codes. See Hosted donation page links. If you do have a website, you can embed the same form on it.

Search this help center first; most questions are answered here. Otherwise submit a ticket or email support@donorfinch.com. Signed-in team members can open a ticket from Help & support inside the app, which lets us see your organization's context right away. We answer by email, usually within one business day. We don't offer phone support.

No monthly fee. DonorFinch takes 1.2% of each online gift, and Stripe takes its processing fee (2.2% + 30¢ for registered 501(c)(3)s on cards; 0.8% capped at $5 for bank transfers). Checks, cash and imported gifts are free. Donors can cover the fees, and most do. Full breakdown in What DonorFinch costs.

No contract, no setup fee, no minimum. You pay 1.2% on online gifts as they happen, deducted automatically. You can export everything and leave whenever you like; see Security and your data.

Yes. Every form has a "Cover processing fees" checkbox, pre-checked by default. On a $100 gift the donor is charged $103.83 and your organization receives $100.00. You can leave the box unchecked by default in the form builder. Details in How donors cover fees.

Gifts go into your own Stripe account and Stripe pays them out to your bank on the schedule set in your Stripe dashboard. Stripe decides the timing per account (new accounts wait longer at first), so check Settings → Payouts in Stripe for yours. DonorFinch's Deposits report shows every payout and which gifts it contained. See Payouts and your Stripe account.

Yes, for online gifts. Stripe is the payment processor; your money lands in your own Stripe account and then your bank. If you don't have one, you create it during Connect Stripe in about ten minutes. If you already use Stripe, connect the existing account. Recording checks and cash doesn't require Stripe.

Yes, automatically, when the donor's device supports them and the page is on HTTPS. For Apple Pay on your own website, the domain must be registered with Stripe; DonorFinch does that for your allowed websites, and you can confirm under Settings → Payments → Check wallet status. See Payment methods and wallets.

Open the gift and use the Refund panel for a full or partial refund (Finance, Admin or Owner roles). The receipt is corrected automatically and DonorFinch returns its fee; Stripe keeps its processing fee. Steps in Issue a refund.

All of them. There's a plugin for WordPress, an App Market app for Wix, and a two-line embed snippet for everything else (Squarespace, Webflow, Weebly, GoDaddy, hand-coded sites). If your platform won't allow scripts, link to the hosted page instead.

The page's domain isn't on your allowed-websites list, usually because www. is missing or you're on a preview domain. Add the exact domain from the address bar under Settings → Website → Allowed websites and reload. See Allowed websites, site keys and embeds.

Yes. Every recurring receipt has a Manage this gift link to the donor portal, where they can update their card, change the amount, pause, skip or cancel without contacting you. Your team can do the same from the Recurring page, and every change emails the donor a confirmation.

We retry after 1, 3 and 7 days and email the donor a link to update their card. After the fourth failure the plan is marked past due and waits; it is never canceled automatically. When the donor saves a new card the plan reactivates and charges once for the missed period. See When a recurring payment fails.

Yes. Every successful gift, online or recorded by hand, gets a numbered PDF receipt by email with your EIN and the standard IRS acknowledgment language. Imported historical gifts don't get receipts but do appear on year-end statements. See Tax receipts, explained.

Yes. Pick a year, click Generate, and every donor gets one PDF statement listing their gifts and the deductible total, emailed automatically. Re-running after a correction only reissues statements whose totals changed. See Run year-end giving statements.

That depends on the organization's tax status and the donor's own situation, not on DonorFinch. Our receipts state the amount, date and the organization's EIN with the standard acknowledgment language. Whether a particular donor can deduct a particular gift is a question for their tax adviser; we and our support team can't give tax advice. See What DonorFinch can and can't say about taxes.

Yes. Upload a CSV (up to 25 MB / 50,000 rows), map the columns, run a dry run, then commit. Donors and gift history both import, with duplicate matching by external ID, email or name. See Import donors and gifts from a spreadsheet.

Yes, any time, with no fee: the Donor list and Gift detail reports export everything as CSV, every receipt PDF can be downloaded, and we'll produce any other cut you need on request. Your Stripe account and its history are yours regardless. See Security and your data.

Deposits: one QuickBooks Deposit per Stripe payout or check batch, split by fund to your income accounts, with fees to an expense account, so the net matches your bank feed. Individual donors and gifts stay in DonorFinch. QuickBooks Online only. See QuickBooks sync, explained.

Card and bank numbers never touch DonorFinch; Stripe collects them directly in the donor's browser. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, each organization is isolated at the database level, sign-in is by single-use email link, and every change is in an audit log. See Security and your data.

DonorFinch signs you in with a single-use link emailed to you (valid 15 minutes), and keeps you signed in for 30 days per browser. There's no password to forget or leak; your email account's security protects DonorFinch, so turn on two-factor there. See Signing in with email links.

No. Each organization's records are separated by the database itself, not just by the app, and a team member sees only the organizations they've been invited to. A donor who gives to two organizations has a separate record in each. See Security and your data.