Issue a refund

Needs the Issue refunds permission: Finance, Admin or Owner roles.

Steps

1. Open Gifts and click the gift.
2. In the Refund panel, enter an amount, or leave it blank to refund the full remaining amount.
3. Click Issue refund and confirm. Refunds can't be undone, and each one is recorded in your audit log.

The money returns to the donor's original card or bank account. Stripe says this takes 5–10 business days to appear on their statement.

What happens automatically

• The receipt is corrected. A partial refund voids the original receipt and issues a new one for the remaining deductible amount, emailed to the donor as an updated receipt. A full refund voids the receipt and emails the donor a refund notice instead.
• DonorFinch's platform fee is returned in proportion to the refund.
• Stripe's processing fee is not returned by Stripe. For a full refund of a $100 gift your organization is out roughly $2.50; this is Stripe's policy, not ours.
• Reports and year-end statements show the gift net of refunds.
• If the gift was already included in a payout that synced to QuickBooks, the refund appears as an adjustment on a later payout.

Refunding a recurring gift

Refund the individual charge from its gift page as above. The plan itself keeps running; to stop future charges, open the plan under Recurring and Pause or Cancel it.

Can't refund?

• Over-refunding is blocked: you can't refund more than remains on the gift.
• Disputed gifts: once a donor's bank opens a dispute, the money is in the bank's hands; respond in Stripe rather than refunding. See Disputes and chargebacks.
• Gifts recorded by hand (checks, cash) have no online payment to refund; edit the gift record and handle the money outside DonorFinch.

If something about a refund looks wrong, don't retry it; send us a ticket with the gift date and amount and we'll check the Stripe side with you.