Donations Overview

Donations can be optionally enabled for your members area, an example donation page is shown below:

Once Donations are configured and enabled then two Donations pages are generated, one that is only visible within the members area, and another which is public facing, allowing your company to accept donations from members and non-members.

The Members Area Donations page is located at:

https://members.yourdomain.com/donations

and the public facing Donations page is located at:
https://members.yourdomain.com/donation

The difference is that one has donations (plural), the other donation (singular) in the URL.

Public vs Members Area Donations Pages

The only differences between the two pages are that when a member makes a donation using the Members Area donations page, as they are already logged in, the system will record the donation against their member record.

Donations made on the public donation page require additional fields to be completed, such as name and email address.

If an email address is used that matches a members email address then the donation is set under that member record.

If an email address does not match a member in the system then a new "non-member" status member record is created, and the donation is linked to that record.

This is useful in that a non member making a donation may at some point wish to become a member, and you would already have a basic record of them in the system, with the history of their donation(s).

Customisable Fields

• Header image
• Title
• Introduction text
• Gift aid instructions
• Charities

The above can be modified to your requirements, allowing for a bespoke Donations page.

Charities

Multiple charities can be added to the donation page, if more than one is added then a dropdown option list is shown where the person donating selects which charity to donate to.

Each charity can show payment methods specific to the charity, for example a unique Stripe account for each charity.

Donations Payments

At least one payment method should be created and enabled to be able to accept donations.

These can be online (Stripe/GoCardless) or offline methods (BACS/Cheque etc).

Payment methods are configured as part of your client configuration file and can be either used based on your current payment methods for events or shop purchases or by specific payment method(s) set for Donations only.

It is typically advisable to have specific payment methods for Donations, allowing for donations to be made to their own accounts and keeping a separation between other payments for accounting purposes.

Please refer to our Members Area Payment Methods for further details.

One-off donations can be made, and if Stripe or GoCardless are used then Monthly donations can also be created. 

These must both be configured for recurring donations, typically by creating a product or subscription for each donation amount which are then linked in your client configuration file.

Further details can be found below:

https://stripe.com/docs/products-prices/getting-started

https://hub.gocardless.com/s/article/Introduction-to-collecting-recurring-payments

Gift Aid

Donations provides support for Gift Aid, if a member or non-member selects that they are applicable for Gift Aid then they are required to enter their address information, which can then be used for reference.

Your company may already have existing Gift Aid agreements with members, in this case that agreement should be your primary source for claiming Gift Aid, whilst using the Members Admin data for reference.

Memb.rs provides a default standard Gift Aid statement on your Donations pages, as shown below, however this can be customised based on your requirements.

If the Gift Aid checkbox is ticked then an additional form for capturing the home address is shown, which must be completed to allow the donation to be made.

For details on Donations administration please view this article.