GiveForms Docs

Comprehensive guides for configuring, deploying, and optimizing your fundraising infrastructure.

Onboarding Guide

The place where it all begins. Think of this as your personal guide - just you, your organization, and GiveForms. We'll walk through everything together, from setup to success.

Illustrated cover of the GiveForms onboarding guide

Popular Articles

Connecting Stripe

Connect Stripe to enable cards, digital wallets, ACH, and recurring donations.

What is a campaign?

A campaign is a single fundraising effort — one donation form, its emails, and the donations recorded against it. Organizations typically run many.

Donation page setup

When to use a donation page, how the editor is organized, and what you'll configure to set one up.

Donation amounts

Configure preset amounts, the default, the minimum, and per-amount descriptions. The most consequential conversion lever on the form.

Onboarding

Organization details

Set your organization's name, website, EIN, time zone, and address. Used on donation forms, emails, and PDF receipts.

Connecting Stripe

Connect Stripe to enable cards, digital wallets, ACH, and recurring donations.

Connecting PayPal

Connect PayPal to enable PayPal and Venmo donations.

Team members

Invite team members, change their role between Admin and Viewer, and remove them when they leave.

Roles

GiveForms has two roles: Admin (full access) and Viewer (Activity section only — no Campaigns or Settings).

Donor portal setup

The org-wide portal where recurring donors manage their gifts. Must be published before you accept recurring donations.

Campaigns

What is a campaign?

A campaign is a single fundraising effort — one donation form, its emails, and the donations recorded against it. Organizations typically run many.

Creating a campaign

Create a new campaign in GiveForms. Most campaigns start by duplicating an existing one.

Archiving a campaign

Move a campaign out of active use. Existing recurring plans continue, the donation page URL redirects to your default campaign, and you can restore the campaign anytime.

Duplicating a campaign

Duplicate an existing campaign from the campaigns list. One click, auto-named, lands as a draft.

Campaigns list

Reference for the Campaigns view: columns, status tags, per-row actions, and how to navigate to filtered donation reports.

Donation Pages

Donation page setup

When to use a donation page, how the editor is organized, and what you'll configure to set one up.

Header

Configure the donation page header: logo, headline, subheadline, and description. Plus writing patterns that lift conversion.

Photo

Upload and crop the cover photo for your donation page. Per-breakpoint cropping is the key concept to understand.

Donation frequencies

Enable one-time, monthly, and yearly giving on your donation page. Plus the Monthly Suggestion Text — the single biggest lever for converting one-time donors to monthly.

Donation amounts

Configure preset amounts, the default, the minimum, and per-amount descriptions. The most consequential conversion lever on the form.

Currencies and payment methods

Configure which payment methods and currencies your donation page accepts. GiveForms auto-orders methods for conversion and auto-converts currencies for international donors.

Fee coverage

Configure your form to let donors cover Stripe or PayPal processing fees.

Personal information

Configure what you collect from donors. Each field has separate enable and require controls. Less is usually more.

Exit popup

Catch desktop visitors who try to leave without donating. Typically lifts conversion 5–15% when configured well.

Receipt page

What donors see after submitting their gift. Customize the title and description; the donation summary and CTA auto-generate.

Dedications

Let donors give in honor or in memory of someone, with optional email notifications. Includes card images and personal messages.

Designations

Let donors choose which fund or program their gift supports. Useful for routing money to internal categories within a single campaign.

SEO and social preview

Control how your donation page appears in search results, social media previews, and browser tabs. URL slug also lives here.

Tracking and conversion events

Install analytics scripts and conversion pixels to measure traffic, attribute donations to ads, and feed data into ad platforms.

Test transactions

Run an end-to-end test transaction in preview mode before publishing your donation page.

Drafts and publishing

Publish your donation page, understand the three publish states, and learn how to take a page down.

Donation Popups

Donation popup setup

When to use a donation popup, how the three-step form works for donors, and how the editor is organized.

Donation amounts and frequencies

Configure the popup's logo and headline, giving frequencies, preset amounts, and minimum gift. Presets are the biggest conversion lever on the form.

Appeal

Add a photo, short narrative, and optional fundraising goal beside the popup. The appeal does the persuading when the host page doesn't.

Personal information

Choose which fields to collect from donors and which to require. Less is usually more.

Currencies and payment methods

Enable payment methods and currencies. GiveForms auto-orders methods for conversion and can auto-switch to the visitor's local currency.

Fee coverage

Ask donors to cover processing fees, customize the checkbox text, and choose whether it's pre-checked.

Dedications

Let donors give in memory or honor of someone, renew the gift monthly or yearly, and email a personalized card.

Designations

Let donors choose which fund or program their gift supports, with per-fund reporting.

Thank you screen

Customize the title, message, and social sharing options donors see after their donation.

Form styles

Set the popup's two colors: the primary for buttons and highlights, and the secondary background.

SEO and search visibility

Set the popup form's title, description, and URL slug, preview the search result, and control whether it appears in search engines.

Tracking and conversion events

Install analytics and conversion pixels that run inside the popup: Google Analytics, form view events, and donation conversion events.

Embedding the popup on your website

Where to find your form's embed instructions, what the snippet and trigger link do, and how to share them with a developer.

Preview and test transactions

Use preview mode to click through the full popup and run test donations with Stripe's test card before publishing.

Emails & Receipts

How emails and receipts work

A tour of the Emails & Receipts editor — the master template, individual email types, receipt PDFs, and personalization tokens.

Email template

Configure the master settings that every email in a campaign inherits — reply-to address, logo, header photo, button color, and footer.

Thank you emails

Customize the Thank You email separately for one-time, monthly, and yearly donors — subject, headline, header photo, body, and CTA.

Recurring emails

Customize the four lifecycle emails for recurring plans — Plan Change, Plan Paused, Plan Cancel, and Payment Failure.

ACH emails

Customize the two ACH emails — Initiated and Processed — that GiveForms sends donors during bank transfer transactions.

Refund emails

Customize the Full Refund and Partial Refund emails, including the variables that show refund and net gift amounts.

Dedication emails

Dedication emails are configured in the donation page editor rather than the Emails & Receipts section.

Receipts

Customize the three receipt PDFs attached to donor emails — Gift Receipt, Refund Receipt, and Partial Refund Receipt.

Viewing and resending a receipt

How to see exactly what a donor received and forward the receipt to a different email address.

Insights & Activity

Insights and Activity dashboard

Track raised totals, conversion, donor activity, and more. Customizable columns, multi-period comparisons, and CSV export.

Understanding your insights

What each top-line insight measures, how to interpret it, and what to do to improve it.

Refunding a donation

Issue a full or partial refund from the donation details panel, with optional refund receipt email and internal description.

Managing a recurring donation

Edit the amount, frequency, or next donation date — or delete the plan to stop future installments.

Understanding GiveForms

Fee coverage explained

Why net donation amounts may differ slightly from the donation amount when cover-the-fees is enabled.

See where your donation form is losing gifts

Bring your current form to a demo and we'll compare it to GiveForms. Migration and onboarding are included if you switch.