Donor portal setup

The donor portal is where recurring donors go to manage their gifts — update their amount, change their payment method, pause or cancel a plan, and review their giving history. Every organization gets one donor portal, shared across all campaigns. It must be published before you accept recurring donations.

How donors access the portal

Donors don't sign in. They access the portal via a Manage Recurring Donation link at the bottom of every recurring donation receipt email they receive. The link includes a unique, tokenized URL that identifies the donor automatically — no password or login required.

This means the portal is private even though there's no login: only donors who've received a receipt email have the link. The URL isn't guessable, and search engines don't index the portal.

What donors can do in the portal

• View their recurring gifts — amount, next gift date, payment method, status (Active or Inactive)
• Edit their recurring gifts — change amount, update payment method, pause or cancel
• View their giving history — every donation they've made, with date, amount, and payment method
• Download their giving history as a CSV
• Make additional gifts through the Welcome Message CTA, which links to a specific campaign

Before you begin

You'll need an Admin role.

Open the donor portal editor

In the GiveForms admin, click Campaigns in the left navigation, then click Donor Portal in the sub-navigation. The editor opens with the donor portal preview taking the full width of the workspace.

The editor has three left-sidebar tabs:

• Donor Portal — the visual layout (cover photo, header, Welcome Message, About card)
• Brand & Styles — colors that apply across the portal
• Portal Settings — page-level configuration (title, description, favicon)

Like the donation page editor, you configure the portal by clicking directly on sections of the preview, or by switching tabs in the sidebar.

Cover photo

The large image at the top of the portal. Click anywhere in the cover photo area to reveal Edit, Upload, and Delete controls.

The cover photo works the same way as on the donation page — see Photo for cropping conventions, recommended dimensions, and per-breakpoint behavior.

A donor portal cover photo doesn't need to match your individual campaign photos. Most organizations use a single, evergreen image here — something that represents the organization broadly, since donors return to this page over time and you don't want to change it every campaign cycle.

Header

The strip below the cover photo with your logo, organization name, and an optional website link. Click the header in the preview to open its editing panel.

• Logo — your nonprofit's logo, displayed as a card overlaid on the cover photo. Square logos work best; vertical logos compress awkwardly. Recommended dimensions: 132 × 132 px or larger.
• Headline — the organization name shown next to the logo. Defaults to your organization name.
• Website Link — a toggle that shows or hides the website link below the headline.
• Website URL — the URL the link points to.
• Label — the display text for the link. Often matches the URL, but can be simplified ("Visit our website").

Welcome Message

The card on the right that greets donors and provides a CTA back to a donation form. This is the highest-leverage configurable area in the donor portal — it's the only place where you can show personalized content to returning donors and prompt them toward another gift.

Click the Welcome Message in the preview to open its editing panel.

Fields

• Title — the headline at the top of the message. Up to 250 characters. Supports rich text formatting (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment) and personalization variables.
• Description — the body text below the title. Up to 250 characters. Same formatting and personalization options as the title.
• Button Label — the CTA button text. Defaults to "Give Today."
• Campaign — the campaign the CTA button links to. Donors who click the button land on this campaign's donation page. Pick an evergreen, general-fund campaign rather than a specific time-limited appeal.

Personalization variables

Click the Personalize dropdown to insert variables. Three are available:

• {{donor_first_name}} — the donor's first name
• {{donor_last_name}} — the donor's last name
• {{org_name}} — your organization's name

Personalized welcomes feel meaningfully different from generic ones — a donor returning to your portal seeing their own name strengthens the relationship.

Writing the welcome message

The donor returning to your portal is already giving. This isn't a conversion moment, it's a relationship moment. A few patterns that work:

• Lead with gratitude, not the ask. "Thank you, {{donor_first_name}}, for your ongoing support" lands better than "Give again today." Donors are here to manage their gifts; the CTA is for those who want to do more, not pressure.
• Reinforce what their existing gift enables. "Your monthly support funds two days of research per gift" reminds them of the concrete impact they're already having.
• Keep both fields concise. 250 characters is a soft ceiling — in practice, shorter is better. Most donors will scan, not read.
• Match the tone to the relationship. Recurring donors are your most committed supporters. The voice can be warmer and more familiar than your acquisition copy.

About card

The smaller card below the Welcome Message, showing your organization's address. Click the About card in the preview to open its editing panel.

• Title — defaults to "About [Organization Name]"; customize as needed.
• Description — your organization's address and any other reference info you want donors to have. Supports rich text formatting and links.

This section is for trust and reference — mailing address, possibly contact email or phone. Keep it concise. The donor portal isn't the place for marketing copy or storytelling.

Brand & Styles

The Brand & Styles tab controls colors that apply across the portal. Currently:

• Button Color — the background color of the Welcome Message CTA button. Use your campaign's primary brand color, or the same button color you use on your donation page CTAs for visual consistency across surfaces.

Portal Settings

The Portal Settings tab controls page-level metadata and the favicon. These settings affect how the portal appears in browser tabs, bookmarks, and shared links — they don't affect the donor-facing portal layout.

• Title — the page title shown in browser tabs and on social shares.
• Description — the meta description for link previews and social cards.
• Favicon — Light and Dark theme variants, 64 × 64 px. Use your organization's mark.

The donor portal is not typically indexed by search engines, since access requires a tokenized link. But the title and description still appear in browser tabs and when donors share their portal URL, so they're worth setting deliberately.

Preview mode

Click the Preview icon (play button) in the top bar to see the donor portal as a donor would, without editor chrome. The preview opens with sample donor data — name, recurring gift, payment method — so you can verify the experience lands right before publishing.

To return to the editor, click Close Preview in the top right.

Publishing

The donor portal has three states, mirroring the donation page:

• Draft — never published. Donors can't access the portal.
• Live — published and accessible.
• Live with unpublished changes — donors see the published version; your edits are saved as a draft layer on top.

Click Publish in the top bar to make the current draft live. The Publish panel shows when it was last published, who published it, and provides a View Donor Portal link to see the live version.

Publish before launching recurring donations

The donor portal must be published before donors can use it. Recurring donation receipt emails include a Manage Recurring Donation link — if the portal isn't published, the link won't work, and recurring donors will have no way to manage their plans.

If you're about to launch your first campaign with recurring donations enabled, publish the donor portal first. Confirm Stripe is connected (see Connecting Stripe), set up the portal, and publish, all before sending traffic to a live donation form.