Thank you emails

The Thank You emails are the first messages donors receive after making a donation. They're often the single most important touchpoint in the donor relationship — the moment donors decide whether they're glad they gave and whether they'd give again. GiveForms lets you customize this email separately for one-time, monthly, and yearly donations, since the three cohorts call for different messaging.

For context on how the Thank You email fits into the wider system, see How emails and receipts work and Email template.

Opening the editor

1. In the campaign editor, click Emails & Receipts.
2. In the left sidebar of the Emails & Receipts editor, click Thank You Emails.
3. The editor has three tabs at the top: One Time Gift, Monthly Gift, and Yearly Gift. Customize each separately.

One Time, Monthly, and Yearly

Three versions exist because each donor cohort calls for different messaging:

• A one-time donor has given once and may give again. The thank-you should welcome them, communicate impact, and leave a clear path back to donating again.
• A monthly donor has committed to ongoing support at a steady cadence. The thank-you should affirm that commitment and reinforce the impact of sustained giving — without an immediate ask for more (they're already giving more, each month).
• A yearly donor has chosen an annual cadence, often tied to year-end giving or a meaningful date. Yearly gifts also tend to run larger than monthly. The thank-you here can be more reflective: looking back on impact made over the past year, anticipating the year ahead.

Set up each tab to reflect these relationships. The fields below appear on all three tabs.

Subject line

The subject line is the first thing donors see in their inbox. Keep it short (under 50 characters renders best on mobile), specific, and personal. Avoid generic subjects like "Donation Confirmation" — they read as transactional and dampen the emotional moment.

The Personalize dropdown next to the field lets you insert tokens like the donor's first name or your organization's name without typing the syntax. Click the dropdown to see what's available for this email.

Good subject patterns:

• Thank you for your generous gift to {{org_name}}
• {{donor_first_name}}, your gift means everything
• From all of us at {{org_name}}: thank you

Headline

The headline appears at the top of the email body, large and centered. It's the second-pass attention grabber — once the donor has opened the email, the headline confirms they're in the right place.

Personalization tokens are supported here too. A personalized headline ("{{donor_first_name}}, thank you for your generous gift") feels more personal than a generic one ("Thank You"), because it signals the email is meant for them specifically.

Header photo

The header photo carries much of the emotional weight in a thank-you email. Donors give from the heart, often moved by something they've just seen or read; the thank-you email is the first chance to reaffirm that decision with gratitude, and the right image does much of that work. This is why Thank You emails give you control over the header photo while purely transactional emails like refunds don't — the emotional register is fundamentally different.

The toggle controls whether the photo block appears in this email at all.

• Toggle off: no photo in this email. Useful when the body copy alone carries the message and a text-forward layout feels stronger.
• Toggle on, no image uploaded: the email uses the default header photo set in Email template.
• Toggle on, image uploaded: the uploaded image overrides the template default, just for this email.

The recommended upload size is 1200px x 500px (landscape). Use a photo that connects emotionally to the donor's contribution — beneficiaries, programs in action, the cause itself. Generic stock photos rarely beat purposeful imagery.

Body

The body is the main message. The rich text editor supports bold, italic, strikethrough, links, and lists. The Personalize dropdown inserts tokens for the donor's first name, donation amount, organization name, and more — the dropdown only offers what's valid for this email type.

The character counter at the bottom right shows your current length against the 1000-character limit. Keep the message short. The best thank-you emails are warm, specific, and brief — three or four sentences works well for most nonprofits.

What to include:

• Acknowledge the donation amount and the donor by name (use tokens).
• Connect the gift to a specific outcome — what will their dollars actually do.
• Express genuine gratitude, not formal language.
• Sign off as a real person (your executive director, program director, or the recipient of services), not "the team."

What to avoid:

• Long histories of the organization.
• Multiple asks layered into the thank-you.
• Generic stock language ("Your generous gift is greatly appreciated") that any nonprofit could send.

Receipt PDF

For credit card and other instant-clear payments, the gift receipt PDF is automatically attached to the Thank You email. Donors see it right below the body, marked "Your gift receipt is attached," which makes this email also the donor's tax-deductible receipt of record.

For ACH (bank account) donations, the receipt attaches to the ACH Processed email instead — see ACH emails — since ACH funds aren't final until they clear several business days later.

The receipt itself — logo, signature, footnote — is customized in the Receipts section of the editor under the Gift Receipt template, not in Thank You Emails. See How emails and receipts work for the full receipt architecture.

Call to action

The call to action toggle controls whether a button appears at the bottom of the email.

• Button Label — the text that appears on the button. Keep it short and verb-led: "Donate Again," "Get Involved," "Share Your Story."
• Campaign — the donation page the button links to. The dropdown lists your account's campaigns; pick the one most relevant to the next ask. For most one-time thank-yous, link back to the same campaign. For monthly or yearly thank-yous, consider turning the CTA off entirely — the donor is already recurring, and an immediate Donate Again button can feel tone-deaf.

The button can only link to a campaign donation page, not an arbitrary external URL. This is deliberate: it keeps the donor experience inside the GiveForms-tracked donation flow so attribution stays clean.

Saving and publishing

Edits to the Thank You email are saved as drafts. Use the publish controls in the top right to ship changes:

• Publish this Email ships only the currently-edited Thank You version (One Time, Monthly, or Yearly).
• Publish All Emails ships every edited email in the campaign.

A dot indicator appears next to Thank You Emails in the left sidebar when there are unpublished changes. See How emails and receipts work for the full publish flow.