Donations, pledges, and fundraising pages

Donations: money received

The Donations grid is the ledger of received gifts. Each donation belongs to a person, so a donor’s full giving history is always one click away on their profile’s Donations tab. Like any grid, it filters, exports, and bulk-edits. See Working in grids.

Most gifts arrive on their own through a fundraising page. For cash, a check, or a bank transfer collected offline, click Record donation at the top of the Donations page: pick the donor, enter the amount, and choose a method (Card, Check, Cash, or Bank transfer). A receipt goes out automatically. Configure the sender and template in Workspace settings → Donations.

If a card gift is later refunded or charged back through Stripe, the donation updates itself. It shows as refunded or disputed and stops counting toward the donor’s giving totals and contribution limits, so your reports stay honest without any manual cleanup. A chargeback you later win flips the gift back to succeeded automatically.

Choose your payment processor

Online gifts are processed by Stripe, set up under Workspace → Donations. Stripe handles both one-time and monthly (recurring) gifts, and processes and stores donor payment data in the United States.

Setting up Stripe means connecting your own Stripe account — click Connect with Stripe, pick your campaign’s country, and Stripe walks you through verifying the campaign before returning you to pplCRM. There are no API keys or webhook URLs to copy. Donations are charged directly to your Stripe account, so your campaign stays the merchant of record for compliance and receipting, and you manage payouts, refunds, and disputes from your own Stripe dashboard (the Open Stripe dashboard button). pplCRM deducts a 1% platform fee from each card donation; Stripe’s own processing fees also apply and are billed to your account by Stripe. If a gift is fully refunded, the platform fee is refunded too.

Why your own account? Campaign finance rules generally require contributions to be received by the campaign itself, so donations settle directly into your campaign’s bank account and never pass through pplCRM. It also puts the money in the safest possible hands: Stripe is certified to PCI DSS Level 1, the industry’s highest payment-security standard, and card details never touch pplCRM’s servers. And the account stays yours; your processing history remains with you even if you stop using pplCRM.

Pledges: money promised

Pledges live in their own view beside donations. Keeping promised and received money separate keeps reports honest, and gives you a follow-up queue of pledges yet to convert.

Fundraising pages: money online

1. 1Open Forms, click New form, then Create a fundraising formBuild the giving page: your appeal, your branding.
2. 2Share the linkThe page stands on its own for email, social, or QR codes.
3. 3Watch gifts arriveDonations made through the page land in the CRM attached to the right people. No retyping.