📌 Note: As of January 25, 2018, Nations located in countries where Stripe is available default to integrated payment processing with NationBuilder. For more information on accepting payments in NationBuilder, click HERE. If you have a third-party processor from prior to that date, you may still use it, but new third-party processors are no longer available.

Donation pages connect to external services such as payment processors, so there are a few things to set up before you can use a donation page.

First, enable donation features in your nation. Under Settings > Defaults > Basics, check the box next to "Enable donations", confirm currency, and click the Save Settings button at the bottom of the page.

Next, Connect a payment processor at Settings > Payment processors > New processor. If you are located in a country that does not have access to Stripe, you will see the option to connect a third-party processor. Otherwise, only the NationBuilder payments option will show up there.

Several payment processor settings will affect how donors interact with your donation page. First, decide whether the donations are tax-deductible. This status will appear on the donation page and on donation receipts.

You may require a donor’s employer and occupation information, the employer’s full address, or just the employer’s city and state. You may also include corporate contribution fields. If you are a political campaign, check your local and Federal regulations to see if you are required to collect this information.

Activate any setting by checking the appropriate text box.

If your organization has a specific disclaimer or contribution rules required to accept donations, enter that copy in the "Contribution rules" text box. This includes specific disclaimers mandated by campaign finance law. Donors will have to check a box accepting these statements before submitting a donation. 

A donation page that is connected to this payment processor will pull from these fields for the donation page.

Create a new donation page at Website > [Site name] > New page. Enter the page name and slug. Select Donation from the page types. Decide whether to include the page in the top nav or supporter nav and click the Create page button. This page type only works with third-party processors. You'll need a Donation v2 page type for the NB processor.

There are a few settings universal to every donation page. Under Donation settings > Basics you may select what payment processor you would like to connect to your donation page from the “Payment processor” dropdown menu.

You may also attach a tracking code to your page which can be used later to assemble donations for a particular fundraising campaign or event. This code will be attached to any donation that is processed by this donation page. Each donation can only have one tracking code. To select a tracking code, make a choice from the dropdown menu.

To create a new code click on the blue here. You will be directed to Finances > Tracking codes where you can add a new one.

Like other NationBuilder pages, you can add the donor to a path, assign membership*, and add tags to any person who uses this page to donate. You may also assign a point person to the donor if a point person does not already exist for that person’s profile. These tools will allow you to track and engage your donors in the future.

📌 *Note: Memberships are available as add-ons. For more information on adding new features please see the add-ons page in your nation.

Select where you would like a person to be directed after she donates by entering the slug of the page in the “After donating, what page should they land on next?” For example, in the image below, the donor will be directed to the volunteer page.

You may also set goals for a donation page. In the  “Goal for amount raised” text box enter the amount you hope to raise through the page. This will populate a progress bar on your donate page that will fill in as you get closer to reaching your goal. Set the goal as “0” if you don’t want a progress bar to appear. 

Similarly, enter a number in “Goal for number of donors” if you want to set a benchmark for how many people donate through the page. This will populate a progress bar on the website page. Both of these settings can be adjusted if you wish to change your goals.

Donations collected offline can count towards the goals set on a donation page. When entering a donation through the control panel or via a donation import, you can include a page slug. A monetary progress bar on that page will increase by the amount of the donation and a donor progress bar will increase by one. 

Click Save settings at the bottom of your page.

Donation pages default to accept one-time donations. Check that the “one-time payment”  button is selected.

Ticketed events should be connected to a donation page that accepts one-time payments. We recommend creating a separate donation page that is not included in the top nav or supporter nav to process ticket payments. 

For one-time donations, you can give your donor the option to select from multiple amounts such as “5 dollars, 10 dollars, etc…” or you can set it so they may only give a single predetermined amount, like “100 dollars.” To offer only one amount, uncheck the “Accept multiple amounts” checkbox and input the select donation amount in the “Amount” text field.

If you want to offer more than one amount, check the appropriate checkbox.

A field labeled “Accept multiple amounts” will appear. Give donors multiple options by entering several amounts separated by commas. Do not add any dollar signs or other monetary symbols. Notice that when you offer these set amounts, there will also be a text field on the donation page for the donor to input a different amount.

Enter the minimum amount you want your donor to give in the “Minimum donation” field. Similarly, set a maximum by entering an amount in the “Maximum donation” box. If you are a political campaign you may set donation limits at Settings > Political. If the limit is reached, donations will be split between cycles.

Remember to click Save settings at the bottom of your page.

Installment payments allow donors to give your nation a finite amount of money during a finite period of time. For example, a donor can agree to give $450 in 24 installments, which means her credit card will be charged $18.75 every month for two years. Keep in mind that you cannot accept installment payments on the same donation page you process monthly donations.

Activate installment payments under Donation settings > Basics. Select the “one-time payment” button.

Check the “Allow payment as installments” checkbox.

A dropdown menu will appear for you to select the maximum number of monthly installments you will accept. You must select a number of months, up to 31, and then click Save settings for the installment option to be saved.

On the donation page, your donor will select the number of installment payments she would like from a dropdown menu.

If you are not seeing these options in Donation settings > Basics, you are probably using a custom theme created before this feature was available. Learn how to enable installment payment options.

📌 *Note: The installment option is only available with third-party processors.

Monthly payments allow donors to give a set amount of money every month for an unlimited amount of time.

Please note that to accept monthly payments you will need a payment processor that accepts monthly donations, this includes PayPal, Paypal Payflow Pro, and Authorize.net. Add a processor at Settings > Payment processors > New processor.

Note that if you are using PayPal to process recurring donations, donors will need to use a PayPal account to complete the donation. Donors will see a message stating “Recurring donation of XX to [Your PayPal name] billed automatically every month” when the donation is successful.

Under Donation settings > Basics, select the monthly payments button.

Much like one-time payments, you can select whether a donor can give a single set amount for their monthly donation, or have a choice of what they wish to give.

Just like one-time payments, you can add minimum and maximum limits for your monthly donations.

Remember to click Save settings when you are done.

If you are not seeing these options in Donation settings > Basics, you are probably using a custom theme created before this feature was available. Learn how to enable monthly payment options.

NationBuilder donation pages include an intro text section where you can post a personal appeal or upload and post an image. To customize that text go to Donation settings > Intro. It's a free-form text field, so you have a lot of flexibility. 

If you need to add a custom disclaimer that you want people to check off before donating, you can add your campaign finance disclaimer by editing your payment processor settings.

A receipt is sent to your donor as part of the auto-response email. By default, a receipt look like this:

You may edit the donation receipt at Donation settings > Autoresponse. Donation receipts can also be accessed on a donor’s personal profile.

Donation pages are secure pages on your website. This is indicated by the “https” at the beginning of the page address. People will be automatically redirected to the secure version of the page when they type in “http://www.yoursite.org/donate."

The URL for your donation page will always read “https://[yournationslug].nationbuilder.com/your_donation_page” to ensure a high level of security for your donations. This cannot be changed.

In order to maintain the security of your donation page, you should not embed any content from outside your site in a donation page.

The easiest way to ensure that payments to ticketed events are always tracked separately from other activities in your nation is to create a separate donation page for each ticketed event. The event payment pages should not be included in the top nav or supporter nav of your site.

You should think carefully if you want the social share prompt to appear when someone completes a ticket purchase - sharing that information on Twitter and Facebook can increase attendance to your event. However, since the link will take new visitors directly to the donation page, rather than to the event page, the RSVPs will not be automatically added for these new purchases. If these donations place donors on a path assigned to a control panel user, that control panel user can have the responsibility of ensuring a one-to-one relationship between transactions and RSVPs by manually adding missing RSVPs in the control panel. This does run the risk of overselling an event. 

If this process concerns you, please add your voice to this suggestion to change the way paid events are handled. 

How to set up your payment processor
​How to fundraise with NationBuilder
​How to accept recurring donations
​Which payment processors process monthly payments and installments
​How to charge for membership
​Understanding tracking codes