Contents
- Introduction: Online Giving Methods
- Who can donate online?
- Set up online giving
- Giving Using Your Custom Donation Link
In this guide, you will learn how to configure the Online Giving feature within ChMeetings so you can receive online donations. Please see Intro to Online Giving for details on supported payment providers, methods, payment provider fees, and more.
Enable online giving
To enable Online Giving, please start by going to: Contribution > Online Giving. Next, turn on the toggle to enable the feature.
Configure your payment provider
Online giving (one-time or recurring) is available through PayPal and Stripe. You can configure your payment provider by clicking Configure.
Next, choose your payment provider.
If you select PayPal, please enter your PayPal email and click Integrate.
If you would like to use Stripe, please select it and click Integrate. You will be taken to Stripe’s login screen where you must connect to your account.
Note: You can disconnect from your payment provider anytime, by clicking the Disconnect button and confirming your choice.
Differences between Paypal and Stripe
You can process online giving using either PayPal or Stripe, but the main difference between them is that Stripe provides more features. Here are the additional features you get when integrating Stripe:
| Feature | Stripe | PayPal |
| ACH | Yes | No |
| Apple Pay & Google Pay | Yes | No |
| Donate within ChMeetings with no external redirection | Yes | No |
| Donate to multiple funds | Yes | No |
| Embeddable online giving page | Yes | No |
| Cancel recurring giving directly from within ChMeetings | Yes | No |
| Refund directly from within ChMeetings | Yes | No |
Select a fund
The funds you select will be displayed to members when they give via your ChMeetings giving link, so they can select where their donation should go.
Optionally, you can customize your online giving link to allow people to contribute to a specific fund directly. Just copy the link or use the QR code to direct people to the fund you want to collect donations for. This is available for all funds, regardless of whether they are selected to be displayed on your giving page or not.
Configure Default Recurrence
You can choose the recurrence that will display by default when someone accesses your online giving page.
One time.
Recurring: In this case, you can also choose the recurrence interval, between weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, or yearly.
Configure Batches
In the Batch Creation Options section, you can choose between two methods of creating batches for your online giving transactions:
Create Daily Batch
If you select this option, online giving batches are created automatically, every day when online giving is received. You can easily distinguish them by their name, formatted as: YYYY-MM-DD Online Giving.
If your church is not receiving donations on a specific day, then no batch will be created for that day.
Online Giving Batches and Deposits include the gross amount (per batch and per transaction) as well as the associated processing fees. This helps provide greater clarity regarding the deposit transactions within the accounting module. Processing fees are recorded as separate negative entries, using the default Category and Fund.
Online giving batches are not closed automatically. You must do so manually by checking the contributions, depositing them to your bank account, then closing the batch last.
If a batch is manually closed mid-day and more gifts are received afterwards, a new batch will be created for the same date.
The date on an online giving batch is not editable.
Manual contributions cannot be added to online-giving batches.
Set Into Specific Batch
This option allows you to assign online giving transactions to a specific batch that you create for the purpose. You can manage this batch as you see fit. Transactions are assigned to the selected batch no matter whether it is open or closed.
Add to Latest Opened Batch
Automatically assign online giving transactions to the most recently opened, active batch. This batch may include all types of contributions, not just online giving. However, this process may streamline your workflow by reducing the number of batches, should you prefer it.
Configure predefined amounts
The Amount Setup section lets you configure predefined amounts that will display to givers on the online giving page. You can set a minimum amount to be given; and add five predefined amounts that givers can select. These amounts act as suggestions and don’t restrict givers from entering a custom amount.
Ask contributors to cover the fees
You can ask donors to cover the processing fees by turning on the toggle. Additionally, you can choose to have the option to cover the fees selected by default on the donation page. You can also choose to make covering fees mandatory.
You can set up fees as follows:
A percentage out of the total donation (less or equal to the fees you pay to the payment provider) - available for Credit Card and ACH payments,
An amount less or equal to the minimum processing fee - for Credit Card payments.
This feature works based on the following formula:
Gross Amount = (Net Amount + Fixed Fee) ÷ (1 − Percentage Fee)
Processing fees are calculated for the total gross amount, which is standard behavior for “cover the fees” options across payment platforms.
Here is an example:
Percentage fee: 2.99%
Fixed transaction fee: $0.49
Intended net amount: $100
So in this case:
($100 + $0.49) ÷ (1 − 0.0299)
$100.49 ÷ 0.9701 ≈ $103.59
When the fees are then applied to $103.59:
2.99% of $103.59 ≈ $3.10
$0.49 fixed fee
Total fees ≈ $3.59
$103.59 − $3.59 = $100.00
Please note that ChMeetings does not add any extra fees. The full amount above is strictly the payment processor’s percentage and fixed transaction fees, calculated in a way that ensures the church receives the intended net donation.
Add a comments box to the donation page
If you use Stripe as the payment processor, you can choose to add a Comments box to your donation page. This allows contributors to provide any additional information relevant to the transaction.
Customize the thank you message
This is the message that donors will see after they contribute. Be sure to let them know how their donation contributes to your church and thank them for their generosity.
Customize the email receipt
Here is where you can customize the email that goes out to your donors, confirming receipt.
Please enter an email from which this message should be sent, then customize the message template.
You can add merge fields to your template, from the Add to Email list:
Place your cursor in the position where you would like to add the field.
Select the desired field from the Add to Email list.
Click the 🕀 sign to enter the field into your email body.
Merge fields will retrieve specific information from within the member’s profile or the donation payment transaction and add it to the email text when sent out. The information will be personalized to each person automatically, so there is no need to change the template when user data is modified. The available merge fields are the following:
- [NAME] - Inserts the giver’s full name.
- [FIRST_NAME] - Inserts the giver’s first name.
- [CHURCH_NAME] - Adds the name of your church.
- [FUND] - Adds the contribution fund to which the payment has been made.
- [AMOUNT] - Inserts the amount paid.
- [TRANSACTION_ID] - Inserts the Transaction ID. This field is only available for payments made via Stripe.
Click Save Settings when you have finished setting up online giving.
Giving Using Your Custom Donation Link
If you are not using any of our integrated payment gateways, or you simply prefer not to integrate with a payment provider, you can also add a custom donation link to ChMeetings.
Go to the Member Portal section in the main menu.
Under Important Links, enter your Custom Donation Link.
Click Save Settings.
You can share this link with everyone to collect donations. If you have a free account and have added it to the Important Links section, it will also create a Donate button on your members’ dashboard. Members will see it every time they log into their ChMeetings account. On paid accounts, you can manage the Donate button in the Member Portal Builder.