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Add a donation

Record a donation that didn't flow through a form or a synced CRM — an offline monetary donation, or an in-kind donation of donated goods or services.

Most donations arrive automatically through forms, checkout links, or CRM sync. The Create donation flow is for everything else: cash, cheques, and bank transfers that never touched an electronic channel, and in-kind donations — donated goods, donated services, discounts beyond normal commercial terms, and excessive payments.

In-kind donations are first-class donations in Together. They are recorded at fair value and count toward disclosure thresholds and donor caps exactly like cash. For the reasoning behind that, see In-kind donations and compliance.

Before you start

You need:

Steps

  1. Go to Donations and click Create donation. You can also start this from a donor's Giving tab, at the top of the Donation history panel, which carries the donor through for you.

  2. Pick the donor, then choose the donation type:

    • Monetary — an offline cash, cheque, or bank-transfer donation. Pick the payment method.
    • In-kind — donated goods or services. No payment method applies.

  3. Enter the amount and the date the donation was made or received.

    For an in-kind donation the amount is the fair value — what the goods or services would cost on the open market, not the cost to the donor and not nil because no money changed hands.

  4. For an in-kind donation, pick the category and describe what was donated:

    • Donated goods — physical items such as printing, signage, or office space.
    • Donated services — professional work with commercial value, such as legal or accounting work.
    • Discount beyond normal terms — a discount given outside the supplier's usual commercial practice.
    • Excessive payment — an amount paid above fair value, such as a $5,000 raffle ticket or an over-priced gala table.
    • Other in-kind benefit — anything that doesn't fit the categories above.
    The Create donation form with the in-kind donation type selected for a chosen donor: the monetary / in-kind type chooser, a fair-value amount field, the AEC-aligned category options (donated goods, services, discount beyond normal terms, excessive payment, other), and a description field.
    Recording an in-kind donation.

  5. Optionally add a revenue code so the donation attributes to a campaign. See Set up revenue codes.

  6. Click Create donation. The donation is saved as confirmed, with source Manual, and appears immediately in the donations list and on the donor's giving history.

    If your CRM is connected with write-back on, the gift is also pushed to your CRM within a few minutes - so don't key it in there as well, or you will have it twice. See NationBuilder sync.

Editing and voiding

A manually recorded donation can be edited or voided from the donation detail dialog. Use edit to correct an amount, date, or description; use void when a donation was recorded in error. Donations that came from a payment form or a CRM sync are not editable here — they are records of what happened elsewhere.

One exception: the revenue code on a donation form, checkout link, recommendation-set or imported gift can be corrected in place, because the code is what carries the jurisdiction into compliance. Open the donation and use Change revenue code; the code must already exist in your library. Gifts synced from your CRM are not included — set their code in the CRM, which then syncs across.

Voiding also stops the donation reaching your CRM, as long as it hasn't been sent yet - Together checks again immediately before it writes. Editing a gift that has already reached your CRM updates the copy there too: the amount, the date, the payment method and the revenue code. If your CRM can't be reached, Together still saves the edit and tells you what didn't get through, and saving again retries.

If the gift had already reached your CRM before you voided it, Together marks the copy there rather than deleting it - in NationBuilder it cancels the donation, so it stops showing as succeeded, and adds [VOIDED IN TOGETHER] with the date to the donation's note. The record stays in place for you to remove or keep as your own record-keeping requires. NationBuilder shows a cancelled donation as Refunded, which is the closest label it has - it does not mean money was returned to the donor. If your CRM can't be reached - or if the gift was still on its way there when you voided it - the void still stands in Together and you are told so on the spot. There is no "try again" for a void, so check your CRM for that gift and remove or annotate it by hand.

Editing or voiding re-checks the donor against disclosure thresholds and cap bands. If you lower a donation's value or void a donation that previously crossed a threshold, review the donor's disclosures and resolve any obligation that no longer applies.

What to do next