Emails your donors receive
Together emails your donors for you - a receipt when a gift clears, a heads-up while a bank debit settles, a notice if a payment fails, and word when a regular gift ends. Here's exactly what each one says and how to brand them.
When a donation comes through one of your forms or checkout links, Together handles the donor-facing email itself - you don't wire up anything in Stripe. Each email is tied to a moment in the payment's life, and all of them carry your branding.
| When it sends | Is it a tax receipt? | |
|---|---|---|
| Donation receipt | Once the gift is confirmed - instantly for card, once the bank clears for BECS/PayTo | Yes |
| Processing notice | The moment a bank-debit gift (BECS Direct Debit or PayTo) is set up | No |
| Payment failed | If a bank-debit gift is declined, or a regular gift's payment doesn't go through | No |
| Regular gift ended | When a regular gift stops - cancelled, or after repeated failed payments | No |
A card or wallet payment settles immediately, so the donor gets the receipt and nothing else. A BECS Direct Debit or PayTo payment takes a few business days to clear, so the donor first gets the processing notice, then either the receipt (it cleared) or the payment-failed notice (it didn't).
The donation receipt
Subject: Donation receipt - your organisation.
Sent automatically the moment a donation is confirmed, and only once per gift - a donor never gets a duplicate receipt, even if the payment system retries behind the scenes. It contains:
- A greeting and your intro message (see Customising the copy).
- The amount, the date, the payment method (card, BECS Direct Debit, PayTo, or a wallet), and a Receipt ID the donor can quote if they ever need to.
- Your organisation name and ABN, and a line reminding the donor to keep it for their records.
If the donor typed contact details on the form that differ from what you already hold, the receipt also shows a single Update my details on file button, so they can confirm the change in one click. Nothing is changed on your records until they do.
The processing notice (BECS and PayTo only)
Subject: Your direct debit to your organisation is being set up (BECS), or Your donation to your organisation is processing (PayTo).
Bank debits don't settle on the spot, so this email sets expectations: it tells the donor the gift amount is on its way, that it usually takes a few business days to clear, and - in bold - that this isn't a receipt and the receipt will follow once the payment clears.
For a BECS Direct Debit it also restates the Direct Debit Request the donor authorised - account-holder name, BSB, and the last four digits of the account - followed by the standard direct-debit service-agreement wording. Card and wallet donors never see this email.
The payment-failed notice
Subject: There was a problem with your payment to your organisation.
If a bank debit is declined after it was set up, Together lets the donor know plainly: the gift didn't go through, no money has been taken, and they're welcome to try again - with a link straight back to your website when you've set one in branding. It's reassuring by design, so a failed debit doesn't read as a charge the donor needs to chase.
Regular giving: what a regular giver hears
A donor who set up a regular gift gets the same receipt on every successful payment, exactly as they would for a one-off. Two more emails cover the rest of the life of that gift.
When a regular payment doesn't go through - subject We couldn't process your regular gift to your organisation - the donor is told what happened, that the payment will be retried automatically over the next few days, and that there's nothing they need to do. This one deliberately gives them nothing to click: a retry is already scheduled, so inviting a second gift now would risk charging them twice.
When the regular gift ends - subject Your regular gift to your organisation has ended - the wording depends on why:
- It was cancelled (by you, on the donor's behalf): a short confirmation that nothing further will be charged, and a thank-you. No pressure to give again.
- The payments kept failing: the donor is told the gift has stopped because the last payment couldn't be collected, and this one does carry a Give again button back to your donation form - the donor didn't choose to leave, so it's the one moment where re-starting is the helpful offer.
If the reason isn't clear, the donor gets the neutral "your regular gift has ended" wording rather than a guess.
Stopping a gift yourself. Open the donor, choose the Regular gifts tab, and hit Cancel gift on the one you want to stop. It takes effect straight away - no further payment is ever taken - and the donor gets the confirmation email above once Stripe confirms the cancellation. Donations already received are untouched, and the gift can't be restarted: the donor sets up a new one from your donation form. You need Editor access or above; a Viewer sees the tab without the control.
Together can't send a donor a "update your card" link - that would be a URL onto their billing details, and it isn't built. A donor whose card has expired starts a new regular gift from your donation form, which is exactly where the ended email points them.
Branding every email
Every one of these emails inherits the look you set at Settings → Branding:
- Your logo and primary colour in the header.
- Your website as the link a donor follows back to you.
- Your ABN in the footer, where you've entered one.
So once your branding is set, these emails already look like they came from you.
Customising the copy
The receipt's intro paragraph - the line under the greeting - is yours to set at Settings → Branding. Leave it blank to use Together's default wording. You can drop in {{ORGANISATION_NAME}} and {{AMOUNT}} and they'll be filled in per donation.
A separate message for regular gifts. Under it sits a Regular gift message. When a donation is part of a donor's regular gift, that's the wording they get instead - so a renewal can say something different from a first gift. Leave it blank and regular gifts use your receipt message above.
A different message per Stripe account. If you run more than one connected Stripe account - a legal fund, a campaign account - each one carries its own pair of messages, on the same panel. An Applies to dropdown appears above the fields listing your organisation default and every account; pick one and the two fields below switch to it. A donation through a form or link pinned to that account gets that account's wording.
A line under the dropdown tells you whether the account you're on has its own wording or is inheriting your organisation's, and every option in the open list is marked the same way. With one Stripe account there is no dropdown at all - your organisation's two messages are the whole panel, unless that account already has wording of its own, in which case the dropdown stays so you can still reach it.
Together works down the list and uses the first message it finds:
- The account's regular gift message (regular gifts only)
- The account's receipt message
- Your organisation's regular gift message (regular gifts only)
- Your organisation's receipt message
- Together's default wording
You never have to work that out yourself. Leave a message blank and its Preview shows exactly what a donor would get instead, captioned with where it came from - "Inherited from your organisation's Receipt message", or "Together's default wording". The greyed-out text in the empty box is the same wording, so the box and the preview always agree.
That rule is printed under the Applies to dropdown, so you don't have to go looking for it. Switching the dropdown mid-edit is safe: Together keeps what you typed on each account separately, so you can move between them and come back to it. It is still unsaved until you press Save changes, and leaving the page drops it.
A form or link with no account pinned uses your organisation's message, not your default account's. It still takes payment through your default account - the account only decides the wording when you've pinned it deliberately.
The processing, payment-failed and regular-gift-ended notices use fixed wording; you brand them, but you don't edit their text.
The thank-you message on the donation form is a different thing - it's the text shown on the success page right after a donor pays, set per form in the form editor, not an email.
Donations you record by hand
Offline gifts you enter yourself - cash, cheque, a bank transfer - don't trigger any of these emails. You're recording a gift that already happened, often one the donor was already thanked for, so Together doesn't email them on your behalf.
What to do next
- Set your branding so every email looks like you: Brand your donate pages.
- Understand the payment states behind each email: Donation statuses and sources.