Donations

Put a donate button on your site, let fans give what they want, and thank every one of them personally.

Not every fan wants a t-shirt. Some just want to help. A donation gives them a way to do that: a button on your site, a few suggested amounts, and a thank you afterwards.

Donations live under Finance then Donations.

How a donation works

A donation in TribeNest is a reusable button, not a single gift. You set one up once, describe what you are raising money for, choose the amounts you want to suggest, and then place the button on your website. Every fan who gives through it is recorded against that donation, and its running totals grow.

You can run more than one at a time. A permanent "support my work" button and a temporary "help me finish the record" push are two separate donations with separate totals.

The donations list

The main page lists every donation you have set up:

Title, which links through to its detail page.
Minimum, the smallest gift you allow, or None.
Clicks, how many people opened it.
Donations, how many actually gave.
Total Raised.
Status, either Active or Inactive.
Created date.
An actions menu with View, Edit and Delete.

Search by title using the box above the table. Two buttons sit in the top right: View Payments and Create Donation.

Clicks next to donations is the number worth watching. A high click count with few donations usually means the amounts you are suggesting are wrong for your audience, or your description has not made the case yet.

Creating a donation

Click Create Donation and work down the form.

Basics

Title, such as "Support My Work". Donors see it.
Description (optional). Tell people what their money does. This is the part that earns the gift, so be specific: "this pays for studio time" beats "thanks for the support".
Donate Button Text, the label on the button itself. It starts as "Donate".

Amounts

Minimum Amount (optional). Donors cannot give less than this. Leave it blank for no minimum.
Preset Amounts. These appear as one-tap buttons on the donation form. New donations start with four suggestions, and you can add or remove them with Add Amount and the bin icon. You can have up to eight.

Presets do most of the work here. People rarely invent a number, they pick one you offered, so the set you choose largely sets your average gift.

Fees and confirmation

Allow donors to cover payment fees. Ticked, the donation form shows the donor a "cover transaction fees" checkbox, so you receive the full amount they intended to give. It is on by default.
Success Message (optional). What the donor sees on screen the moment the donation goes through.

Thank-you email

Success Email Content (optional). A rich message emailed to the donor afterwards. Leave it empty and your success message is used instead. Either way the donation receipt is added to the bottom automatically.

You also get an email yourself summarising every donation as it arrives, so you know who is supporting you without checking the dashboard.

Visibility

Active. Untick it and the donation stops opening for visitors, even if the button is still sitting on your site. It is the clean way to end a campaign without deleting its history.

Click Create Donation to save.

Editing and deleting

Open a donation's actions menu for Edit, which reopens the same form, or Delete.

Deleting stops the button working

Deleting a donation keeps every payment already made through it, so your records and totals stay intact. What it does do is stop the button working, everywhere it is placed on your site. If you only want to pause a campaign, untick Active instead.

The donation detail page

Click a donation title to open it. You get a summary card with its title, description, whether it is active, when it was created, and the four numbers that matter: Minimum, Clicks, Donations and Total Raised.

The actions menu in the top right holds Edit, View payments and Message Donors.

Donation payments

Click View Payments, or open one donation and choose View payments to see only that campaign's gifts.

Each row shows:

Donor name and Email.
Amount, what they chose to give.
Fees Covered, the extra they added if they ticked the cover-fees box, or None.
Total, what they actually paid.
Status, one of succeeded, pending or failed. A refund chip sits beside it when part or all of the gift has been given back.
Message, if the donor left one.
Date.

Use the dropdown above the table to switch between All donations and a single campaign.

Refunding a donation

On any successful payment, open the row menu and choose Refund. The standard refund dialog opens and you can return all or part of it. See payouts and refunds.

Messaging your donors

This is the part most people skip and should not. Open a donation and click Message Donors.

Write a Subject.
Write your message in the editor. It needs to be more than a few words long.
Click Send Message.

It goes to everyone who has donated through that donation. TribeNest sends it for you in the background, so you can leave the page.

Back on the donation page, Messages to Donors lists everything you have sent, with its subject, when it went, whether it is still sending or already Sent, and a View Report link that opens the full delivery report in emails.

Say what the money is for. Vague causes raise less than specific ones.
Set your presets deliberately. Include one small amount that feels easy and one larger one for the people who would have given more if you had asked.
Leave cover-fees on. Most donors tick it, and it is the difference between the amount they meant to give and the amount you keep.
Write the thank-you email once, properly. It is sent to everyone, forever, so it is worth ten minutes.
Deactivate rather than delete when a campaign is over, so the numbers stay readable next year.

Where to go next

Give money back → payouts and refunds
See donation income beside everything else → overview
Put the button on a page → my website
Check how a message performed → emails