Record a donation by hand

Gifts that arrive outside your donation form still belong in Donately, so your totals and donor records are complete. You can log a check that came in the mail or goods someone donated, or take a card payment over the phone.

Record a gift

Go to Donations and select New Donation. The sheet opens on Create offline gift, a quick entry for a gift you already have. The arrow beside the button offers:

• Quick entry, for cash, check, in-kind or other gifts you already received.
• Use a form, which opens one of your published forms to charge a card or PayPal now, or to collect the form's own questions.

You can also start from a contact, a campaign or a fundraiser page, which fills in the donor or keeps the gift on that campaign.

Quick entry needs no form. Only Use a form needs at least one published form.

Cash, check, in-kind and other gifts

In the sheet, enter the amount and the gift date, then pick the Type:

• Cash.
• Check, with an optional check number so you can reconcile later.
• In-kind, for donated goods or services. A description is required, and the amount you enter is the fair market value.
• Other, for anything else you already have, such as a stock transfer, a wire or a grant from a donor-advised fund. A description is required.

Choose a campaign if the gift belongs to one, search for the donor or create them, and select Record gift. Record and add another keeps the date, type and campaign for the next entry, which suits a pile of checks.

For the full walk-through, including grants from a donor-advised fund and the Not tax-deductible mark, see Record cash, check, in-kind and other gifts.

What happens to receipts

A recorded gift does not email the donor unless you ask. Tick Email the donor a receipt in the donor section to send one. The box is off by default because most offline gifts were acknowledged when they arrived, and a second automatic email confuses donors.

The receipt names the payment method: cash, check, in-kind or other. In-kind receipts leave out the tax-deductible sentence, since what was given was not money. You can send a receipt later from the gift's page with Resend Receipt. See Donation receipts.

Changing a gift afterwards

Open the donation and use Edit Donation. You can change the amount, the status, the campaign or fundraiser, the offline details, and the donation date, which is how you backdate a gift to when it actually arrived.

Cash and check donations can be deleted outright. Processed card donations cannot, because they represent a real transaction; refund those instead.

Two things the old dashboard did that this does not

Recurring gifts cannot be recorded by hand. Quick entry records one-time gifts only. For a donor who has committed to give monthly outside the platform, record each gift as it arrives, or ask them to set up a recurring donation through a form.

$0 donations are not accepted. Zero-value entries used to be a way to add someone as a contact. Instead, use a form that collects information without payment, which creates the contact record properly and keeps your donation metrics honest.

Who can do this

Recording donations needs an admin-level role on the account. Team members without those permissions won't be able to, even if they can see the page.