Offline Donations

What Is offline Donations?

Offline Donations lets donors give using checks, money orders, or other non-digital methods. Unlike online gateways, no sensitive payment details are collected—just basic contact information like name, email, phone, etc. This gateway records the donor’s intent to give and provides them with instructions for sending their contribution.

When to Use Offline Donations

Offline Donations is a good choice when:

• Accepting donations by check or money order
• Processing gifts through direct bank transfer
• Recording cash donations received at an event
• Handling contributions from donors who prefer not to pay online

Using this gateway keeps offline contributions organized and ensures every gift is acknowledged in the same way as online donations.

User Experience with Offline Donations

The donor experience with Offline Donations is as follows:

1. They choose “Offline Donation” from the list of Payment Options
2. They fill out their information
3. They see your  pre-populated  information on how to provide their offline payment
4. They hit submit
5. They see the confirmation page showing that their payment is “Pending” (this is important and explained below)
6. They get an email saying that you received their submission and their payment is “Pending”
7. They send you their Offline Donation (via mail or in person)
8. You manually switch the status of their transaction from “Pending” to “Complete”
9. They get another email saying that their donation is complete.

Configuring Offline Donations on your Form

When you set the global option to enable Offline Donations, you also have the ability to customize the instruction text per form. This is helpful if you have a specific form that is designed to be for a canned good drive or something unique that needs unique instructions.

Setting Your Offline Donations Settings

The Global settings for Offline Donations allow you to set your Offline Donation settings once and then every form automatically inherit these settings. Keep in mind that changing these settings will NOT affect forms that you already created and have updated their individual Offline Donation settings.

Navigate to GiveWP > Settings > Payment Gateways. There you’ll find the Offline Donations section. Here’s an overview of those settings:

• Collect Billing Details: When this box is checked, you can ask your donor to fill out their mailing address information. This is particularly useful if you want to mail them a thank you note.
  
• Offline Donations Instructions: Here you can set the text that appears in the form when the user chooses Offline Donation as their Payment Option. Remember, this is just a default. This can be used as a good template for all your forms to easily customize individually as necessary per form.

All of these settings are available to customize in each individual form as well.

Managing Offline Donations You Receive

Now that your Offline Donations gateway is configured, you can start receiving Offline Donations. But what do you do with them when they arrive?

Generally, what you do with them depends on the purpose of asking for Offline Donations. Here’s a few use-cases for Offline Donations and what you would do when you receive one.

• Offering the ability for your donors to pay by check
  Your donor indicates that they will mail you a check. Wait until the check arrives in the mail, then find that donation in GiveWP > Donations and manually change the Status from “Pending” to “Complete”. Note that only users that are either designated as an “Admin” or a “GiveWP Manager” can change Transaction Statuses.

   

  • Learn more about Donation Statuses here.
  • Learn more about GiveWP User Roles here.
• Take Registration for an Event and allow Donors to “Pay at the Door”
  Maybe your GiveWP form is for an event. You can customize the Offline Donations label to say “Pay at the Door”. They indicate that they are coming to the event, but are not paying online. So their donation is set to “Pending”. At the door, you can have your site open, and as they arrive you can find their transaction and manually change it to “Complete” when they pay.

   

• Allow Donors to Donate Physical Goods
  Perhaps you are doing a fundraiser for the homeless, or a natural disaster and need both funds and physical goods like Canned Goods or blankets. use Offline Donations to allow users to indicate that they will bring physical goods to your location. Optionally add a Textbox with Form Field Manager to allow them to tell you what they plan to bring.

   

  • Learn more about Form Field Manager here.

Frequently Asked Questions