Get Started with Donorbox

Welcome to Donorbox!

We realize you might have a few questions as you get started, so we created this guide to help you work through them.

Here are the steps covered in this post.

• Step 1: Create a Donorbox Account
• Step 2: Create a Campaign Form
• Step 3: Add a Payment Processor (How to connect with Stripe and Paypal)
• Step 4: Go Live
• Video Tutorial
• The 4 options for making your Donorbox Form go live
• Other helpful manuals

It takes just 4 steps to go from creating a Donorbox account to deploying your first donation form. It’s really simple! Ready? Let’s go!

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Step 1: Create a Donorbox account

It takes only a few minutes to create a Donorbox Org Account. We’ve put together a helpful guide to take you through each step.

We don’t require any uploaded documentation from you to register. Just enter your email address, password, and a few other relevant details. Our goal is to get you donation-ready as fast as possible.

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Step 2: Create a Campaign Form

You will need a campaign form to collect donations. To create one, click the “Create Campaign” link on your Donorbox dashboard.

This will open up our Form Builder page. Start by naming your campaign and entering your campaign description to let your donors know exactly what they are contributing to. If necessary, you can also change the language or currency of your form.

You will be guided through each step of building your campaign form. They’re quite customizable – add pre-filled donation amounts to your form, and edit your automated email receipts. You can also add custom questions and enable different recurring intervals. Check out our Features Page for a full list of what our awesome campaign forms can do.

You can change the color of your donation form, inject custom CSS, and add logos and a hero image to match your website’s branding.

Once you have gone through the editor and you’ve customized it to your liking, click “Save & Preview”. This will save the changes, and you’ll be ready for the next step!

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Step 3: Add a Payment Processor

Donorbox supports 2 payment processors: Stripe and PayPal. Stripe is our main payment processor, and we can’t recommend it enough – it’s safe, efficient, and cost-effective. But PayPal is great, too! They are both highly regarded for their data security.

To maximize your donations, it’s best to sign up for both Stripe and PayPal so that donors can choose their preferred method of payment. Donorbox does not hold any donations for any period of time. All donations get processed directly via Stripe and PayPal.

If you are only planning to connect to 1 payment processor, we highly recommend that it be Stripe. It gives donors a wider variety of payment options like debit/credit cards, ACH, and SEPA. Google Pay and Apple Pay are also both supported (due to Apple’s strict domain matching security measure, Apple Pay will only work on your Donorbox-hosted secure donation page).

Both Stripe and Paypal charge 2.2% – 2.9% + $0.30 per donation. If you are a registered 501c3 nonprofit, contact to get discounted Stripe fees and apply at PayPal’s Nonprofit Centre.

Donorbox is free to start and charges a small platform fee of 1.5% for the month’s donations. Our fees are the lowest in the market, and we charge no setup fee. Check out our pricing guide for details of what your payment processing and Donorbox fees may look like.

To know more about PayPal nonprofit donation fees, we have written a detailed article here.

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Here is how you can connect Stripe and PayPal.

3.1. Connect with Stripe

• To create a new Stripe account, click the “Create Your Stripe Account” button on the Donorbox dashboard. You will walk through the steps of setting up a Stripe account.
• To connect to an existing Stripe account, click the “Already have a Stripe Account?” link. Select the sign-in button, as shown below, and enter your login details.
• Once you fill out and submit the form, you will be redirected back to your Donorbox dashboard, and you’ll be ready to go!

Stripe will automatically transfer your funds from your Stripe account to your bank account based on the transfer schedule listed on your dashboard.

In the US and Australia, transfers will be automatically completed every two business days. However, your first transfer may take a little longer (around 7 days). In most other countries, transfers are completed every 7 business days.

For more information about the exact transfer time in your country, click here. You can also access a summary of your past and upcoming transfers on your Stripe dashboard, as shown below.

3.2. Connect with PayPal

Donorbox has implemented some measures to strengthen our connection with PayPal. Personal PayPal accounts are no longer supported. Only PayPal business accounts can connect to Donorbox.

• Simply click the “Connect Your PayPal Account” link. You will be taken to the Payment Methods page.
• Enter your email address in the PayPal field, click “Update” and you’re all set!

Unlike Stripe, PayPal requires you to initiate the transfer of your funds from your PayPal account to your bank account. After you’ve initiated the transfer, the funds will arrive in your bank account within two to three business days.

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Step 4: Go Live!

So, you’ve created your campaign form. The next step is to deploy it to live. You can do this in 4 ways. You can choose from any of these options:

1. Donation Page, hosted by Donorbox
2. Embedded form
3. Popup form
4. Donate button

Don’t worry, you don’t need any programming experience. We will auto-generate all the required code for you to simply copy and paste.

If you use specialized web builders such as WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and others, our platform-specific installation guides may be useful.

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Video Tutorial

If you are a visual learner, watch the video tutorial to get started.

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Here are the 4 options for making your Donorbox form go live.

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1. Donorbox-hosted Donation Page

Donorbox automatically creates a beautiful donation page for your campaign, hosted on our SSL-secure servers. This saves you from having to install SSL yourself. There is no extra charge for this, no matter how many campaigns you create.

The other great thing about our Donorbox-hosted donation pages is that you don’t even need your own website. We host the page for you. Your donors can start donating immediately without you going through the hassle of first developing a whole website. But, if you already have a website, that’s cool too!

Another advantage of using a Donorbox donation page is that you’ll be able to accept donations via Apple Pay. Our servers have already been certified and approved for use by Apple. How convenient is that?

To direct donors to this donation page from your website, click the “Link to Donation Page”, which you will find next to your campaign name.

This will open a page containing the URL to your Donorbox donation page, including the text that will be hyperlinked. There are also customizable settings that you can edit. The URL will self-adjust as you make these edits.

Simply copy and paste the code in your web page editor, wherever you want the link to appear.

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2. Embed Form

The second option is to embed the donation form directly to your website. Donorbox will generate the embedding code – you just need to copy and paste.

Click the “Embed Form” link, found on your Campaigns page.

You will be taken to a page containing the embed code, and all the different settings that you can adjust. You’ll notice the embed code change as you adjust the settings.

You can also preview your form so that you know exactly how it will look once it’s on your website. When you are happy with your form, simply copy the code and paste it into your website editor – it’s that easy!

If you are embedding the donation form, your website needs to be SSL-enabled.

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3. Popup Form

Our third option is the popup modal form. Instead of redirecting your donors to a separate donation page, you can make a donation form pop up, as an on-screen overlay,  when someone presses the Donate button.

Click this Donate button to see how a pop-up form works:

Donate

For details on how to install this, please check out our pop-up installation guide. Just like with embedding the donation form, if you want to use the popup modal you will need to install SSL on your website.

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4. Donate Button

You can use the Donorbox Donate button anywhere to take donors to your Donorbox-hosted donation page. It works great within emails too, if you want to include a Donate button as part of the email message.

To do this, simply click the “Donate Button” link on your Campaigns page.

Here, you have many options for you to customize the donate button so that it meets your preferences. For example, choosing the size and color of the button. Simply copy the code for the URL and paste it into your website/email editor, and you’re good to go!

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Other Helpful Manuals

And that’s it for our Getting Started Guide! We know you’re going to love using Donorbox. Feel free to check out our other manuals (linked below) for more assistance. You can always drop us an email at any time – we’d love to help.

• Weebly Embedding
• WordPress Embedding, WordPress Donation Plugin
• Mailchimp Integration
• Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack Integration
• Squarespace Embedding
• Wix Embedding
• Joomla Embedding