Get Started with Donorbox

Charles Zhang November 10, 2020

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!

Step 1: Create a Donorbox account

It takes only a few minutes to create a Donorbox Org Account.

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.

Step 2: Create a Campaign Form

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

This will open up our campaign creator. Here, you can name your campaign, add a campaign description to let your donors know exactly what they are contributing to, edit the language or currency of your form, and more.

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 “Update.” This will save your campaign.

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.

Here is how you can connect Stripe and PayPal.

3.1. Connect with Stripe

To create a new Stripe account, click the “Connect with Stripe” button on the Donorbox dashboard. You will walk through the steps of setting up a Stripe account.
To connect to an existing Stripe account, simply enter that email address. Select the sign-in button, as shown below, and follow the instructions.
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.

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:

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.

Video Tutorial

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

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

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 “Embed Codes” button on your Campaigns Page, then head over to the “Link to Donation Page” tab.

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.

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 Codes” button, 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.

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.

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 “Embed Codes” button on your Campaigns Page and head over to the “Donate Button” tab.

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!

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.

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Charles is the Founder and CEO of Donorbox. His years of experience in the nonprofit technology sector has helped him bridge various gaps in fundraising technology and bring forth a perfect fundraising solution through Donorbox.