You can take one-off donations with the Contact Form Advanced widget in EverWeb 4.6 and later. Donors pick a set amount or choose their own, add a note, and pay by card through Stripe or through PayPal. You get an email marked Paid with everything they told you, and they get a thank-you email.
Who uses this
- A parish church or mosque lets members give online, with a choice of fund such as General, Building appeal or Food bank.
- An animal rescue charity offers 10, 25 or 50, or another amount, with a box to give in memory of a pet.
- A school's parent association collects sponsorship for a fun run and lets parents cover the card fees.
- A youth sports club raises money for a new minibus and thanks every donor by email.
What you need
- EverWeb 4.6 or later.
- The Contact Forms Enhanced add-on: taking payments, the thank-you email and the online record of every donation all need it. See What is the Contact Forms Enhanced Add-on?
- A Stripe account and/or a PayPal Business account. Their own fees apply.
- HTTPS (the padlock) on your website: see My site says 'Not Secure': how to get HTTPS (SSL) on your website. On another web host, it must run PHP with cURL. EverWeb + Hosting does.
New to the form widget? Start with Build a custom form: quote requests, registrations and file uploads.
Sample form plan
| Field label | Control Type | Settings / Price |
|---|---|---|
| Your gift | Card Select | Options: 10, 25, 50, 100, I'll choose my own amount. Prices: 10, 25, 50, 100, and leave the last one empty |
| Your own amount | Stepper | Min 0, Max 5000, Step 1, Unit Price 1. Control Instructions/Tip: "This is added to any amount chosen above." |
| Fund | Drop Down Menu | Where it's most needed, Building appeal, Food bank (no prices) |
| Yes, add 3% to help cover card fees | Toggle | Price When On 3% (off to start with, so it stays optional) |
| In memory or in honour of | TextBox | Optional |
| Name | TextBox | Required |
| Required | ||
| Address | Address | Only if you need it for receipts or Gift Aid |
The percentage is worked out on the whole donation, including the Stepper amount, so a gift of 50 with the fees switch turned on comes to 51.50.
Set it up
- Buy the add-on and sign in to your account in EverWeb (EverWeb > Settings on a Mac, Edit > Options on Windows).
- Drag Contact Form Advanced onto your page and open Inspector > Widget Settings.
- At the top, choose your add-on in Contact Form Enhanced Add-on and type a Contact Form Name, such as St Mary's Donation. Donors see this name on the Stripe or PayPal checkout page.
- In Email Address to Send Form to, type the address that should receive each donation.
- Open the Payments section and tick Accept Payments. Tick Accept Cards (Stripe) and paste your Stripe Secret Key, and/or tick Accept PayPal and paste your PayPal Client ID and PayPal Secret. Get a Stripe API Key... and Get PayPal Credentials... open the right pages.
- Choose your Currency, set Total Label to Donation total, and leave Tax Rate (%) empty.
- Add the fields from the plan. Once Accept Payments is on, the Option List has a Price column. Write prices with a full stop for decimals, such as 12.50.
- Set Submit Caption to Donate. Make a thank-you page and choose it in Forward To Page, and a "Your donation didn't go through" page for Payment Unsuccessful Page.
- Turn on spam protection (Use reCaptcha SPAM Protection, with your choice of Captcha Provider), then tick Send Confirmation Email (see below).
- Test with a Stripe test key or PayPal Sandbox (testing), then paste your live details and publish with File > Publish Entire Site. Payments only work on the published website, not in Preview.
The thank-you email
Send Confirmation Email sends the donor an email once their payment is confirmed. In Confirmation Email Content you can use any field label between % signs, plus a few payment words. For example:
Hi %Name%, thank you for your gift of %ordertotal% to St Mary's. Your payment reference is %paymentreference%.
The email can thank the donor and show the amount. Whether it counts as an official donation receipt, and what one must include, depends on the rules where you are: check them before calling it a receipt.
What you receive
- An email for each donation, marked Paid, with the payment method, a Payment Reference and the amount. It arrives once the payment is confirmed.
- If someone starts but never finishes paying, you get their details a few hours later with Unpaid order in the subject, so you can follow up.
- A record of every donation in your Client Area under Contact Form Submissions > View Form Submissions, where you can search, sort and Export to a CSV file for your year-end figures.
Good to know
- One-off gifts only. Forms can't take monthly or other repeating payments. For regular giving, use a paid plan in Members-only pages, logins and paid subscriptions: EverWeb Membership Sites, or the recurring payment tools in your own Stripe or PayPal account.
- There's no box to type any amount into a TextBox or Number field and be charged it. The Stepper with a Unit Price of 1 does that job: donors tap + and −, or type a whole amount.
- If a donor chooses nothing that has a price, the total is 0 and the form arrives as a normal message with no payment.
- One currency per form: for two currencies, make two forms.
- Gift Aid (UK charities): add a Description field with the declaration wording that HMRC currently asks for, a Toggle such as "Yes, I want to Gift Aid my donation" (leave Required field unticked so it stays optional), and the Address field. Check the official requirements yourself.
- Never ask for card numbers or bank details in a form field. Payment happens on Stripe's or PayPal's own secure page, so card details never touch your website.
Related articles
- Build a custom form: quote requests, registrations and file uploads
- What is the Contact Forms Enhanced Add-on?
- Build a website for your charity or nonprofit with EverWeb: donations, volunteers and events
- Build a website for your church, mosque, synagogue or temple with EverWeb
- Take payments on your website with the PayPal and Stripe widgets