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Online donation form ​

The donation form is a public web page that lives at /donate on your church's public site (e.g. grace.geniuschurchmanager.com/donate or your custom domain). Anyone with the link can give — no account required.

Public donation form

What visitors see ​

A clean form with:

  • Amount — preset buttons ($10, $25, $50, $100, custom).
  • Fund — dropdown of every active fund not flagged hidden.
  • Frequency — one-time, weekly, fortnightly, monthly.
  • Donor details — name, email, optional phone.
  • Card details — through a hosted checkout, not collected by GCM directly.
  • Optional message — short free-text the treasurer sees on the donation row.

When the donor clicks the give button, we hand off to Genius Checkout (our hosted payment page) or to PowerTranz's hosted page. The visitor enters card details there, the gateway returns a result, and we redirect back to your site with a success or failure message.

Setup ​

The donation form is on by default. To configure:

  1. Go to Settings → Donation form.
  2. Choose:
    • Logo — your church's logo (pulls from organization settings by default).
    • Header text — the verse, slogan, or message at the top of the form.
    • Default fund — which fund the dropdown shows first.
    • Success URL — where to redirect after a successful gift. Defaults to a built-in thank-you page; you can point to your own page if you want.
    • Failure URL — same idea for declines.
  3. Save.

The form picks up your branding (colors, fonts) from Settings → Branding automatically.

The form is at /donate on your public site. Common places to put the link:

  • The "Give" button on your church website's main nav.
  • The QR code printed in your bulletin or projected during offering.
  • A WhatsApp message after each service.
  • Your social media bio.

TIP

QR codes work better than typed URLs at scale. Generate one pointing at /donate and post it on the back wall of your sanctuary. People who skip the offering basket will still snap and give.

One-time vs recurring ​

The form supports both. The frequency selector defaults to one-time; visitors who pick weekly/fortnightly/monthly land on the recurring donations flow with the same card.

For recurring, we use a tokenized card-on-file — the gateway returns a token that powers the nightly charge job. The donor's full card number is never stored by GCM.

What happens after a successful gift ​

In the moment:

  • The visitor sees the success page.
  • They receive an email receipt.
  • A donation row lands in your donations table.
  • The donor is matched to an existing member by email; if no match, a new visitor-type member is created.

Downstream:

  • The dashboard giving widget updates immediately.
  • The donor's profile (or new member record) gets the donation in the Giving tab.
  • Any workflow listening for the giving.recorded trigger fires.
  • The amount is included in the year-end statement.

Failed payments ​

When a card declines:

  • The visitor sees a friendly failure page with a "try again" link.
  • No donation row is written.
  • No donor record is created (we don't want to litter your members table with abandoned attempts).

We log every attempt for audit purposes — accessible to admins from Settings → Data & Logs → Payment attempts.

Security ​

  • The form lives on your custom domain via Vercel, served over HTTPS.
  • Card details are entered on the gateway's hosted page, never seen by GCM.
  • The payment-callback edge function validates HMAC signatures on every callback, so a forged success doesn't create a phantom donation.
  • See our PCI compliance notes for the full pattern.

Embedding ​

You can embed the form in an iframe on your existing church website. The form is responsive and works at any width down to mobile. Use the embed code shown in Settings → Donation form → Embed.

Common questions ​

Can I have multiple donation forms for different campaigns? Currently one form per organization, with multiple funds selectable. We're considering multi-form support for capital campaigns — see Launch a giving campaign for the workaround using funds and headers.

Does the form support Apple Pay / Google Pay? Yes if your gateway supports it. Genius Checkout supports both; PowerTranz support varies by region.

What currencies? The form charges in your organization's currency (set in Settings → Organization). Multi-currency on a single form is not supported.

Next steps ​