A target, a deadline and six channels giving at once. You need one total, not six.

What goes wrong today

Nobody can say what the appeal has raised right now

A social push, an email link, an in-person collection and a card terminal at an event are all producing gifts at the same time, in different systems. The total against target is an estimate until someone reconciles everything by hand, usually after the moment it would have been useful.

The project ends and the donors disappear

The appeal brought in three hundred new supporters through a form tool, an event platform and a spreadsheet of bank transfers. When the project wraps and the temporary tools get cancelled, those supporters are stranded outside your actual donor base, invisible to next year’s appeal.

A team assembled for one purpose, then gone

The people running the appeal are often volunteers, contractors or staff pulled in for the duration. Give them the same access as a permanent finance administrator and a short project leaves a long-term access problem behind it.

The closing report is a reconstruction, not a record

A board, a major donor or a grant funder expects to know what was raised, through which channels, and from how many supporters once the appeal closes. Assembling that report from separate exports is slow, and the figures rarely tie back to anything reviewable.

What connects, and on whose authorization

Each source below is read only after your organization configures and authorizes it.

Stripe

Card gifts given online during the appeal arrive with their charges, refunds and status intact, so the running total reflects what settled, not what was submitted.

Square

A collection tin at an event or a card reader on the day counts toward the same appeal total as an online gift, instead of sitting in a separate till record.

Donativus forms

A dedicated page for the appeal produces submissions already linked to a supporter and to the campaign, without needing a separate event platform.

Bank transfers & offline gifts Limited

Offline pledges and transfers, often the largest single gifts in a capital appeal, get recorded into the same ledger instead of a side spreadsheet only the project lead can read. Recorded by your team or brought in by import today. Direct bank connections are on the roadmap.

CSV & spreadsheet imports

A supporter list built up during the project in a spreadsheet or a temporary tool can join the same record once the appeal is over, instead of being archived and forgotten.

Campaign & source attribution

Every gift keeps the link to the appeal and the channel that produced it, which is what makes the closing report a query instead of a reconstruction.

The operating loop for this work

1. Connect

   Authorize the processors, forms and offline recording your appeal actually uses before launch, whatever combination that is.

2. Unify in real time

   Gifts from every connected channel normalize into transactions tied to the appeal as they arrive, not at month end.

3. Analyze the live total

   Progress against target is a running figure across all channels, so the team running the appeal knows where things stand without asking each channel owner separately.

4. Act and carry supporters forward

   Donors acquired during the project join your ongoing supporter record, not a project-only list that ends when the appeal does.

5. Measure and report

   The closing report, total raised, by channel, by supporter count, is built from the same transactions the whole appeal ran on.

Where the live total actually lives during the appeal

A time-bound appeal is unusual in fundraising terms. For a few weeks or months, income arrives faster and through more channels at once than the rest of the year combined. That is exactly the condition where a spreadsheet reconciled once a week stops being good enough.

Because each connected channel feeds the same transaction ledger as it happens, the total against target is a current figure, not a projection. Check progress the morning before a deadline and you see what has actually settled across the processor, the appeal page and any recorded offline gifts, not a partial view from the one channel you happen to have access to.

What happens to the supporters once the project closes

The usual failure mode of a successful appeal is that it succeeds twice: once at raising money, then quietly fails at keeping the people who gave it. A donor acquired through an event platform or a one-off campaign tool has no path into your ongoing supporter relationship unless someone builds one.

Because gifts and the supporters behind them are captured into the record you already use, a donor who gave to the building fund in March is visible to the same team planning the autumn newsletter, with the campaign that brought them in recorded on their history. The appeal does not have to end with an export nobody quite gets round to doing.

Reporting what was raised, and from where

Every time-bound appeal ends with someone owing an answer. A board wants the final total, a major donor wants to know their gift was used as promised, a funder wants a breakdown by channel or by month. That report is only as good as the records behind it.

Because each transaction keeps its provider reference, its status and its link to the appeal, the closing report is drawn from the same ledger the appeal ran on, not rebuilt from separate exports after the fact. A figure quoted to a trustee traces back to the gifts that produced it.

Running a project with a team that exists for its duration

Capital appeals and emergency campaigns are often staffed by people who will not be with you in six months: a contractor, a volunteer committee, a colleague seconded from another team. Giving that group standing access to your whole donor base is a bigger decision than the project itself usually warrants.

Access is role-aware, so a project team can be given exactly the campaign and its supporters, and nothing wider. When the appeal ends and the team disbands, closing their access does not touch the records they created. The donors and gifts they brought in stay with you.

What changes

A total you can trust mid-appeal

Progress against target reads across every connected channel, updated as gifts arrive rather than reconciled afterwards.

Donors who outlast the project

Supporters acquired during the appeal join your ongoing record instead of staying trapped in a temporary tool.

A closing report with evidence behind it

Final figures trace back to the transactions that produced them, ready for a board, a donor or a funder.

Access scoped to the project

A team assembled for one appeal gets exactly that appeal’s data, and closing their access afterward is a single step.

How it fits with what you run

• Donativus is not a payment processor or an event ticketing platform. Whatever provider actually takes the gift, a card terminal, a processor, a bank transfer, still captures and settles it, and its fees are separate from the Donativus platform price.
• Donativus is not a hosted crowdfunding site with public fundraising pages and social sharing tools built in. Hosted Donativus forms give an appeal a dedicated page, and work alongside whatever site you already run.
• Every channel is ingested only once you authorize it for that specific appeal. There is no passive tracking of who visits an appeal page or shares a link.
• Composing and scheduling social posts about the campaign from inside Donativus is planned, not available today. A connected Meta presence supports ingestion and attribution of social-driven gifts only.