This article is part of our series on the platforms we build for nonprofits. Our working example is the Normandy Park Police Foundation (NPPF), a volunteer-run 501(c)(3) in Washington State. The first article explains why we built it one platform instead of a website with subscriptions attached. This one is about money: how it comes in, where it lands, and how it gets into the books.
The problem with the donate button
A donate button that links to a third-party form is the default for small nonprofits, and it has a cost that doesn't show up on the invoice.
The vendor's form knows nothing about your organization. It doesn't know that a gift to a restricted program can't be spent on anything else. It doesn't know which people on your board should see who gave what. It issues receipts in its own format, keeps the donor record on its own servers, and charges a platform fee on top of card processing. At year end, someone exports a spreadsheet and reconciles it by hand against the books.
For an organization with restricted funds, that reconciliation isn't optional. It's the difference between a clean Form 990 and an afternoon of guesswork.
Start from the chart of accounts
We don't start a giving project with a form template. We start with the treasurer's books: which funds exist, which are restricted, which expense accounts the organization reports against, and how money gets from the payment processor to the bank. Then we build every way money moves through the platform so it lands in those same places.
Every dollar that comes in through the platform is tagged to its place in the books before it reaches the bank.
At NPPF that means three funds. The General Fund is unrestricted and goes wherever the need is greatest. The Shop with a Cop Fund and the Officer Appreciation, Training and Equipment Fund are restricted: money given to them pays only for that program. Whether a fund is restricted is set when the fund is created and can't be changed afterward. A fund that's no longer used is retired, never deleted, and each gift records its fund as it stood on the day it was given, so renaming a fund later doesn't rewrite history.
Funds first, then amount
The donation form starts with the question most forms skip: where does this gift go?
The fund is the first choice on the form, and restricted funds are labeled as such.
Because the donor chooses the fund at the moment of giving, nobody re-codes gifts after the fact. Program pages, news stories, and printed materials link to the form with the fund, and even the amount, already chosen, so a reader who was just looking at Shop with a Cop doesn't have to find it in a dropdown.
Donors can also choose to cover the processing fee. The amount is worked out from the processor's rate so that, after the fee, the full gift arrives, and the receipt shows the gift and the covered fee as separate lines.
Every way to pay, one record
Donors give by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, or Venmo. Whichever they use, the gift is recorded once, in the organization's own database, against the fund they chose.
Card details go to Square, the processor. They never reach the Foundation's website.
A card gift. Apple Pay and Google Pay run the same way through Square; PayPal and Venmo use their own sign-in.
The platform never handles a card number, and a one-time gift needs no account: a name and an email address for the receipt are enough.
Recurring gifts belong to the donor
Recurring gifts are where third-party forms get awkward. The donor has an account with the vendor, not with you, and changing or stopping a gift means finding the vendor's portal.
Choosing a monthly or yearly gift prompts for a free account, so the donor can manage it themselves.
We keep monthly and yearly gifts on a free account with the organization itself. From their account page, donors switch funds, use a different card, change the amount of a card gift, or stop the gift, and stopping is immediate. Yearly donors get a reminder about a month before each payment. Recurring gifts work by card or PayPal; Venmo and the wallets don't support them, and the form says so up front rather than failing later.
A declined payment doesn't quietly end the gift, and it doesn't quietly keep failing either:
A declined card is tried again 3 and 7 days later; an expired or closed card pauses the gift at once. When the donor saves a new card, a missed payment is skipped, never taken late.
The treasurer gets a digest of anything declined, paused, or stuck, so nothing fails silently. And if someone gave once without an account and later creates one with the same email, their earlier gifts are attached once they confirm the address. The giving history follows the person.
Receipts the IRS expects, without the export
Every gift produces a numbered PDF receipt by email as soon as it goes through. The receipt shows:
- the fund, and whether it's restricted
- how the gift was paid
- the gift and any covered fee, as separate amounts
- the organization's 501(c)(3) status and EIN
- that no goods or services were provided, or, when a thank-you item has real value, how much of the gift is deductible
- a reminder that the IRS requires a written acknowledgment like this one for any single gift of $250 or more
NPPF offers a ribbon patch as a thank-you for gifts of $70 or more. It's a token item, so the whole gift stays deductible, and the receipt says so.
Donors with an account can download any receipt, and a year-end statement for each year they gave. That removes the January job of answering "can you resend my receipt from March?" and compiling totals for donors who ask. Receipts are built from the records each time they're opened, so a gift refunded at the processor keeps its record but loses its receipt and drops off the statement.
Store sales aren't donations
Many nonprofits also sell something: patches, shirts, a calendar. A sale isn't a gift, and the books have to keep them apart.
NPPF's store takes the same payment methods as the donate form. Washington sales tax is calculated from the delivery address, and the store receipt says plainly that purchases aren't tax-deductible. A buyer can add a gift at checkout; it goes to the General Fund and gets its own donation receipt. The sales tax is kept separate from the sales, because it belongs to the state, not the organization.
The deposit sheet: where the processor meets the books
This is the part that saves the treasurer the most time. Square and PayPal pay out in lump sums. One deposit can mix gifts to three funds, store sales, sales tax, and processing fees, and the bank statement shows a single number.
The platform checks with Square and PayPal every hour. When a payout arrives, the treasurer ticks its gifts and sales into a deposit sheet, and the platform splits the total the way the books need it: by fund, with lines for processing fees, store sales, and sales tax collected. The PDF is the journal entry, ready to type in.
NPPF keeps its books in Wave, and the platform doesn't post into it. The treasurer still enters the books; the platform makes each entry a copy, not a reconstruction.
Not every dollar passes through the platform, either. Checks, workplace giving, and bank interest go straight to the books. So when the board tracks its budget against actuals, the treasurer's figures from the books are the record. The platform shows its own totals beside each line as a check, never as the figure.
Money out, on the same accounts
Giving is half the ledger. The other half is spending, which is where volunteer boards usually fall back on emailing receipt photos to the treasurer.
On NPPF's platform, a board member submits an expense from their phone with a photo of the receipt. They choose the kind of cost from the same expense accounts the books use, each tied to its Form 990 line, plus the program, the fund, and the grant if one paid for it. One receipt can be split across programs and funds, and charging a restricted fund for a different program raises a warning.
Nobody approves their own expense, and a grant's books fill in as its costs are logged.
The treasurer approves everyone else's expenses, and another officer approves the treasurer's. The platform warns about anything over $1,000 the board hasn't authorized, a missing receipt, a possible duplicate, or an expense more than 60 days old, and it sends reminders when one sits too long waiting for review, for the books, or for repayment. The board can print what was spent between any two dates by program, fund, grant, and Form 990 line.
A cost charged to a grant lands in that grant's books, so the progress and expense report for the funder is already assembled when it's due. Finding those grants in the first place is what Grant Scout is for.
Who sees the money
Gift records are donor data, so access follows the organization chart, not a pricing tier.
| Role | What they see |
|---|---|
| Treasurer | Every gift, the deposit sheets, and every expense to approve |
| Board members | Gifts and expenses, to read |
| Site administrators | Gifts, and they manage the funds |
| Editors and program volunteers | No gifts, donors, or expenses |
| Donors | Their own gifts, receipts, and statements |
No one can change a gift's amount on the site; what was charged is what's recorded. Refunds happen at the processor, and the hourly check picks them up: a full refund is recorded automatically, and a partial refund or a dispute is flagged for a person to review. Every export is logged.
Role-based access to financial records is usually an enterprise-tier feature, or it's all-or-nothing admin access. Here it's part of the design, because that's how the organization runs.
What this means for a small nonprofit
Gifts carry the processor's fee and nothing else. There's no per-transaction platform fee, no per-donor pricing, and no monthly subscription for the privilege of having a form.
More importantly, the records are the organization's. Donors, gifts, funds, sales, expenses, and receipts live in one place, structured the way the organization accounts for them, and visible to the people whose work needs them.
Your funds, expense accounts, and bookkeeping software won't match NPPF's. The approach is the same: we start from your chart of accounts and your fund restrictions, then design the forms, receipts, and reports around them.
If your organization is reconciling a donation vendor's export against your books, or paying a platform fee on every gift, a free assessment is the place to start. We'll look at how money moves through your organization today and tell you plainly what a purpose-built platform would and wouldn't change.