Feathr Fundraising provides nonprofit organizations with a complete donation collection solution that includes secure payment processing, zero platform fees, and a unique tips-to-credits model that converts donor generosity into marketing budget. Understanding the financial aspects of Feathr Fundraising helps you maximize both donation revenue and earned marketing credits. To learn more about how Feathr Fundraising generally, check out this article.
Payment Processing Through Stripe
Feathr Fundraising uses Stripe Connect for all payment processing. Stripe is a industry-leading payment processor that handles secure credit and debit card transactions, ensuring your donors' financial information stays protected through PCI-compliant infrastructure.
Setting up your Stripe account
During the initial Feathr Fundraising setup, you'll connect your organization's Stripe account through a guided onboarding flow. If you don't already have a Stripe account, you can create one directly during this process. The Stripe Connect integration allows Feathr to facilitate donations while funds flow directly into your organization's account.
Once connected, your Stripe account handles all payment processing for your donation forms. You maintain full control over your Stripe account settings, and all donation funds are deposited directly to the bank account you configure within Stripe.
Payment Processing Fees
Feathr does not charge any processing fees for donations collected through Feathr Fundraising. This is a significant benefit—you retain 100% of every donation your supporters make, helping you maximize the impact of donor generosity.
How Donor Tips Work
During the donation checkout process, donors see an option to add a tip that supports your organization's marketing efforts. This tip is separate from and additional to their donation amount. The tip section includes clear explanations about how tips convert into marketing credits that help you reach more potential supporters.
Tips are entirely optional—donors can choose to add a tip, adjust the suggested amount, or skip the tip entirely. The donation form clearly distinguishes between the donation itself and the optional tip, ensuring transparency throughout the process.
Tip-to-Growth Credit Conversion
When a donor adds a tip to their donation:
- The tip amount is processed along with the donation through Stripe
- Feathr converts the tip amount into Growth Credits
- The credits are added to your Feathr account
- You allocate those credits to specific Projects to fund your ad campaigns
Allocating Tips to Projects
Through the Fundraising dashboard, you control tip allocation settings that determine which Feathr Projects receive the earned marketing credits. You can assign tips from specific donation forms to specific Projects, allowing you to align credit earnings with relevant marketing initiatives.
For example, if you create a donation form specifically for an annual gala campaign, you might allocate those tips to the Project managing your gala advertising. This gives you flexibility in how you distribute earned credits across your marketing efforts.
You can adjust tip allocation settings at any time, and changes apply to future tips earned from that point forward. This allows you to shift credit distribution as your marketing priorities change throughout the year.
When getting started, we strongly recommend you create one Project that is dedicated to, and used solely as a "wallet" for your Growth credits, and name it something like "Fundraising Growth Credits." That provides you the most flexibility for redeeming your Growth Credits.
Redeeming Growth Credits
As Fundraising is still in early access phase, growth credits must be redeemed manually through Feathr's Customer Success team. Read this article for instructions on how to redeem Growth Credits.
Financial Tracking and Reporting
The Fundraising dashboard provides centralized financial visibility across all your donation activities. For each donation form, you can view:
- Total donations raised showing cumulative donation amounts collected through that form.
- Tips earned displaying the total marketing credits generated from donor tips.
- Form completions indicating how many successful transactions occurred.
- Form views helping you calculate conversion rates and form performance.
This dashboard gives you real-time insight into both your fundraising revenue and your marketing credit earnings, allowing you to measure the full financial impact of each donation form.
Tax Receipts and Documentation
Feathr Fundraising automatically generates and sends email receipts to donors immediately after successful transactions. These receipts include tax-deductible donation information, providing donors with the documentation they need for their tax records.