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Recording Offline Donations

Record cash, checks, and other gifts received outside your giving forms

Offline Donations records donations your organization received outside its giving forms, such as cash collected at an event, checks that arrive by mail, or a card payment run on a separate terminal. Enter donations one at a time or upload many at once from a CSV file.

Offline Donations records a donation that was already paid. It does not charge a card or bank account. To take a card payment over the phone, see Processing Card-Not-Present Donations.

Recording a Single Donation

  1. Navigate to Offline Donations and select Single Entry.
  2. Enter the Date, Campaign, and Payment Type. To attribute the donation to a specific giving form, select it under Giving Form after choosing the campaign.
  3. Select a Designation and enter the Amount. To split the donation across designations, click Add another designation. The total updates as you add amounts.
  4. Under Donor Information, select Individual Donor, Anonymous Donor, or Donate as Organization, then complete the donor fields. Anonymous donations do not require a name, email, or address.
  5. Click Create Donation.

Uploading Donations From a CSV

  1. Navigate to Offline Donations and select Bulk Upload.
  2. Click Download CSV Template. The template includes every supported column and an example row.
  3. Replace the example row with your donations, one donation per row.
  4. Drag the file onto the upload area or click Select File. Files can be up to 10MB and 10,000 rows.
  5. Click Create Donations.

Every row is checked before anything is saved. If any row has a problem, a list of errors by row number appears and no donations are created. Correct the file and upload it again.

Once the file passes, the import runs in the background and a progress notice tracks it, so you can keep working.

Preventing Duplicate Donations

Before saving, iDonate compares each donation to donations previously recorded through Offline Donations. A donation is treated as a possible duplicate when its date, amount, payment type, campaign, designation, giving form, reference code, and donor all match. The donor matches on email, or on first name, last name, and company.

  • Single Entry: A prompt asks whether to add the donation anyway.
  • Bulk Upload: You choose to skip the matching rows or import them. This makes it safe to upload a corrected file or to upload the same file twice by mistake.

If two separate donations are truly identical, such as two $20 cash donations from the same donor on the same day, give each a different Reference Code so both are recorded.

Reviewing Previous Imports

Select Previous Imports to see every CSV upload, who uploaded it, its status, and how many donations were created or skipped. Uploads in progress show how many rows have been processed.

Open the triple-dot menu on an upload to download either file:

  • Download report: One row per donation showing its outcome (created, skipped as already recorded, or not imported) along with the transaction ID, donation date, amount, and donor.
  • Download file: The original CSV exactly as it was uploaded.

After a Donation Is Recorded

Offline donations are recorded as completed donations and appear in Reporting with your other donations. iDonate does not email the donor a receipt for offline donations.

Offline donations trigger the same webhooks as online donations, so connected systems receive them automatically. See Creating and Managing Webhooks.