How donors complete a donation

When someone clicks Donate Now on your campaign page, Pledgix opens a short, secure checkout right on the page. Here's what your donors see, step by step — so you know exactly what happens between "I want to give" and the money landing in your campaign total.

Step 1 — Amount and preferences

The first screen asks the donor to Select Donation Amount. They can:

• Tap one of the quick amounts, if your campaign shows them, or type their own. (Quick amounts are optional and customizable on paid plans; free Go campaigns show the standard Pledgix presets.)
• Pick a currency from the dropdown if your campaign accepts more than one — the checkout shows a live conversion, such as "Equals $180 towards the goal", so donors always know how their gift counts toward your target.
• Choose How often? — Give once, Monthly, or Installments — if recurring giving is enabled for your campaign. Both recurring options run for a set number of months the donor picks — there are no open-ended plans, so every donor knows their total commitment up front.
• Pick a team to support (Single Team, All Teams, or Multiple Teams) if your campaign uses teams. "All Teams" splits the gift equally; "Multiple Teams" splits it across the teams they choose, with a split preview. Multi-team splits apply to one-time gifts — switching to Monthly or Installments returns the selection to a single team.
• Add an optional dedication in In Honor / Memory Of.
• Check Make this donation anonymous to hide their name from the public feed.

If you've set up donation tiers with limited quantities, the checkout also verifies the tier is still available — a sold-out tier can't be selected.

Step 2 — Contact details

Next, the donor enters:

• Full Name — optional for anonymous gifts, and never shown publicly in that case.
• Email Address — required. The checkout notes "Your receipt will be sent here."
• Phone — optional.

Political campaigns may show additional compliance questions here (citizenship confirmation, address, employer details) depending on how you've configured them.

Step 3 — Secure payment

The payment step depends on which payment provider is connected to your campaign:

• Card fields directly in the checkout — the donor enters their card number, expiration, and security code. Card details go straight to the payment processor; Pledgix never stores raw card numbers.
• On campaigns that accept them, a charity card / DAF toggle lets donors pay with an OJC, The Donors' Fund, Pledger, or Matbia charity card — or grant directly from an iMaaser account — instead of a regular card.
• Campaigns can also offer digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay when enabled — on both Stripe-connected campaigns and the standard Pledgix rail. Campaigns on Stripe may additionally offer other payment methods Stripe supports; some of these briefly redirect the donor to approve the payment, then return them to your campaign page.
• On free Pledgix Go campaigns, the checkout also shows an optional tip to Pledgix line — the tip is added on top of the donor's gift and charged together with it, but it never counts toward your campaign total or payout.

Every donation also passes an invisible security check (Cloudflare Turnstile) that blocks bots and card-testing attacks. Real donors almost never notice it; automated abuse is stopped before a charge is ever attempted.

What happens after payment

• Approved instantly — most card payments confirm in seconds. The donor sees a Thank You screen showing where their receipt was sent, your campaign total and progress bar update live, and the gift appears in the public donations feed.
• Processing — a few payment methods (certain bank-based ones) take longer to clear. The donor sees: "Your payment is processing. It can take a few business days to clear — we'll email your confirmation once it completes." The donation shows as Pending in your Donations tab until the processor confirms it, then it's counted automatically.
• Declined — if the card is declined, the donor sees the reason and can try again with another card. Declined attempts appear under your Pending / Failed / Refunds tab and never affect your totals.

Once the payment is confirmed, Pledgix automatically generates a PDF receipt and emails it to the donor — anonymous gifts included (unless you've turned automatic receipts off — see Donation receipts).

Tip: If a donor says their payment "didn't go through," check the Pending / Failed / Refunds tab in your Donations dashboard. You'll see the attempt with its status, which makes it easy to tell a decline from a payment that's still clearing.

Where you see it

Every donation — successful or not — is listed in your campaign's Donations dashboard with the donor's details, amount, payment method, status, and team credit, updating in real time as gifts come in.