Best Practices for Donation Receipting When Using DonorDock with an Online Fundraising Platform

Some organizations use DonorDock alongside other fundraising platforms for events, peer-to-peer campaigns, or online donation forms. When these systems are connected, both platforms may send donation receipts.

To avoid duplicate acknowledgments and inconsistent donor communication, we recommend centralizing receipting in DonorDock whenever possible and disabling automatic receipts in the external fundraising platform.

Why Centralize Receipting in DonorDock?

Keep One Consistent Receipting Process

When receipts are sent from multiple systems, it can be difficult to determine which gifts have already been acknowledged.

Using DonorDock as the central receipting system helps ensure:

• Gifts follow the same acknowledgment process

• Staff know where to review and resend receipts

• Receipt tracking remains consistent across your donor records

Maintain Consistent Donor Communication

Using DonorDock Transactional Templates allows your organization to keep receipt formatting, branding, messaging, and acknowledgment language consistent.

If multiple platforms send receipts, donors may receive different:

• Receipt formats

• Branding

• Thank-you messaging

• Contribution language

Centralizing receipts provides a more consistent experience regardless of how the donor gave.

Include Both Online and Offline Gifts

Not every Gift originates from an online fundraising platform. Your organization may also receive:

• Checks

• Cash

• Grants

• Sponsorship payments

• Imported Gifts

• Other offline contributions

Using DonorDock for receipting allows your team to manage acknowledgments for these Gifts alongside Gifts received through connected fundraising platforms.

Prevent Duplicate Receipts

When multiple systems are configured to send receipts, donors may receive more than one acknowledgment for the same Gift.

For example:

1. The external fundraising platform sends an automatic receipt.

2. The Gift syncs into DonorDock.

3. A team member sends another receipt from DonorDock.

Using a single receipting system helps prevent duplicate communications and makes it easier for your team to see whether a Gift has already been acknowledged.

Recommended Setup

When connecting DonorDock with another fundraising platform:

1. Disable automatic donation receipts in the external platform, if available.

2. Create and maintain your receipt templates in DonorDock.

3. Allow Gifts to sync into DonorDock.

4. Send or automatically generate the applicable receipt from DonorDock.

💡 Centralizing receipts in DonorDock gives your organization one place to manage acknowledgments for Gifts received through Online Giving, integrations, imports, and manual entry.