Donation records

Every donation your organization receives lands in a central transaction log in your workspace. Whether it came through a fundraising page or was recorded manually by staff, the record is always in one place. This article covers how to find, read, and act on those records. For setting up the page donors give through, see Creating a fundraising page. For managing donors' recurring gifts, see Recurring donations.

Finding donations

Donations enter your workspace in two ways: a supporter gives through a fundraising page, or a staff member records a gift manually. Both produce a row in the same transactions table.

To see them, open Fundraising in the workspace sidebar, then Donations > Transactions. The list shows every donation your organization has received, newest first. You can search by donor name or email, and filter by status (Completed, Pending, Failed, or Refunded).

Reading a donation record

Each row shows the donor's name and email, the amount, the status, whether it is a one-time or recurring gift, and the date. Anonymous donations show "Anonymous" in place of the donor name on this list; your organization's internal records still retain the full donor identity for reporting and compliance purposes.

Each donation automatically creates or updates a contact in your CRM. That means a donor who also attended an event or volunteered appears as a single contact, not separate rows. You can view the donor's full history (giving, events, messages) from their contact record under CRM. The contact's engagement score updates automatically when a donation is recorded.

Donations held for review

A small number of donations may be automatically flagged by fraud guardrails (for example, a mismatch between the card's country and other signals) and held in a Review queue rather than counted as routine. If any donations are waiting, a Review button with a count appears at the top of the Donations overview page. Approving or rejecting a held donation records a compliance decision on the record; it does not refund the charge or affect whether the donor was already charged.

Refunds

Staff with the owner or admin role (or a custom role granted donation-refund permission) can refund a completed donation from its row menu on the Transactions page. You can refund the full amount or a partial amount; funds return to the donor's original payment method. The donation's status updates to Refunded once the refund is confirmed. Refunds are only available for donations processed through the current payment flow -- a donation record that predates your organization's Stripe setup, or one entered without a completed payment, can't be refunded through the tool.

Receipts and thank-you emails

A receipt email is sent automatically to the donor's email address when a donation completes. Receipts are sent by the email system connected to your workspace, so make sure it is configured before your first live campaign.

Compliance fields for political organizations

If your organization is a political committee, federal law requires capturing the employer and occupation of donors who give $200 or more in aggregate, and your donation form can be configured to require the donor's mailing address and eligibility attestations as well. These fields are stored on every donation record and are visible from the transaction record.

Keep your own filing calendar and thresholds in mind: OrganizeOS stores the data your filing will need, but the filing itself goes through your compliance process.

Why this matters

Your transaction log is the authoritative source of record for every dollar your organization raises. Keeping it accurate protects you during audits, builds donor trust through reliable receipts, and gives your team a complete picture of supporter relationships. For political committees, clean transaction data makes compliance filings faster and reduces the risk of costly errors. When your donation records are in order, your whole fundraising program runs on firmer ground.