Give Lively pages are able to accept credit card, debit card, and ACH (direct bank account transfer) donations from donors by default.
In addition to that are other payment options that you can enable to provide donors with more ways to donate. You can enable PayPal and Venmo, Shift4, and Chariot DAFPay as options for donors to donate through.
All these options can be found in the "Payment Processing" menu under "Settings."
Enable PayPal and Venmo
You can add PayPal and Venmo together as an additional payment method to the standard Stripe debit and credit card option on Give Lively donation forms. There are restrictions, however.
PayPal and Venmo cannot replace Stripe or be the only donation option. It can only exist as an additional, optional, payment method for donors to use.
PayPal and Venmo only accept one-time donations. Our integration doesn't allow for subscription donations at this time.
When your PayPal account is integrated with our platform to accept PayPal donations, Venmo will also automatically appear as a payment method but only to US-based donors using a supported device.
Important: PayPal charges a transaction fee to manage the donation process. This fee is subtracted from the donation. Our website has a list of all the third party fees you could expect to see through the payment method integrations we offer.
Integrate With PayPal
You can integrate your PayPal account through your dashboard by clicking on "Settings" and then "Payment Processing." Click on the "Begin PayPal Integration" button. After that:
Enter your email address and select your country, then click the "Next" button.
Log in to your PayPal account. If you don’t have one already, create one by clicking “Sign Up” and then filling out the required information.
Click “Continue to PayPal Setup” to complete your PayPal profile and authorize transactions with your bank account. When finished, you will land on a page that says “Thanks for signing up!”
You must now click “Go back to Give Lively's Store” to return to the Nonprofit Admin Portal (see image below).
The integration process is not complete until this is done. When it is, there should be a check mark and note that "Your organization can now accept donations through PayPal" next to PayPal on the Integrations page. If you do not see a check mark or the PayPal payment option on your fundraising page(s), contact us at support@givelively.org.
Integrate Venmo
Venmo appears automatically as a payment method for one-time donations when you integrate a PayPal account. Venmo is more limited than PayPal, however, as this option will only appear for US donors using:
An apple device on a Safari browser
An android device on a Google Chrome browser
Additionally, if you're using one of our donation widgets, Venmo will not appear as an option on Wix-hosted widgets.
Disconnecting your PayPal account disables Venmo as a payment option.
Disconnect PayPal and Venmo
Disconnecting PayPal is done from the same page that you connected it through. In your nonprofit dashboard navigate back to "Settings" then "Payment Processing." Then, click the red "Disconnect PayPal" button in the "Remove PayPal Integration" popup.
Enable Shift4
Shift4 is a payment processor an additional payment processor you can offer your donors. You can read more about our partnership in this blog post.
At the moment, nonprofits can only gain access to Shift4 as a payment processor by applying through a form. If you want to have Shift4 as a payment option, please contact us directly by sending an email to support@givelively.org with the email providing your nonprofits name, EIN, and a message to say that you're interested in having Shift4 as a payment option.
Enable Chariot DAFPay
Give Lively supports one-time donations made from donor-advised funds (DAFs) through DAFpay powered by Chariot. The DAFpay button on Give Lively donation forms lets donors make charitable grants to nonprofits through their DAF providers. For more detailed information about Chariot and DAFpay we recommend visiting the Chariot Help Center.
What Are DAF Payments?
A donor-advised fund (DAF) account is a charitable giving account that donors contribute funds to and receive an immediate tax deduction for doing so. Donors can then send the funds in their DAF account as a donation to the nonprofit of their choice. On Give Lively this is done in a similar process to an ACH donation, where a donor makes a direct donation through their bank instead of a card.
The ability for donors to make a one-time donation from a donor-advised fund (DAF) is automatically enabled on all Give Lively-powered donation forms, but is only active after connecting your Chariot account.
Connect a Chariot Account
Nonprofits must connect a DAF payment account from Chariot to Give Lively in order to enable electronic disbursement of DAF grants.
Nonprofits receive an email from Chariot with an invitation to either: (1) claim a new DAF payment account or (2) connect an existing Chariot account. This happens when DAFpay is first enabled for the organization through Give Lively and when a DAF grant to the nonprofit has been initiated.
Once a Chariot account is claimed/connected, most future DAF grants are disbursed electronically (see more below).
If a Chariot account is not claimed/connected within 60 days, grants are disbursed by paper check (checks valid for 90 days).
Important: Nonprofits that do not claim/connect a Chariot account are not able to declare a grant as “Received,” meaning the helpful Give Lively automations outlined here are not possible.
View DAF grant data
DAF grant data appears immediately (even while a disbursement is pending) in the Line Items (All) data report available through the Nonprofit Admin Portal. It includes the following details:
Payment Method – daf
Payment Processor – Chariot
Disbursement Method – DAF Grant
Payment Status – “Pending" (being processed/disbursed), “Succeeded” (received by nonprofit) or “Failed” (the donor cancels the grant)
Chariot Tracking ID – 10-digit alphanumeric identifier generated by DAFpay
Chariot External Grant ID – string identifier generated by the DAF provider following a successful grant initiation request
Payment Platform Charge ID – unique identifier of the charge in the respective payment processor
Await DAF Grant Disbursement
How DAF grants are disbursed depends on whether a nonprofit has claimed/connected its Chariot account and whether the DAF provider is a Chariot Disbursement Partner.
When a nonprofit has claimed/connected its Chariot account:
If the DAF provider is a Chariot Disbursement Partner (see list here), then the funds are sent to the nonprofit via electronic transfer within 1-2 business days.
If the DAF provider is not a Chariot Disbursement Partner, then the funds are sent directly by the DAF provider via electronic transfer or paper check, depending on the individual DAF provider. The processing timeframe is a function of the DAF provider as well.
When a nonprofit has not claimed/connected its Chariot account within 60 days of a DAFpay grant:
Chariot’s 501(c)(3) disbursement partner, DAFpay Network, issues a paper check to the IRS-registered address of the nonprofit.
DAFpay Network levies a surcharge of $25 or 10% of the check amount, whichever is lower.
Keep in mind that there are three primary DAFpay disbursement channels:
Chariot Disbursement (electronic transfer to nonprofits with a Chariot account) – If a DAF provider uses Chariot Disbursement, i.e. is a Chariot Disbursement Partner, then the DAF grant is deposited electronically within 1-2 business days into a nonprofit’s Chariot Deposit Account. When the grant is deposited, it is also automatically marked as “Received” on the Chariot dashboard (see more about this below). The nonprofit must then trigger a transfer to the nonprofit’s bank account.
Directly from DAF provider (electronic transfer or paper check to nonprofits with a Chariot account) – If a DAF provider is not a Chariot Disbursement Partner, then the DAF grant is sent via electronic transfer or paper check directly to the nonprofit, according to the provider’s processing tools and timeline. Nonprofits should manually acknowledge these grants as “Received" through the Chariot dashboard (see more about this below).
DAFpay Network (paper check to nonprofits without a Chariot account) – In all cases, nonprofits that have not claimed a Chariot account within 60 days of a DAF grant receive that grant via paper check sent from DAFpay Network (Chariot’s 501(c)(3) disbursement partner). There is a check surcharge of $25 or 10% of the check amount, whichever is lower. Nonprofits are unable to acknowledge a grant as “Received,” meaning the automations outlined directly below are not possible.
Mark DAF Grants As Received
It is important for nonprofits to confirm each DAF grant as “Received Outside Chariot" in their Chariot dashboard. This cannot be done through Give Lively.
Not all DAF grants need to be manually confirmed, but we always recommend checking each one. A grant acknowledged by the nonprofit as received will do the following:
automatically send an email confirmation receipt to the donor (donors initially receive an email confirming that the DAF grant has been initiated, but must wait for it to be received before a receipt is sent)
shift the DAF grant status from “Pending” to “Succeeded” in the Line Items (All) data report
send data to relevant Salesforce/Zapier syncs (see below).
Important note: Nonprofits that are sent a paper check payment but do not have a Chariot account are unable to declare a grant as “Received,” meaning the automations outlined above are not possible. Give Lively does not have the ability to mark a nonprofit’s DAF grants as “Received."
See DAF Grants in Salesforce/Zapier
When a DAF grant is acknowledged as received (see above) by a nonprofit, data flows through Salesforce and Zapier integrations. Pending grants, i.e. those that have not been marked as received by a nonprofit, do not appear in Salesforce or trigger a zap through Zapier.
DAFPay Donor Experience
Donors are responsible for choosing, creating and provisioning their own donor-advised funds. This section will go over the flow a donor will go through when making a DAF grant to your organization.
If you have a DAF account then we recommend making a DAF grant donation to your nonprofit so that you can understand the donor experience at hand.
As is the case for all payment methods, donors first enter the amount of their grant on the Give Live-powered donation form.
DAF payments are available on Give Lively for one-time grants only – recurring grants do not show the DAFpay payment option.
DAF grants must be in whole dollar amounts (no cents), so the desired grant is rounded (up or down), if necessary.
The DAFpay option appears alongside other available payment methods (card, bank, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo).
DAFPay Fees
While Give Lively does not charge a fee for DAF grants (or any other payment method), Chariot does subtract a processing fee from each DAF grant, which donors can choose to cover.
The Chariot processing fee is 2.9% on all DAF payments.
Since DAF grants must be in whole dollar amounts (no cents) fee coverage is also rounded separately (up or down) to the nearest whole dollar, except when the fee amount is less than $1, in which case it is always rounded up to $1.
Log in to The DAF Provider
After choosing the “Donor Advised Fund/DAFpay” button, donors log in to their DAF provider via Chariot’s DAFpay popup. Following the prompts, donors initiate the DAF grant.
If a particular DAF provider is not covered by DAFpay, then that provider can’t be used to grant DAF funds via DAFpay on Give Lively.
Confirm and Submit the Grant
Once a final amount is set in the Chariot DAFpay popup, donors confirm and submit the grant. Donors are then automatically returned to the Give Lively donation form’s thank-you screen confirming the submitted donation.
Donors have the ability to increase or decrease the amount of the grant within Chariot’s DAFpay popup. All changes are retained on the Give Lively form as well. Note that donors who increase their grant total within Chariot’s DAFpay popup may be able to give beyond Give Lively’s maximum donation amount.
That said, any changes to the grant amount made in the Chariot DAFpay popup automatically turn off fee coverage.
Followup Communications
Donors receive email communications following grant submission.
Donors get an immediate email confirming that the DAF grant has been initiated. This is not a receipt since the nonprofit has not yet received any funds.
It can take from several days to several weeks for DAF providers to process the grant. (Learn more about the types of grant disbursement.) During this time, donors can cancel the grant through their DAF provider. After this time period ends, refunds are not possible.
Once the grant is marked as received by the nonprofit, donors receive the following email confirmation receipt, which makes clear that only donations to DAFs are eligible for a tax deduction, not DAF grants to nonprofits.
DAF Donations on Giving Basket
Giving Basket Donors can also donate with donor-advised fund accounts using DAFpay by Chariot on Giving Basket. If you're not familiar with Charity Navigator's Giving Basket donations then this article will provide more details.
Donating through your donor-advised fund (DAF) account is now possible on Giving Basket using DAFpay, which is powered by Chariot. Making a donation through DAFpay is as simple as using a credit card or ACH. However, if it’s your first time using DAFpay, then there are some important details to consider.
DAF Donations are Not Tax Deductible: Because you receive an immediate tax deduction after transferring funds to your DAF account, the donation you make with those funds is not tax deductible. This is also mentioned in the confirmation email you will receive after making your donation.
DAF Donations Have Their Own Fees: Chariot subtracts a processing fee from each DAF grant, which donors can choose to cover. The Chariot processing fee is 2.9% on all DAF payments.
One-Time Donations Only: For the time being, only one-time donations can be made using DAFpay, so the option will not be available if you’re making a recurring donation.
Whole Dollars Only: DAFpay donations can only be made in whole dollar amounts. If your Giving Basket donation total adds up to an amount with cents, your total and the individual gift amounts will be rounded to the nearest dollar. After that, the fee is made available for you to cover for the nonprofit, if you so choose.
Fee coverage is also rounded separately (up or down) to the nearest whole dollar, except when the fee amount is less than $1, in which case it is always rounded up to $1.
No Refunds: DAFpay donations cannot be refunded. Donors may have the ability to cancel their grant with their DAF provider before it gets processed, however Give Lively recommends that donors contact their DAF provider to make sure.
Once you have selected “Donor Advised Fund” as your payment method, you will be brought to a screen which displays your Cart Summary, donation’s total, and an optional toggle to cover payment processing fees.
Clicking the final DAFpay | Donor Advised Fund button will open Chariot’s DAFpay window to log into your DAF account. Your final total cannot be edited within this window, as this final amount represents your total gross donation and does not let you manipulate your individual donations for each nonprofit. Trying to edit the final number will display an error asking you to edit your individual donations in your cart instead. You can get back to the cart by clicking on the blue and white cart icon button on the navigation bar at the top right of the website.
Once the donation is confirmed, you will be shown a confirmation page and sent the first of two emails.
The first email you will receive is called a “pending receipt” email, confirming that the grant request was successfully submitted to your DAF Provider, which will then begin the process of sending the funds to the Give Lively Foundation for disbursement.
Once the Give Lively Foundation successfully receives the funds, you will receive a final confirmation email. The Give Lively Foundation will then begin its typical Giving Basket disbursement cycle.