Anonymous vs. Named Donations

During a donation, each donor can choose to share their contact information or give anonymously when both are toggled on in the Configuration settings. This article explains what each option does and how it affects your receipts and CRM data.

How donors choose

In the donation workflow, a donor can either enter their contact information (such as name and email) or select the option to give anonymously. You control, per configuration, whether anonymous giving is allowed and which fields are required when a donor does share their information.

What “anonymous” means

When a donor gives anonymously, the donation is truly anonymous — we don’t capture their name or contact details. The card is still charged and the gift is recorded, but there is no donor information attached to it.

Note that this is separate from what appears in Stripe. Tap-to-pay and chip (contactless) card payments don’t carry the cardholder’s name, so even named donations may appear in Stripe as “valued card member.”

Requiring contact information

If you want to collect donor details, you can turn off anonymous giving or mark specific fields as required. When anonymous giving is disabled, donors must enter their contact information to complete a gift.

Anonymous donations and your CRM

Because an anonymous donation contains no donor information, there’s nothing to match or push to your CRM for that gift. If syncing donor records is important to you, consider requiring contact information, but keep in mind that some organizations prefer to accept anonymous gifts rather than risk incomplete or inaccurate data.

For anonymous gifts that do sync, your CRM integration can be configured to use a default “anonymous donor” record.

Related: Receipts