Beta & Experimental Features

Donations (Beta)

Interested?Manage on the Beta Features page

The Donations module lets you collect one-time gifts, recurring gifts, pledges, and peer-to-peer fundraising through Forge-powered donation pages — with every transaction written through to Salesforce in real time.

Beta feature

Donations is a beta feature built on the bt_fundraising__ managed package. Enable it for your org on the /beta page. The data model and UI are stable for production use but the feature set continues to expand before general availability.

What it does

Branded donation pages with custom ask arrays, imagery, and impact statements
One-time and recurring gift options on the same page
Recurring gift engine powered by bt_stripe__Payment_Schedule__c — not Stripe Subscriptions (see note below)
Designation support: donors choose where their gift goes (general fund, scholarship, specific project)
Pledge recording: capture a commitment to give and track fulfillment over time
Gift Aid declaration collection for UK-based donors
Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising: participants create personal fundraising pages under your campaign
Soft credit recording for matching gifts and third-party contributions
Donor portal (Forge route) for donors to view their giving history and manage recurring gifts

A Forge donation page for Planner Conference 2026 showing the ask array, designation picker, and Gift Aid toggle.

How to enable

Ensure the bt_fundraising__ managed package is installed in your Salesforce org. Contact your Blackthorn Customer Success rep if it is not.
Go to /beta and toggle Donations on.
Navigate to Fundraising in the Forge sidebar (the Donations section will now appear).
Click New Donation Page to create your first giving page. Give it a name, link it to a Salesforce Campaign, and configure your ask array.
Add designations from the Designations tab if your organization routes gifts to multiple funds.
Publish the page. Forge generates a public URL you can embed or share.
To enable recurring gifts, ensure a payment gateway supporting recurring charges is configured in your Forge admin settings.
To enable P2P fundraising, toggle the Peer-to-Peer option on the donation page settings and set the participant registration form.

The donation page builder with ask array configuration, designation picker settings, and Gift Aid options.

Recurring gifts

When a donor selects a recurring gift frequency (monthly, quarterly, annually), Forge creates a bt_stripe__Payment_Schedule__c record in Salesforce. The Blackthorn recurring engine processes charges on the configured schedule using your event's payment gateway — not Stripe Subscriptions or Stripe Billing.

Recurrence is Salesforce-native, not Stripe Subscriptions

Forge never creates Stripe Subscription objects or bt_stripe__Subscription2__c records for recurring donations. All recurrence is managed through bt_stripe__Payment_Schedule__c and the HighVolumeTransactionBatchScheduler Apex scheduled class. This ensures multi-gateway parity and a single source of truth for all recurring gift schedules.

Gift Aid (UK)

For UK-based organizations, you can enable Gift Aid declaration collection on any donation page. When a donor checks the Gift Aid declaration, Forge records a bt_fundraising__Gift_Aid_Declaration__c record in Salesforce linked to their Donation record. Your Gift Aid submissions are then generated from Salesforce.

Salesforce data model

Salesforce Field Mapping

Forge	SF Object	SF Field
Donation	bt_fundraising__Donation__c	Amount, designation lookup, recurring flag
Recurring schedule	bt_stripe__Payment_Schedule__c	Frequency, next charge date, status
Pledge	bt_fundraising__Pledge__c	Total pledge amount, fulfillment date, balance
Designation	bt_fundraising__Designation__c	Fund name, allocation rules
Donation allocation	bt_fundraising__Donation_Allocation__c	Links donation to designation with split amount
Soft credit	bt_fundraising__Donation_Soft_Credit__c	Contact, amount, credit type
Gift Aid declaration	bt_fundraising__Gift_Aid_Declaration__c	Declaration date, donor eligibility
P2P participant	bt_fundraising__P2P_Participant__c	Personal page URL, fundraising goal, raised amount
P2P team	bt_fundraising__P2P_Team__c	Team goal, team captain, member list
Campaign (linked)	Campaign	Standard SF Campaign linked to the fundraising effort

PII in donation records

Donor names, email addresses, and billing details are stored only in Salesforce (Contact and Donation records). Forge's Postgres layer stores only Salesforce record Ids and non-PII configuration. Payment card data is never stored anywhere — it passes through to the payment gateway only.

Current limitations

Donation pages support Stripe and Authorize.Net gateways in this beta. PayPal and Spreedly support is planned.
The donor portal is a Forge route (not a standalone webapp) in this beta phase. A standalone public donor webapp is in development.
In-event donation widgets (embed on the event registration checkout) are planned post-GA.
Automatic NPSP/NPC opportunity sync is provided through the Giving Data Models feature (see that page) — it must be enabled separately.
The P2P email invitation flow is configurable but limited to the built-in Forge email templates in this beta.
Auction and donation pages are managed separately — there is no unified fund-a-need flow yet in the Forge UI (available in the Live Auctions module).