Fundraising: Accept Online Donations for Your Campaign

Overview

Vottiv Fundraising lets your campaign accept online donations through beautiful, customizable donation pages. Donations go directly to your committee's own Stripe account — Vottiv never holds your money. You get a live dashboard, donor records built for FEC and state reporting, recurring donations, and built-in compliance guardrails.

Getting set up

1. Enter your committee information. In Fundraising → Settings, add your committee name, committee type, treasurer contact, and jurisdiction (federal or your state). Your committee name appears in the legally required "Paid for by" disclaimer, so donation pages can't go live without it.
2. Accept the Fundraising Services Addendum. Before connecting payments, an authorized administrator reviews and accepts the fundraising agreement. This only takes a minute.
3. Connect payments with Stripe. Follow the guided Stripe onboarding to verify your committee and link your bank account. Donations become available as soon as Stripe activates your account — the Fundraising page shows your status the whole way.

Donation pages and the customization studio

Create as many pages as you like in Fundraising → Pages — for example, one for your website, one for an email appeal, and one for an event. Each page has its own link at donate.vottiv.com/your-slug that you can copy and share anywhere.

Creating a page takes one step: give it a name, and you'll drop straight into the customization studio — a full-screen editor with a live preview of your actual donation page beside the controls. Everything you change appears in the preview instantly, and your work autosaves as you go (the badge in the top bar shows Saving / Saved). You can switch the preview between desktop and mobile at any time, rename the page inline, and flip it between Active and Inactive with the switch in the top bar.

The studio organizes your options into four panels:

• Brand: pick a visual style — Editorial (serif, storytelling), Bold (heavy, high-energy), or Minimal (clean and quiet) — plus your colors, logo, and gradient background.
• Story: headline, subheadline, description, campaign photo, background image, an optional looping hero video, and an endorsement quote with the endorser's name, title, and photo.
• Amounts: suggested amount buttons (add, remove, or edit tiers), a default pre-selected tier, optional minimum/maximum per donation (enforced automatically), and a fundraising goal with a progress bar.
• Behavior: recurring giving (choose which frequencies to offer — weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly), a "monthly upsell moment" that offers one-tap monthly giving before payment, the recent-supporters ticker, donor count and amount-raised displays, fee coverage, optional tips, footer text, and your thank-you message. Donors always opt in to recurring themselves — recurring is never pre-selected — and give explicit consent to the recurring charge before paying.

The gear icon in the studio opens page settings, where you can change the page's URL (applied explicitly so links never change by accident — you'll be warned if the new URL is taken), duplicate the page into a new draft, or delete it. Pages that already have donations can't be deleted; deactivate them instead.

Donors can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Link. Every donor receives a branded email receipt automatically.

Your dashboard

The Fundraising dashboard gives you a live picture of your program, updating in near real time:

• Headline stats: total raised, net raised after fees, donor counts with your recurring base, and average donation.
• Raised over time: a chart of gross vs. net dollars raised each day, switchable between the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 12 months — hover any day to see the amounts and donation count.
• Recurring revenue: a one-time vs. recurring split of your fundraising, your projected monthly recurring revenue, and your active subscription count. If any recurring payments have failed, an alert appears here linking to the affected donations.
• Share your pages: every active donation page with one-click sharing — copy the link, download a print-ready QR code (great for mailers, signs, and event materials), grab a website embed code, or share to X, Facebook, or email.
• Recent donations: the latest gifts at a glance.

The Donations tab lists every gift with search and status filters; click any donation for full details including fees, election designation, and refund history. The Donors tab aggregates giving per person, with contribution history and voter-file matching.

Refunds and disputes

Issue full or partial refunds from any donation's detail page — donor totals and compliance records update automatically. If a donor disputes a charge with their bank, your admins are emailed immediately (dispute responses are time-limited) and the donation is flagged until the dispute resolves.

Compliance built in

• Contribution limits for your jurisdiction are enforced before a card is ever charged, including across multiple gifts from the same donor.
• Donor information (address, employer, occupation) is collected and becomes required at your jurisdiction's reporting thresholds.
• Attestations: every donor certifies they are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, using their own funds, not a federal contractor, and at least 18 — plus state-specific certifications where required.
• Exports: generate FEC Schedule A (CSV or FEC ASCII), donor lists, refund, and recurring reports from Fundraising → Compliance, with correct period-to-date aggregates per donor.
• Late-contribution alerts: if your state requires expedited reporting of large pre-election contributions, your treasurer is emailed automatically and the Compliance page shows each contribution needing a filing until you mark it acknowledged.

Notifications

Organization and fundraising admins receive an email for each new donation (you can opt out in notification preferences), plus alerts for disputes and any failed bank payout.

Fees

Vottiv charges a single all-in percentage plus 30¢ per donation, which covers card processing — shown in your account settings and in each donation's fee breakdown. Donors can optionally cover the fee so your campaign nets the full amount.