How to Set Up Donations on Squarespace (2024 Guide)

Do you run a charity, or would you like people who read your blog to buy you a coffee to say thanks?

Offering donations functionality on your website is a brilliant way to encourage visitors to give. Visitors can send a one-off donation or set up regular donations.

Plus, you can customize your Squarespace donations form to get exactly the look and feel you want for your website.

Here’s how to accept donations on Squarespace

Step 1: Set up your payment processor

If you haven’t already, you need to set up a payment processor to accept donation payments.

To do this, go to the Squarespace menu and click Donations.

This will bring you to the Donations menu. Click on Payments

You’ll then be able to connect your Stripe or PayPal account to your website.

Step 2: Turn on customer accounts

You need to turn on customer accounts if you want to allow recurring donations.

Even if you only want to offer one-off donations, customer accounts make it easier for web visitors to save their details.

(This means they’re more likely to donate!)

You can turn on customer accounts by going to Settings, choosing Selling, and clicking on Customer Accounts. You can then toggle customer accounts off and on.

Step 3: Add your donation block

Go to the page you want to add a donation block to.

You can’t add donation blocks to all pages on Squarespace, for example, blog posts. If you try to add a donation block to an ineligible page, you’ll get an error message.

Go to the part of the page you want to add a donation block to and click the blue plus (+) button. Choose Donation in the menu.

Your donation block will appear.

Click on the pencil icon to edit the settings. From here you can:

• Set up your payment processor and turn on customer accounts if you haven’t already

• Choose the donation amounts you want to offer (you can also let customers enter a custom amount)

• Turn recurring donations off and on

• Change the button text

• Amend the design of the donation box. For example, you can add a background, change the padding and alignment, and change the button color and style

(Don’t forget that you can alter the design of your donation box even more with Spark Plugin’s range of customizations!)

Save your page, and your Squarespace donation box will go live.

Step 4: Customize the donation experience

Once your box is live on your site, you can access additional functionality from the Donations panel.

Here you can:

• See how many people have donated and how much money you’ve made

• See a list of donors. You can segment this information by first-time customers and people who make regular donations. You can also create your own segments

• Customize the donation confirmation email

• Export a list of donations in CSV format

• Customize the checkout process that people see when they make a donation

• Refund a donation – the process to do this will depend on the payment processor you use. You can also cancel a recurring donation

• Test the donation process to see if it works. You will be charged a payment processor fee for this

Is Squarespace donations free?

It’s free in that you don’t have to pay to set up donation blocks on your website.

However, you’ll have to pay transaction and processing fees on any donations you receive. These fees vary depending on the payment processor you use and the amount of money that’s donated.

This means that you won’t see the full amount that people donate.

Do I have to use the Squarespace donation block?

No. You can set up a donation button in PayPal or use Payment Links in Stripe if you prefer.

However, the beauty of Squarespace donations is that you can customize the box to match your website’s branding and manage donors directly on your website.

This is great if you want to market to them, for example, through an email newsletter.

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And there you have it, how to set up donations on Squarespace in four simple steps.

If you want extra revenue for your not-for-profit organization, Squarespace donations is an easy way to encourage people to donate.

Looking for more ways to cut costs if you run a non-profit? Here are four secrets for saving money on your Squarespace site!