Free Donation Process Guide Chatbot: Take Gifts In Chat

The Donation Process Guide is a conversational replacement for the multi-step donation page that most charities send supporters to. Rather than a long form with a dozen fields visible at once, it asks one question at a time, in the order a donor naturally thinks about giving: what kind of gift, which cause, how much, how they want to pay, where the receipt should go, and whether they need a mailed tax receipt.

It is worth being precise about the boundary. The template is a guided intake and routing flow. It structures the decision, captures everything your finance team needs to reconcile a gift, and hands the donor off to the payment route they chose. It does not itself settle money — a chatbot flow is not a payment gateway — so the payment step is the one part you must wire to a real processor before going live. Everything else in the flow works out of the box in the chatbot builder.

Because the flow loops back on itself at the end, a donor who wants to split a gift between two funds can do it in a single session without reloading anything. That loop is the reason this template converts better than a static page for supporters who arrive undecided: they can explore, commit, and then add a second gift without ever leaving the conversation.

The shipped flow has fifteen connected nodes. Here is the exact path a donor takes.

1. Welcome. The bot opens with "Welcome to our Donation Portal! Thank you for your interest in supporting our cause" and promises to guide the donor through the process. It sets the expectation that this will take a moment rather than a second, which reduces mid-flow drop-off.

2. Gift type. A three-way choice — one-time donation, monthly recurring donation, or annual donation — stored in a donation_type variable. All three branches converge immediately, so the answer is recorded for your records and for the receipt wording rather than used to split the conversation.

3. Cause selection. Four options: Education, Healthcare, Environmental Conservation, and General Fund, stored as donation_category. This is the single most important field to customise, because it has to mirror the restricted and unrestricted funds your accounting actually tracks.

4. Amount. A number question with a currency prefix and a validated range from $1 to $1,000,000, stored as donation_amount. The validation matters: it blocks the accidental zero-dollar and mistyped-decimal submissions that pollute donation reporting.

5. Payment method. A three-way branch — Credit/Debit Card, PayPal, or Bank Transfer — and this is the only point where the three paths genuinely diverge.

6a. Card path. A multi-question node asking for card number, expiry and CVV. Replace this node before launch. Collecting raw card numbers in a chat transcript is not how you want to handle payment data, and it is not necessary — see the setup section below.

6b. PayPal path. A redirect node that sends the donor to a PayPal donate URL with the button label "Proceed to PayPal". Swap the placeholder link for your organisation's own PayPal donation link.

6c. Bank transfer path. A multi-question node collecting account holder name, account number and routing number — again, a node to rethink. For most charities the better pattern is to display your own bank details and a reference code rather than collect the donor's.

7. Receipt contact. All three payment paths converge on a multi-question node asking for full name, email address, and an optional phone number, stored as donor_name, donor_email and donor_phone. This is the record your CRM needs.

8. Tax receipt. A yes/no question. A yes adds one more question for the donor's mailing address; a no skips straight ahead. Keeping the postal address optional is deliberate — most donors only want the emailed acknowledgement, and asking everyone for a street address suppresses completion.

9. Processing and confirmation. Two message nodes: a "Processing your donation..." holding message, then a thank-you that tells the donor a confirmation email is on its way.

10. The loop. A final yes/no asks whether the donor wants to make another donation. Yes returns them to the gift-type question with everything they already provided still in session; no closes with "Thank you for your support! Your donation will make a real difference."

This flow fits any organisation that takes money from the public online and wants better data than a payment button gives them. Registered charities and foundations get a clean record of gift type, designated fund and receipt preference against every donation. Community groups and mutual aid networks running on volunteer time get a giving process that does not require building or paying for a donation platform. School and university advancement offices can run it alongside an annual appeal to capture designations precisely.

It also suits campaigns where the fund matters as much as the amount — disaster appeals with several concurrent restricted funds, for example, where miscoded gifts create real reconciliation pain later.

If your need is broader than the gift itself — storytelling about programmes, donor history lookups, engagement nurture — pair this with the Donor Engagement Manager or the Charity Program Explainer, both of which handle the education side and can hand a warmed-up supporter into this flow. For a broader alternative, the donation chatbot in the same category covers similar ground with a different emphasis.

1. Fix the payment step first

Do this before anything else. There are two safe patterns. The first is the Stripe integration, which is one of Conferbot's shipped native integrations and keeps card handling inside Stripe rather than inside your transcript. The second is the redirect node the PayPal branch already uses: point it at your own hosted donation page or payment link and let the processor own the card fields. Either way, delete the card-details and bank-details question nodes that ship in the template. They are placeholders demonstrating node types, not a recommended pattern.

2. Replace the funds with your real ones

Open the cause-selection node and swap Education / Healthcare / Environmental Conservation / General Fund for the fund names your finance team recognises. Use the same wording as your chart of accounts so nobody has to translate later. If you have more than about six funds, consider an "Other" option that routes to a free-text question rather than a list nobody will read.

3. Set the amount ceiling to something you would actually accept

The shipped maximum is $1,000,000. For most organisations a five-figure gift should trigger a human conversation, not a chat widget. Lower the maximum and add a branch above it that offers a call with your development lead — major gifts are relationship work, and routing them through a self-service flow leaves money on the table.

4. Send the data somewhere

Route completed donations to wherever your team already works. Conferbot ships native connectors for Google Sheets (a fine starting point for a small team), HubSpot and Zoho CRM for donor records, Gmail for the acknowledgement email, and Airtable or Notion for campaign tracking. If your donor database is something else — Salesforce NPSP, Blackbaud, Donorfy — reach it through Zapier, which opens 2,000+ apps, or through a webhook to your own endpoint. Webhooks and API access require a paid plan; the native app connectors and the widget work on Free.

5. Make the confirmation honest

The template's closing message says a confirmation email has been sent. Make that true by wiring the Gmail node or your processor's own receipt, or change the wording. A promised email that never arrives generates support tickets and erodes trust at precisely the wrong moment.

6. Add your receipting language

Charitable-receipt rules differ by country, and the template deliberately ships without any. Whatever your jurisdiction requires — a registration number, a statement about goods or services received, a specific receipt format — add it as a message node before the closing thank-you, using wording your finance or legal advisor has approved.

Suggested amounts with impact framing. Replace the open number question with a choice node offering four preset amounts, each labelled with what it buys — "$50 — a week of school meals for one child". Keep a "custom amount" option that falls through to the number node. Impact framing consistently lifts average gift size compared with an empty amount box.

Employer matching. Add a yes/no question after the amount asking whether the donor's employer matches gifts, and a follow-up capturing the employer name. That single field can meaningfully increase realised revenue and costs one node.

Gift in honour or memory. A branch that captures an honouree name and an optional notification email turns a transaction into a relationship with a second household.

Recurring-gift reinforcement. When donation_type is monthly, add a message before the payment step that states the annual total and how it is used. Making the commitment concrete reduces the cancellations that follow a surprise second charge.

Cover-the-fees toggle. A yes/no asking whether the donor would like to add a small amount to cover processing costs. Use a math-operation node to compute the adjusted total and pass that to your payment step.

Anonymity. A yes/no asking whether the donor wants to be listed publicly. Charities routinely get this wrong and it is a genuine trust issue; one question solves it.

Post-gift ask. Instead of ending, route the "no more donations" branch into a short offer — newsletter signup, a volunteer enquiry, or a link to your impact reporting. The moment right after someone gives is the highest-intent moment you will get.

Conferbot does not gate channels by plan, so the same flow runs anywhere your supporters already are. The website widget is the natural home — put it on your donate page, your campaign landing pages, and your impact pages where intent peaks.

Beyond the site, this flow works particularly well on WhatsApp for appeals in regions where WhatsApp is the default messaging channel, and on Facebook Messenger and Instagram where a campaign post can open straight into the giving conversation. Telegram, Discord, LINE, Microsoft Teams and the mobile SDK are all available too, which matters for community-run organisations whose supporter base lives on one particular platform.

A practical note on channel choice and payments: on messaging channels the redirect-to-processor pattern is the only sensible one, because you cannot reasonably ask someone to type card details into a public-facing messenger thread. Build the flow redirect-first and it will behave correctly on every surface.

You can start on the free plan, which includes 600 conversations a month and one chatbot — enough to run a real campaign and see whether conversational giving works for your supporters. Paid plans start at $19/month and unlock webhooks, API access and removal of Conferbot branding, which most charities want before a public appeal. Full details are on the pricing page.

Three habits keep this flow trustworthy in 2026 and beyond.

Do not collect what a processor should hold. Card numbers, CVVs and bank routing details belong in Stripe, PayPal or your bank's own interface, never in a chat transcript that your team can read. This is the single most important edit to make to the shipped template.

Only ask for what you will use. The postal address behind the tax-receipt question is a good model: it is conditional, and only donors who want a mailed receipt are asked. Apply the same test to every field you add.

Say what happens to the data. Add a short line before the contact-capture step linking to your privacy policy and stating plainly that you use the details to issue a receipt and to contact them about their gift. Donors are far more forgiving of a question they understand the reason for.

None of this makes the template a compliance product. Charity receipting, data protection and payment rules vary by jurisdiction, and the responsibility for meeting them stays with your organisation.