Church Admin Plugin

Donation Receipt Template

⭐ Premium

The donation receipt template controls the email sent to donors automatically after each gift is recorded — whether submitted through the online giving form or entered manually by an admin. Customising this template lets you make the receipt warm and on-brand rather than a generic system message.

Go to Church Admin → Giving → Donation receipt template.

Writing the template

The template is a free-form text area supporting HTML formatting. Write it as you would any email — a warm thank you message, details of what the donation will be used for, any tax or Gift Aid information relevant to your donors, and contact details if they have any questions.

Available shortcodes

Two shortcodes are available to personalise the receipt with details of the specific donation:

  • [name] — replaced with the donor’s name as recorded on the gift
  • [donations] — replaced with an HTML table showing the details of the gift, including the fund and amount for each line of the donation. For split gifts this table will show one row per fund.

A simple template might look like this:

Dear [name],

Thank you so much for your generous gift to St Andrew's Church. We are so grateful for your support.

[donations]

If you have any questions about your donation please don't hesitate to get in touch.

With thanks,
The team at St Andrew's Church

Saving the template

Click Save. A preview of the saved template is shown so you can check the formatting looks correct before the next donation triggers it. The template takes effect immediately — the next donation recorded will use the updated version.

Tips

  • Set this up before going live with your giving form — donors receive the receipt immediately after giving, so an empty or placeholder template will make a poor first impression.
  • UK Gift Aid — if your church is a registered charity, consider including a reminder in the receipt that their Gift Aid declaration is on file and what that means for their donation. This also serves as a useful written record for the donor.
  • HTML formatting — the template supports HTML, so you can use bold text, paragraphs, links, and your church’s colour scheme if you’re comfortable writing basic HTML. Keep it simple — overly complex HTML can break in some email clients.
  • Check your email settings — the receipt is sent using your Church Admin email configuration. If your emails aren’t arriving, check your email setup before troubleshooting the template. See Update email settings.

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