You’ve worked so hard to gather supporters in a moment of high-intent. The room is inspired, engaged, and ready to give. What happens next should be easy, but it’s not.
Cash donations in most cases go unattributed.
A generic card reader does not know the donor's name.
And whatever gets scribbled on a clipboard at the check-in table usually ends up retyped into a spreadsheet the following week, if it gets entered at all.
That is the gap In-Person Giving from Fundraise Up is built to close in two ways:
- Tap to Donate: turn a phone or a tablet into a live donation terminal. When a donor taps their card or phone, their gift lands in Fundraise Up instantly, attributed to the right campaign and connected to their donor record.
- Giving Station: turn a tablet into a self-serve donation station that supporters use on their own.
Below are the questions organizations have actually asked, pulled together in one place:
- How the In-Person Giving flow works
- What setup is involved
- How donor data and security hold up
- What shows up in your Dashboard once the event is over
What is In-Person Giving from Fundraise Up?
In-Person Giving from Fundraise Up lets a staff member or volunteer accept in-person donations directly on a smartphone, or lets a donor give on their own through a self-serve tablet. With Tap to Donate, a donor taps their card or phone against the fundraiser's phone, no separate point-of-sale account required. With Giving Station, a tablet runs a locked, donor-only version of that same flow without anyone operating it. Either way, the gift is processed, attributed to a campaign, and recorded in the same donor record as every online gift your organization collects.
It's available to organizations already on the Fundraise Up platform, with new capabilities shipping regularly. The sections below describe what's live today.
How does In-Person Giving for donations work?
The flow is short by design, since it happens while a donor is standing in front of you, not sitting at a laptop.
A team member downloads the Fundraise Up app and logs in with their organization's credentials. From there, they select the campaign the gift should go toward, enter the donation amount, and choose whether to capture the donor's name and email for a receipt.
The donor then taps their physical card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay against the fundraiser's phone or Giving Station tablet. Payment processes through Stripe in seconds, and the donation appears in your Fundraise Up Dashboard immediately, attributed to the campaign, linked to the donor, with a receipt generated automatically.
Donors can also access their giving history in the Donor Portal. Fundraise Up's Donor Portal is a self-service dashboard where donors can manage their giving directly including updating payment methods, adjusting gift amounts, pausing or upgrading recurring plans, retrying failed payments, and downloading receipts, all without contacting your team. It cuts down support requests, boosts donor retention, and drives more upgrades.
If the connection drops mid-transaction, the card isn't charged. Nothing gets double-billed and nothing gets lost in a gap between systems.
What do you need to set up Tap to Donate?
You need an existing Fundraise Up account. For Tap to Donate, your organization admin invites a team member as a Tap to Donate specialist, that person accepts the invitation, sets a password, and installs the app from the App Store or Google Play Store.
Set up Tap to Donate in 4 easy steps:
1. Enable Tap to Donate inside your Fundraise Up dashboard
2. Configure your campaigns
3. Add your users (fundraisers / canvassers / volunteers)
4. Download the Fundraise Up app on the App Store or Google Play Store
On the device side, Tap to Donate runs on iPhone XS or newer running iOS 16.4 or later, and on NFC-capable Android phones running Android 11 or later. There's no card reader to plug in and no separate hardware to configure. If a fundraiser's phone meets those requirements, they can be ready to collect within minutes of logging in. If using an iPad or tablet for Tap to Donate, card readers can be used.
One setup detail worth knowing ahead of time: iPhones prompt for location access during setup. Apple requires this of any app that uses the phone's built-in tap to pay hardware, not something specific to Fundraise Up, and it's worth mentioning to volunteers so the prompt doesn't catch them off guard mid-event.
This covers Tap to Donate. Setting up a self-serve tablet works differently; see information regarding Giving Station below for what that mode needs to complete setup.
Is Tap to Donate safe to use on a personal phone?
Absolutely.
Payment processing runs through Stripe, which is PCI DSS certified, the security standard credit card networks require of anyone handling card payments. When a donor taps, their card data is encrypted on the device and sent directly to Stripe. It doesn't pass through the fundraiser's phone storage or through Fundraise Up's servers, and Fundraise Up never stores card numbers or CVV codes.
Access is scoped tightly on top of that. A Tap to Donate specialist can collect donations and nothing else. They cannot log into the Fundraise Up Dashboard, cannot see campaigns they have not been assigned to, can only view the donations they personally collected, and cannot modify or cancel a completed donation once it's processed.
If a phone is lost or a volunteer moves on, there's no donor or card data sitting on that device for anyone to find. And if your organization has a device policy that restricts installing apps on personal phones, say so before your event rather than after. It's a real and common constraint, particularly for larger organizations, and your Fundraise Up contact can walk through what device options exist for your situation.
What does a donor actually see and do?
A donor sees a simple screen: the campaign name, the amount, and a prompt to tap. They tap their card or phone against the fundraiser's device the same way they would tap to pay for coffee. If the campaign is set up to collect it, they can add their name, email, and phone number for a receipt. A toggle lets the donor choose to cover the transaction cost themselves when turned on in the given campaign, the same option available at checkout on your website, so the full intended amount reaches your organization. A receipt follows automatically once the donation completes.
If a donor has questions about their donation in the moment, the fundraiser can pull up campaign details and quick answers on security, tax deductibility, and how to cancel a recurring gift, right from the app, without sending the donor to a separate page.
What is Giving Station, and how is it different from Tap to Donate?
Giving Station is built for the moments when no one is free to hold a device: a food bank counter, a museum lobby, a church entrance, a gala table between courses.
A staff member sets up the session ahead of time. They sign in with SSO and two-factor authentication, select a Giving Station campaign, a campaign type built specifically for this mode, connect the payment reader, and set an exit PIN.
From there, the tablet shows only the donor-facing screen. A donor picks an amount, taps to give, and gets a receipt, and the screen resets itself for the next donor, either right after a completed gift or after a stretch of inactivity. The exit PIN keeps donors from reaching operator settings, transaction history, or switching to a different organization or campaign.
One hardware detail worth knowing before you set one up: an iPad does not tap natively the way an iPhone does in operator mode, so Giving Station on an iPad connects to an external Stripe Terminal reader. Android tablets can use built-in NFC where the tablet supports it, or the same external reader where it does not. Either setup still runs on the same checkout engine as the rest of Tap to Donate, so a Giving Station gift is attributed to its campaign, tied to a donor record, and synced to your CRM exactly like a donation collected in operator mode or online.
What does In-Person Giving cost?
Fundraise Up's pricing is performance-based: you pay only when a donation goes through, not for licensing a terminal or maintaining a kiosk system. Donations collected through In-Person Giving carry the same transaction fee as donations collected through your online checkout, so turning it on doesn't change what you pay per transaction, only how a donor is able to give.
There's no software subscription tied to In-Person Giving, no setup fee, and no contract to sign.
The one hardware cost to plan for is the external card reader Giving Station needs on an iPad, since that's a physical accessory you buy once, not a Fundraise Up fee. And as noted above, donors have the option to cover the transaction cost themselves, so the fee doesn't have to come out of what your organization keeps.
Can donors set up recurring gifts through In-Person Giving?
Yes. Tap to Donate supports recurring giving at any frequency your campaign allows: daily, weekly, biweekly, every four weeks, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually. Setting up a recurring gift requires being able to identify the donor, so name, email, and phone number are required in that case, even though those fields can be skipped for a one-time gift.
This is the part that most separates In-Person Giving from a standalone terminal: the donor who taps once at your gala isn't a one-time transaction that disappears when they walk out the door. They're in the same donor record as everyone who gives on your website, ready for the follow-up that turns a single gift into a habit.
What happens to the donation after the event ends?
It shows up where your other donations already live. In-Person Giving donations appear instantly alongside online giving in Insights, on your Donations page, in exports, and in connected CRM integrations. Each one is attributed to a "Tap to Donate" or “Giving Station” source, so you can filter and report on in-person results separately from your website. Exports also include who accepted each donation, by name and email, so you know which specialist collected which gift.
There's no file to import, no spreadsheet to reconcile, and no separate login for your finance team to check.
How is this different from Square or a standalone card reader?
Square, Stripe Terminal, and similar tools process a payment. That's what they're built to do, and they do it fine. What they don't do is know that the payment was a donation, which campaign it belongs to, or who the donor is beyond a name on a receipt.
In-Person Giving processes a donation: attributed to a campaign, linked to a donor record in the same platform as your online giving, ready to show up in the same reports and the same CRM sync you already use. A standalone terminal hands you a payment. In-Person Giving from Fundraise Up connects you directly with the donor.
Where is In-Person Giving available today?
In-Person Giving is currently available for events in the United States, for organizations that already have a Fundraise Up account. It's not a standalone product a new organization can sign up for on its own; it's part of the platform you're already running your online giving through.
Learn more about In-Person Giving
If your organization runs galas, church services, community drives, food bank events, or any other moment where donors give face to face, and you are already on Fundraise Up, the next step is simple: talk to your Fundraise Up team about your upcoming events.