How to accept donations on Shopify

Shopify is built to sell products, so donations on Shopify are either a product, a relabeled checkout tip, or an app.

Short answerShopify has no donation form of its own. You can sell a "Donation" product, relabel Shopify's checkout tipping as a donation, or install a donation app from the Shopify App Store. If you sell merchandise and want shoppers to add a gift, that is often enough. If you need donor records, recurring gifts, and receipts with annual statements, link your store's "Donate" menu item to a separate donation page.

Donor Merchant is a WordPress plugin, so it cannot be installed on Shopify. This guide covers what Shopify can do by itself, and when a small WordPress donation site linked from your store is the better fit.

What are Shopify's rules for fundraising?

Shopify's help center used to have a dedicated Fundraising page. When we checked in October 2026, its address redirected to Shopify's general compliance pages, so the most recent copy we could read is the version archived in May 2024. That page said:

  • A registered charity raising funds through its store must show, publicly and easy to find, its name, phone number and address, its identification number, a declaration of its tax-exempt status, and proof that it is listed with the relevant authority (such as the IRS tax-exempt database, the CRA charities database, or the Charity Commission for England and Wales).
  • A store that says it donates part of its proceeds must name the charity, give its contact details and ID number, and have proof of the donations.
  • A personal fundraiser must say how the money will be used, state that the business is not tax-exempt, and say that contributions are not tax deductible.
  • Prohibited: claiming a false charity affiliation, raising money for a charity that does not exist, posing as a charity, and "vague and sentimental claims" with no specific information on how donations will be used.
  • Shopify could ask for documents to verify a claim, and failing to provide them could lead to the store being suspended or closed.

Shopify may have moved or changed these rules. Read Shopify's current Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, and ask Shopify support if you are unsure.

Shopify staff on Shopify's community forum (in 2023 and 2024) also described nonprofit plans, NPO Lite and NPO Full, arranged through live support. They said these plans include accepting donations through Shopify Payments for registered charities in the US or Canada. These plans are not on Shopify's public pricing page, so confirm the current terms with Shopify support.

What are the ways to take donations on Shopify?

A donation product

Create a product under Products in your Shopify admin, call it "Donation", and add variants for the amounts you want to offer ($25, $50, $100). In the Shipping section, turn off Physical product so checkout does not ask for shipping. In Pricing, decide with your accountant whether Charge tax on this product should be off. A product has set prices, so donors pick one of your variants. Shopify's product settings don't include a donor-chosen amount; some apps add one.

For monthly gifts, Shopify's own Shopify Subscriptions app can add a subscription option to a product. Shopify says the app needs one of these payment providers: Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Authorize.net, Adyen or Stripe, and a theme that supports sections and blocks.

Checkout tipping, relabeled as a donation

Shopify's online tipping adds a tip option to the payment page. Turn it on under Settings > Checkout, in the Tipping section, with Show tipping at checkout. Shopify's own help page suggests relabeling it for charity, for example a title of "Donations" and a label of "Donation". Limits Shopify documents:

  • Up to three preset percentages of the subtotal, plus a custom amount.
  • Tips are capped at $1,000 USD.
  • Tipping does not work on a cart that contains a subscription item.
  • Tips are subject to card and transaction fees.

This only works when someone is already buying something.

Donation apps

The Shopify App Store's Donations category listed 80 apps when we checked in October 2026. They fall into two groups. Some send a share of sales to partner causes, for example planting trees or giving to charities on the app's network. Others let your store collect donations for your own cause: one app describes itself as accepting "custom donation amounts throughout your store", and another says donations are "added directly to their order total". Check each app's listing for its monthly price, where the money goes, and whether it supports recurring gifts or receipts.

What does Shopify cost for donations?

As published on Shopify's pricing page in October 2026, the Basic plan's online card rate with Shopify Payments is 2.9% + 30¢, and stores that use a third-party payment provider pay an extra 2% transaction fee on Basic (lower on higher plans). Donations sold as products or tips go through the same checkout, so the same rates apply. Verify current rates with Shopify.

When is Shopify enough?

Shopify is enough when the store is the point and giving is a side option: a shop raising money for a cause, a museum shop asking shoppers to add $5, or a one-off fundraiser product. You avoid running a second site.

When do you need more than Shopify?

A nonprofit whose main goal is donations usually needs things a store is not built for:

  • Donor records. Giving history and lifetime totals per donor, and totals per campaign, rather than orders.
  • Tax receipts and annual statements. In the US, a gift of $250 or more needs a written acknowledgment with the amount and a statement of whether goods or services were provided. An order confirmation is written for purchases.
  • Recurring gifts without a cart, shipping step or account, which Stripe donors can update or cancel themselves.
  • Fee recovery, so donors can cover the processing fee.
  • Offline gifts such as checks, recorded next to online ones.
  • Gift Aid declarations if you are a UK charity.

How do I add a separate donation page to a Shopify store?

The realistic route is a small WordPress site on a subdomain such as give.yourdomain.org, running Donor Merchant, with your Shopify store linking to it. Your shop stays on Shopify. Our guide to adding a donation page to any website builder walks through the setup.

  1. Point the subdomain at your WordPress host. If you bought your domain through Shopify, go to Settings > Domains, click the domain, then Manage in DNS settings, and Add custom record (an A or CNAME record, whichever your host gives you). If your domain is registered elsewhere, add the record there.
  2. Install WordPress and Donor Merchant on the subdomain, with HTTPS turned on. Connect Stripe or PayPal using Getting started.
  3. Create a Donate page with the Donation Form block or the [donor_merchant] shortcode.
  4. Match your store's look. In Shopify, your brand colors are in the theme editor's Theme settings (colors). Copy the hex code into Donor Merchant under Settings > Forms > Form style, and pick a button shape (pill, rounded or sharp) close to your store's buttons.
  5. Add a Donate link to your store menu. In Shopify, go to Content > Menus, open your main menu, click Add menu item, name it "Donate", paste the full address of your donation page into the link field, and save.

Should I embed the donation form in a Shopify page instead?

We recommend a link. A payment form framed from another domain loses Apple Pay unless the frame allows payments and both domains are registered with Stripe. PayPal opens a popup window, which a frame can block. Safari and some other browsers block third-party cookies inside frames. A link avoids all three.

What do donors get on the separate page?

One-time and recurring gifts (weekly to yearly) through Stripe and PayPal, including Apple Pay, Google Pay and US bank debit. A printable receipt for every gift, with your tax ID and a statement you write, plus annual statements. A donor portal where they can see their history and, for Stripe gifts, update a card or cancel. You get donor records, campaigns with goal thermometers, optional fee recovery, offline gifts, and Gift Aid for UK charities. Every feature is free. For recurring gifts, set up webhooks so renewals are recorded.

Checked against Shopify's documentation in October 2026. Shopify's admin changes often; if a label differs in yours, look for the equivalent setting.

Sources

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