Text to give for organizations. Donors text a keyword and get a giving link with the fund and amount filled in. Every gift syncs to Raiser's Edge NXT and Blackbaud CRM.
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Nidhi Singh
Published:
November 5, 2026
Updated:
Imagine it's Giving Day, the Homecoming crowd hears you're close to your goal, and plenty of people want to chip in. A few pull out their phones, but then they have to find the right page, pick a fund and type in their card details, and somewhere along the way, the moment's gone.
Our newly introduced Text-to-Give feature for institutions, foundations and nonprofits gives them an easier, much more straightforward way to say yes. They text one word, like GIVE, to your number, and a link comes back with the fund and amount already filled in. They tap, they give, and they get back to the game.
Say Emily, who graduated in 2019, is at the game. She texts GIVE to your number and gets a reply with a link to your Annual Fund page. The fund and amount are already chosen, so she just taps ‘Give’.
Donors can pick their own amount too. If Emily texts GIVE 100, the page opens with $100 filled in.
Setting it up on Almabase is easy. Pick a keyword and link it to a giving page or a fund.You can keep a word running all year or turn one on just for Giving Day, a gala or reunion weekend.
After a big giving day, someone on your team usually has to spend time cleaning up the gift data. They match gifts to donor records, add the right codes, and make sure everything is in place before the gifts go into Raiser's Edge.
Text-to-Give gifts come in ready to go. Each gift already has its appeal, campaign and package attached, and it syncs to Raiser's Edge NXT or Blackbaud CRM. You can also track which word brought in each gift.
Text-to-Give gifts go through the same payment processor you use for your giving pages, whether that's Blackbaud Merchant Services, Stripe, Braintree or Authorize.net. There's nothing new to set up.
Text-to-Give is meant for more than just a Giving Day. Each keyword can point to its own fund and has its own report, so you can set one up for almost anything on your calendar.
Put your keyword on every social post, email and livestream graphic, and schedule it to switch on in the morning and off at midnight. When you announce a matching gift, donors can act on it in seconds.
Put the keyword on the scoreboard or have the announcer read it out at halftime. Fans can give to athletics or the annual fund without leaving their seats.
Give each reunion class its own keyword, linked to its class gift fund. The reports show how each class is doing, which makes a friendly class challenge easy to run.
Show the keyword on the big screen during the paddle raise and put a QR code on every table. Guests who'd rather not raise a hand can still give.
Seniors live on their phones. A keyword in the commencement program or on a senior send-off flyer makes the senior class gift an easy first gift, and a habit you can build on.
Family weekend, concerts and plays bring parents to campus who want to support their student's experience. A QR code in the program lets them do that on the spot.
Add one line next to the reply envelope: text GIVE to give now. It's an easy option for alumni who don't write checks anymore.
Each keyword gets its own report. It shows how many people texted, how many opened the link, how many gave and how much you raised. So if you use one word at your gala and another on social media, you can see which one did better.
Every word also comes with a QR code and ready-made text. You can add them to a flyer, a slide or your alumni newsletter.
Texting to give doesn't sign anyone up for your other text messages. A parent who gives once at a spring concert won't start getting texts about every event. And if someone replies STOP, they stop getting texts.
If you already use Almabase Giving and Texting with your own Twilio account, you'll find Text-to-Give under Text Communication. Choose a word, connect it to a giving page and fund, and share the QR code.
Giving Tuesday is on December 1. You can reach out to your CSM to get set up in time, or book a demo if you’d like to see how it works.
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Nidhi Singh
We've all been there. A donor is excited about your mission, they're on your checkout page, they want to help... but the timing just isn't right. Maybe it's the week before a big payment is due. Maybe they're waiting on a bonus. Maybe they just need a little more time.
Until now, you had two choices: lose that moment of connection entirely, or manually chase down pledges through spreadsheets and follow-up emails. Neither option is ideal.
Today, that changes.
We're excited to roll out a feature that lets you capture donor intent in the moment, even when they can't pay immediately. With "Pledge for later," your supporters can commit to a future gift right on your checkout page, and you can track every step of that commitment without lifting a finger.
Think of it as meeting donors where they are: ready to commit, just not ready to pay today.
Here's what you can do now that you couldn't before:
Donors see a simple "Pledge for later" option alongside one-time and recurring gifts. They choose their amount, pick a start date (at least 10 days out), and set up their payment schedule, whether that's a single future payment or monthly installments.
Donors add their payment card while pledging, but nothing gets charged by Almabase. Instead, the card is securely tokenized and passed to Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS) and Raiser's Edge NXT (RENXT), which handle all the actual charging. Your donor makes one commitment, and the system takes care of the rest.
Let the system do the follow-up
Each checkout page now includes a "Pledges" tab with full visibility into status, balance, and installment schedules. Paid, Failed, Overdue, all mirrored from RENXT every single day, automatically.
One important safeguard: pledge payments won't execute until they're synced to RENXT. If the first installment date arrives and the pledge hasn't synced, it's automatically cancelled. This keeps your data clean and prevents any surprises.
You stop losing people who want to give
When someone says "I really want to support this, just not this week", you don't have to let them walk away anymore. You've got a real answer for them.
Your follow-up basically runs itself
Remember those pledge tracking spreadsheets? The reminder emails you had to manually send? Yeah, you can retire those. RENXT handles the charges, Almabase keeps your dashboard current, and you get your evenings back.
You can actually plan ahead
There's a huge difference between "Sarah might give us $500" and "Sarah pledged $500 starting March 1st." That difference shows up in your forecasting, your board reports, and how you talk to major donors.
Everyone has less stress
Donors get a straightforward way to follow through. Your team gets reliable data. Nobody's chasing anybody down for forgotten promises.
Just create a new Checkout Page and you'll see the "Pledge for later" option. One heads up: your BBMS needs to have CSC set to "None," but don't worry. We'll let you know if you need to change that.
(Quick note: This is for BBMS users right now.)
Introducing Pledges on Checkout: Let Donors Commit Now, Pay Later
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The right way to fundraise means creating experiences that make giving feel natural, meaningful, and rewarding for the donors.
Universities and nonprofits spend countless hours building campaigns, yet too often the actual act of giving feels clunky. Donors drop off, admins lose time, and campaigns miss their potential.
With Almabase’s new spin on Payment Links, we’re changing that.
Not just with another feature, but with a smarter way to design giving experiences that encourage participation and generosity at scale.
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Until now, payment links have been a black box:
This meant lost opportunities for follow-ups, messy attribution, and a lot of wasted admin effort.
Research confirms why this is such a problem: nearly 60% of donors abandon online donation forms when the process feels long or confusing, and pre-filled amounts have been shown to increase average gift size by up to 20%.
Traditional donation forms work, but they put the burden on donors to find the right fund, enter the right amount, and complete multiple steps.
Payment Links flip this dynamic. Instead of asking donors to figure it out, admins can now:
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The result? A smoother, more personal giving journey.
Payment Links are part of a broader shift in fundraising: designing experiences that reduce friction, highlight the right opportunities, and make generosity the easy choice.
All of these, including Payment Links, are about the same thing: turning intent into impact, without extra steps.
Fundraising technology shouldn’t just digitize processes. It should optimize experiences for donors who want to give, and for admins who need to scale their efforts.
That’s what Payment Links are designed to do.
👉 Curious to see how this works in practice? Explore Almabase Giving and reimagine how your next campaign can feel effortless, personal, and powerful.
Redefining the Giving Experience: Payment Links on Almabase
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Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) are one of the fastest-growing giving channels for nonprofits and universities. Until now, accepting them on Almabase meant redirecting donors off the form, or worse, losing the gift altogether.
Today, that changes. 🎉
We’re excited to announce the launch of DAFpay on Almabase, powered by Chariot. Institutions can now offer DAF as a native payment option, right alongside Cards, ACH, PayPal, and Venmo. Donors complete their gift without ever leaving the form, while DAFpay automatically tracks fulfillment in the background. The result: higher conversion, cleaner data, and less admin work.
But the real impact comes from the fact that DAFpay expands giving potential. In Chariot’s 2025 DAF Fundraising Report, donors who began using a DAF to give to the same organization increased their annual support by a median of 100%, showing that DAFs meaningfully grow overall generosity.
That means every time you enable DAFpay, you’re not just making it easier to give, you’re unlocking access to significantly larger contributions that might have otherwise gone untapped.
Here’s the reality: many donors already have money available in their Donor-Advised Fund, earmarked for giving. If they can’t use those funds easily on your page, chances are the gift never happens, because why would they dip into other accounts when they’ve already set aside tax-free dollars to give?
That’s the gap we wanted to close. We asked ourselves: what if giving through a DAF felt as natural as paying with a card or PayPal?
That’s exactly what DAFpay does. Powered by *Chariot, it shows up as a payment option right inside your Almabase giving forms. Donors use the funds they’ve already set aside, without ever leaving your page, and Almabase tracks the gift automatically in the background.
At the end of the day, we built DAFpay into Almabase because we don’t want institutions to lose donors, and we don’t want donors to feel excluded just because they prefer giving through their DAF.
For institutions, DAFpay is more than just another payment method; it’s a way to align with your constituents’ giving preferences and expand your total giving pool.
By offering multiple payment options, Cards, ACH, PayPal, Venmo, and now DAFs, Almabase enables institutions to meet donors where they are, leading to higher conversion rates and larger average gift amounts.
When donors can give through their preferred method, everyone wins: you increase participation, streamline fulfillment, and make generosity frictionless.
Think about it this way: sometimes a donor wants to give, but the process gets in the way. Maybe they’ve already set aside money in a Donor-Advised Fund, but actually moving that gift feels clunky or confusing. With DAFpay, that hesitation disappears.
Now, when someone resonates with your cause, they can act on it right away without detours, redirects, or second-guessing.
Here’s what they experience:
The bottom line: it’s giving without friction.
Enabling DAFpay is simple. Institutions complete a quick onboarding with Chariot, and once connected, “DAF” appears as a native payment method right inside your Almabase giving forms.
From there, donors can choose DAF the same way they’d pick Card or PayPal. Gifts are tracked automatically in Almabase, with statuses updating in real time, so admins always know whether a grant is initiated, received, or cancelled, without touching a spreadsheet.
Recurring monthly gifts are also supported. The first gift shows up in Almabase, while future cycles are seamlessly handled through the donor’s DAF portal.
Philanthropy works best when generosity meets simplicity. Donors shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to support the causes they already believe in, and institutions shouldn’t lose gifts because of outdated workflows.
That’s why DAFpay matters. It bridges the gap between intent and action, helping donors use the funds they’ve already set aside, while giving your team a cleaner, smarter way to track every gift.
With DAFpay on Almabase, giving through Donor-Advised Funds no longer feels like the exception, it becomes just another effortless choice.
👉 Get started with DAFpay today and make giving feel as simple as it should.
Disclaimer - Chariot is a financial technology company, not a bank. Chariot Deposit Accounts are a Demand Deposit Account through our banking services partner, Column, N.A., Member FDIC. Deposits in Chariot Deposit Accounts are eligible for FDIC insurance up to $250,000 per depositor, for each insurable capacity in which the account is held.
Introducing DAFpay on Almabase: Seamless Donor-Advised Fund Giving
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