Refunds can be issued directly from your dashboard!

How to issue a refund

  • First, check that you have enough funds in your campaign balance to issue the refund. You can do this by heading to your Payouts page, and checking that the relevant campaign has enough funds to issue a refund.

πŸ‘‰ Note: Refunds must come from the same campaign that the transaction was donated to. You cannot currently issue a refund using funds from other campaigns on your account. If you have no available funds in Givebutter, you will not be able to issue a refund online.

  • Go to the Transactions tab in your dashboard.

  • Locate the transaction you want to refund using the search bar, or by adding filters.

  • Click in the white space next to the donor's name to select the Transaction.

  • A sidebar menu will appear on the right side of the screen. Click the three dots [...] button on the right, and choose Refund.

    an arrow points to three dots
  • Choose a reason for the refund.

    • Duplicate Charge - the donor submitted a transaction multiple times by mistake.

    • Fraud - the donor's card or bank information was compromised and someone used it to donate fraudulently, as a way to test whether the card worked. This will often appear as a $1 or $5 transaction and the name and/or email will not match or be very generic. If you see multiple $1 charges from names you don't know, please notify us at [email protected] so we can investigate further.

    • Requested by donor

    • Unauthorized charge - most often for someone who accidentally set their donation to recurring, but only intended it to be a one-time gift.

    • Item or ticket return - if tickets were part of the transaction, you can indicate if you also want to revoke the tickets and return them back to the ticket pool for purchase by someone else.

refund reasons
  • Click the blue Refund button. A confirmation email will be sent to the donor.

Once refunded, the popup with show a Refunded label, and the status of the transaction will change to Refunded.

refunded status

Refund FAQs

How long do refunds take?

Refunds will be removed from your available balance immediately and will appear in the donor's account in 5 - 10 business days.

Why can't I issue a refund?

  • There are not enough funds in the available balance for the relevant campaign.

  • The funds were not processed online by Givebutter (this includes imported transactions, offline check or cash donations). If this is the case, you can still manually issue a refund directly to the donor via your organization's bank.

  • The transaction has already been refunded.

Can I issue a partial refund?

Not at this time. If a donor gave more than they intended, you can issue a full refund and they can submit a new donation for the correct amount. For tip-only refunds, please contact [email protected].

What happens to the supporter feed?

Refunded transactions and donor messages will still display on the supporter feed by default. You can hide a message from a refunded transaction if you like.

Will my goal bar change?

Yes, the refunded amount will be deducted from your total raised, and your number of supporters will decrease by one.

What about teams and team members?

If the donation was assigned to a team or team member, their total amount raised will be reduced, and their total number of supporters will decrease by one.

What does the refund receipt look like?

See below!

sample refund receipt

Can I resend the refund receipt?

Not at this time. Feel free to add your vote to our feature request for the ability to resend refund receipts!


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