Issuing a refund 💸
You should 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.
Refunds must come from the same campaign that the transaction was donated to. You cannot 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.
Once you have confirmed that you have available funds for the refund, head to the Transactions page in your dashboard.
You can locate the transaction you want to refund using the search bar next to the Actions button 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.
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 to test whether the card worked.
Sometimes, fraudulent charges will 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, check the box if you also want to revoke them and return them to the ticket pool for someone else to purchase.
Refunding ticket purchases will not automatically revoke (invalidate) the associated tickets – you need to indicate this at the time of refund. You can also revoke tickets without refunding them. Read more about revoking tickets →
Click the blue Refund button. A confirmation email will be sent to the donor.
If you get an error message that says an unknown error occurred, this could be due to a PayPal transaction over six months old. PayPal does not allow refunds beyond six months.
Once completed, the transaction's status will change to Refunded, and the donor will receive a receipt confirming the refund.
FAQ 🤔
How long do refunds take?
Refunds will be removed from your available balance immediately and appear in the donor's account in 5-10 business days. Funds are sent to the same account originally used to make the payment.
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 and offline donations via check or cash). 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.
The transaction was originally submitted via PayPal, and it's been more than six months.
Can I issue a partial refund? Can I refund just the ticket or donation portion of a transaction?
Not at this time. If a donor gave more than they intended or accidentally donated and purchased a ticket, 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 be displayed by default on the supporter feed. Refunding does not remove posts. You can hide a message from a refunded transaction if you like.
If a matched donation is refunded, will the match amount change to reflect this?
Yes – successfully refunded transactions are removed from match calculations.
Will my goal bar change?
Yes, the refund 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!
Can I resend the refund receipt?
Not at this time. Please add your vote to our feature request for the ability to resend refund receipts!