Donations & Gift Aid

What It Does

The workspace money-flow tools help mosque owners, admins, and finance users prepare donation campaigns for the mosque website. Campaigns can include suggested donation amounts, a target amount, restricted-fund wording, monthly giving, and Gift Aid eligibility. Active one-off and monthly campaigns can now appear inside tenant-site donation blocks and take rate-limited Stripe payments. Successful one-off donations and recorded monthly donation invoices send donor receipts through the verified mosque sender domain when available, or the MAS fallback sender otherwise. Finance users can review monthly donor subscription history and record cancellation-request notes. They can also review eligible Gift Aid donations, create a draft claim batch, record the MAS evidence retention policy/version and review date, see claim batches due for retention review, retain identifiable evidence for another review cycle, redact stored CSV/XML export payloads into summaries, download CSV evidence, mark the claim ready for HMRC submission review, build a draft HMRC XML package, record manual/test HMRC response outcomes, and see correction package rebuild audit details.

Where to Find It

Open the dashboard, choose a mosque workspace, then open its Fundraising tab.

Creating a Campaign Step by Step

Select New campaign. A panel slides in from the right with two guided steps — About the appeal (title, description) and Amounts & giving options (target, suggested amounts, restricted fund, monthly giving, Gift Aid) — with ⓘ icons explaining each option. Continue checks the campaign has a title, and Create campaign checks both steps again: if the title is missing, the panel takes you back to About the appeal with a note saying so. Once the campaign is created the panel closes and the campaign appears in the list; next time it starts fresh.

Two finance actions ask you to confirm before they happen: Redact exports (it permanently replaces stored CSV/XML evidence files with a summary) and Request cancellation on a monthly donation (it records the request for your audit trail; MAS does not cancel the Stripe subscription automatically).

Step by Step

Select New campaign, then enter a campaign title, such as Ramadan Appeal.
Add a short description for the appeal.
Optionally add a target amount.
Add suggested amounts separated by commas, such as 10, 25, 50.
Add a restricted-fund label if the appeal is for a specific purpose.
Choose whether monthly giving should be available.
Choose whether the campaign is Gift Aid eligible.
Select Create campaign. New campaigns are active immediately for the current public checkout tranche.

Monthly Donor Subscriptions

In the Donations and Gift Aid section, find Monthly donor subscriptions.
Select Refresh monthly to load the latest recorded monthly donor rows.
Review the donor name/email, monthly amount, total recorded amount, invoice count, last gift date, campaign, and Stripe subscription id.
Add a Cancellation note when a donor asks the mosque to stop a monthly donation.
Select Request cancellation to record the finance audit note across the tenant's matching monthly donation rows.
Select Verify provider to check the Stripe subscription metadata before any provider cancellation side effect can be considered.
Check the cancellation status, requested timestamp, note, provider readiness state, Stripe status, cancel-at-period-end flag, checked timestamp, and provider message shown on the row.

By default, Verify provider records that Stripe metadata matches the tenant donation subscription and that live cancellation remains disabled. MAS only schedules Stripe cancellation if the tenant-donation provider path has been explicitly enabled in the environment.

Gift Aid Claim Review

In the Donations and Gift Aid section, choose a claim start date and end date if you want to narrow the review period.
Select Preview to review eligible donations, excluded donations, the donation total, and the estimated Gift Aid top-up.
Check the exclusion reasons before creating a claim. Donations may be excluded when declaration evidence is incomplete or they already belong to another active claim batch.
Select Create draft claim when the preview is ready.
Check the evidence retention, evidence review, and policy version shown on the created claim.
Use Download CSV on the created draft claim to keep/export the evidence for finance review.
Select Prepare HMRC when the mosque finance reviewer is ready to move the draft claim into the HMRC-ready queue.
Check the claim status, HMRC submission status, prepared timestamp, and retention review expectation before any external HMRC filing step.
Enter the HMRC reference, Organisation name, and optional Authorised official.
Select Build XML to create the draft HMRC XML package.
Check the IRmark status shown after the draft is built. MAS currently records the placeholder IRmark readiness state for future filing work.
Use XML draft to download the generated file for technical validation.
If the mosque receives a manual/test HMRC response outside MAS, choose an HMRC outcome, paste the Response payload, optionally add an HMRC code and Response note for rejected or correction-required outcomes, then select Record response.
Correction required moves the claim back to a correction-ready state so finance can prepare it for HMRC review again after fixing the evidence or notes.
After the claim is prepared again, select Build XML to rebuild the draft package. The claim summary then shows Correction package with the rebuild time, attempt number, source response, and correction reason.

Gift Aid Evidence Retention Review

Open the Donations and Gift Aid section.
Find Evidence due for review inside the Gift Aid claim review panel.
Select Refresh reviews to load the latest claim batches due for manual review.
Review each row's claim id, claim period, retain-until date, review-due date, claim/submission status, claim total, review reason, export impact, and next action.
Select Retain evidence when the mosque still needs donor-identifiable export evidence. MAS records the review and moves the claim to a future review cycle.
Select Redact exports only after the mosque confirms no HMRC, legal, dispute, or operational reason still requires donor-identifiable CSV/XML export payloads.
Redact exports replaces the stored claim CSV and stored draft HMRC XML payload with non-donor-identifying summaries. It does not delete the underlying donation or Gift Aid declaration records.

Public Checkout

Donations are only accepted once the mosque website is live. If the site has not been taken live yet, or has been paused, visitors cannot start a one-off or monthly donation. Take the site live from the Website go-live panel before sharing your donation page. See the Website CMS and Page Builder guide for how to go live.

When a published tenant page includes a Donation block, donors can choose a suggested amount or enter their own amount, enter their name and email, optionally leave a message, and pay by card.

If the campaign allows both donation frequencies, visitors can choose One-off or Monthly. One-off donations are confirmed inline through Stripe Elements. Monthly donations redirect to Stripe Checkout and come back to the mosque page with a success or cancellation message.

Repeated valid one-off payment, payment confirmation, or monthly checkout attempts may be asked to wait briefly before trying again. This protects public donation routes from automated duplicate submissions without changing normal donor journeys.

If Gift Aid is enabled for the campaign, donors can tick the Gift Aid declaration and provide address evidence. The checkout records the declaration text version, taxpayer confirmation, address line 1, postcode, and acceptance time alongside the succeeded donation or paid monthly invoice.

After MAS records a successful one-off donation or a paid monthly invoice, it attempts a donor receipt email. The receipt includes the campaign, amount, donation date, restricted-fund wording where relevant, and whether MAS recorded a Gift Aid declaration for that donation. Replayed apply or webhook events do not duplicate a receipt that has already been marked sent. Failed receipt delivery is recorded on the donation record for follow-up without failing the donation itself.

What Each Screen Shows

The workspace page shows existing donation campaigns, their campaign slug, status, suggested amounts, target amount, monthly-giving setting, and Gift Aid setting.

The Monthly donor subscriptions panel shows grouped monthly donation rows by Stripe subscription id, including donor details, campaign, last gift, invoice count, total recorded amount, cancellation status, cancellation notes, provider readiness state, provider checked timestamp, provider errors, Stripe subscription status, and provider-status text.

The Gift Aid claim review panel shows period inputs, a preview action, eligible and excluded donation counts, donation and top-up totals, exclusion reasons, claim/submission status, prepared timestamp, evidence retain-until and review dates, policy version, evidence due for review rows, Retain evidence and Redact exports actions, CSV download, HMRC XML metadata fields, IRmark readiness status, HMRC response status/error notes, correction package rebuild audit details, an XML draft download after the XML package is built, and Record response controls for manual/test outcomes.

Owners, admins, and finance users can create campaigns. Other workspace roles can view campaigns but cannot create them.

Tenant-site visitors see the active checkout inside the Donation block. If the block has a campaignKey, it targets the matching campaign id or slug; otherwise it uses the active campaign list for the mosque.

Tips

Each donor row and each Gift Aid retention row waits only for its own work: recording a cancellation request, checking a provider, or retaining or redacting evidence shows the spinner on that row's button and leaves the other rows usable. Nothing on this panel is shown before the server has agreed — money and Gift Aid evidence are only ever displayed as they were actually recorded.

Use pounds in the form. MAS stores money internally in pence so Stripe and finance exports can use exact minor-unit amounts.

Only mark a campaign as Gift Aid eligible when the mosque can collect and retain the required donor declaration and address evidence.

Gift Aid generally lets a charity claim 25p for every £1 donated, but the donor must have paid enough UK Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax and must make a declaration. Keep finance review and claim submission under mosque control.

HMRC guidance says charities need adequate records linking the donation, donor, and Gift Aid declaration, and that most charities keep Gift Aid tax records for six years after the accounting period they relate to. MAS currently uses the claim period end as the review basis until tenant accounting periods become configurable. The review date is not an automatic deletion date: finance users must check whether HMRC, legal, dispute, or operational reasons still justify retaining donor-identifiable evidence.

ICO storage limitation guidance says organisations should document standard retention periods, regularly review the data they hold, and erase or anonymise personal data when they no longer need it. MAS records the policy version and review date, lists due/legacy claim batches for manual review, and now lets finance users explicitly retain evidence or redact stored CSV/XML export payloads after review.

The CSV export, Prepare HMRC action, Build XML action, Correction package summary, and Record response action are evidence/review helpers for the claim batch. Prepare HMRC records internal audit state only, Build XML creates or rebuilds a draft XML package for validation, and Record response stores a manually supplied or test response outcome; none of these actions sends the claim to HMRC yet.

Before making a real HMRC claim, the mosque still needs the correct charity/CASC recognition, Charities Online setup, eligible donor declarations, retained records, schema/business-rule validation, real IRmark generation, sandbox response validation, and operational sign-off. GOV.UK guidance says eligible charities can claim Gift Aid online or through suitable software, but MAS has not yet wired the live Charities Online XML submission client.

Useful official references:

Troubleshooting

If campaign creation fails, check that the title is filled in and at least one donation frequency is enabled.

If a suggested amount is rejected, use numbers only, separated by commas.

If the tenant page says donation campaigns are being prepared, create an active campaign with one-off or monthly giving enabled and make sure the page has a Donation block.

If donors cannot start a donation, check that the website has been taken live. Donations are refused while the site is in draft, preview, or paused status; take the site live from the Website go-live panel.

If a donor sees a message asking them to wait, they can retry after the short waiting period shown by the checkout response.

Direct HMRC Gift Aid XML/API submission, real IRmark completion, correction filing, production-enabling live Stripe cancellation for monthly donations, donor self-service subscription management, deeper event occurrence dashboards, and booking refund-policy polish are still being built.