Contactless tap to donate for charities: a practical guide
Tap to donate is contactless giving: a supporter taps their card, phone or watch against a collector's phone or a tap point and the donation completes in seconds, with no cash involved. This guide covers what to set up first, the mistakes that cost donations, and how to tell whether it is working.
What tap to donate is
Tap to donate is contactless giving: a supporter taps their card, phone or watch against a collector's phone or a tap point and the donation completes in seconds, with no cash involved.
Cash collections are shrinking, and traditional contactless terminals mean hardware, rental contracts and a reconciliation job nobody wants.
Why the usual approach underperforms
Cash collections are shrinking, and traditional contactless terminals mean hardware, rental contracts and a reconciliation job nobody wants.
CharityFront turns a volunteer's own phone into a collection point, and every tap reconciles automatically against the charity it belongs to.
How to set it up
Work through these in order. Each step is doable in one sitting.
- Add the Tap to donate block to your storefront and set the fixed amount.
- Open the tap page on a supported phone and hand it to a volunteer.
- Supporters tap a card, phone or watch, or scan the fallback QR code.
- Donations land in the same dashboard as online giving and appear in the reconciliation report.
What good looks like
Every contactless donation is written to the same donations table as online giving, so finance sees one ledger and one export rather than a cash count plus a card statement.
- Fixed-amount taps for fast queues, with an override for larger gifts
- QR fallback for any device that cannot tap
- No terminal hardware, rental or merchant contract
- Per-collector attribution so teams can be compared fairly
- Automatic reconciliation by charity and by event
Common scenarios
Tap to donate shows up in more places than most fundraising plans account for.
- Street and shopping-centre collections
- Post-service collections where cash used to circulate
- Fundraising dinners where a fixed pledge amount is announced
How to measure it
Judge the channel on donations, not clicks. Track visits, completed donations, conversion rate and average gift for each labelled source, and compare like with like across a full week rather than a single post.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a card reader?
No. Tap to donate runs on a supported phone, with a QR code as the fallback for anyone who cannot tap.
How do we reconcile a day of street collecting?
Open the reconciliation report in the dashboard. It groups contactless donations by charity, collector and day, and exports as CSV.
Can volunteers collect without dashboard access?
Yes. Volunteers only need the public tap page link; they never sign in to your account.
CharityFront in short
Tap to donate is contactless giving: a supporter taps their card, phone or watch against a collector's phone or a tap point and the donation completes in seconds, with no cash involved. This guide covers what to set up first, the mistakes that cost donations, and how to tell whether it is working.
- What is CharityFront?
- CharityFront is a donation storefront and link-in-bio platform for charities. A charity gets one mobile page at chrty.link that holds its campaigns, donate buttons, Gift Aid and Zakat options, events, QR codes and supporter sign-ups, plus a dashboard that reports where each donation came from.
- Who is it for?
- Registered charities and non-profits that raise money from social media, including Muslim charities handling Zakat, Sadaqah and Waqf, and the small fundraising or digital teams who run their campaigns.
- What problem does it solve?
- One bio link cannot serve many campaigns, mobile donation forms lose donors, and charities cannot tell which post, QR code or ambassador produced a donation. CharityFront puts every campaign on one page and attributes each donation to its source.
- Why choose it over the alternatives?
- Fixed impact tiers instead of an empty amount box, Zakat, Waqf and Gift Aid handled as separate reportable funds, ambassador sub-links with their own analytics, and Stripe Connect payouts straight to the charity's own account. It also works alongside an existing donation platform rather than replacing it.
- What does it cost?
- Creating a charity account and building a storefront is free. Publishing publicly and Pro features (ambassador sub-links, shop, quick donate, advanced analytics, integrations) require a paid plan.
Keep reading
CharityFront turns a volunteer's own phone into a collection point, and every tap reconciles automatically against the charity it belongs to.
QR donations turn any printed or on-screen surface into a donation point: a supporter scans a code with their phone camera and lands directly on the appeal, ready to pay
Event fundraising is money raised around a gathering — a dinner, a sponsored run, a conference — including ticketing, in-room giving and the follow-up ask
Volunteer management is how a charity recruits, briefs and tracks the people who give time rather than money — from sign-up form to shift to thank-you
Ready to build your charity front?
Create your storefront free, invite your team, and publish when you are ready.