In memory and in honor donations on Wix: tribute gifts and cards

By Kayabyte

A tribute gift is a donation made in honor or in memory of someone: instead of flowers, for a birthday, after a loss. Donors usually want two things: the person’s name attached to the gift, and someone (the family, the person honored) to hear about it. Wix Donations has no dedication feature. This guide shows the workaround Wix suggests, where it falls short, and how to take tribute gifts and send a card with an app.

What Wix Donations offers today

Wix lists dedication options as a feature request: Wix Donations “does not offer a feature that lets people submit their donation with a dedication”. The workaround Wix describes is the notes field: turn on Notes from donors in the campaign, and “Donors can write their dedication message in the notes field.”

To use it:

In your site’s dashboard, open Wix Donations and edit the campaign.
Turn on Notes from donors and give the note a title that tells donors what to write, for example “Is this gift in honor or in memory of someone? Tell us their name.”
Read the note on each donation order and write to the family yourself.

This works for a few gifts a month. Its limits: the note is free text, so you get everything from a full name to “for grandma”; there is no place for the address of the person who should hear about the gift, unless the donor types it into the same note; and nothing reminds you which notes you have already answered.

Thanking by hand: what a good tribute card says

Whether you write from your own mailbox or use a tool, the card to the family or the person honored should:

name the donor, your organization and the person the gift is for
leave out the amount, unless the donor asked for it to be mentioned
be sent once, by a person who looked at it first
come with a reply address that someone reads

Only write to someone whose address the donor gave you for this purpose.

Tribute gifts with an app

Fundraising Toolkit is our app that works on top of Wix Donations. On its Pro plan the Donate Form widget has a “Give in honor or memory of someone” switch:

The donor chooses In honor of someone or In memory of someone, enters the person’s name and an optional message.
Under “Let someone know about this gift” the donor can enter who should hear about it and their email address, and confirms that this person may receive one card.
The donor pays at your site’s own Wix checkout.
The paid gift appears under Tributes in the app’s dashboard. You open it, see a preview of the card, add a message of your own if you like, and click Send card.

The card is an email that says who gave to which organization in honor or in memory of whom, with the donor’s message or yours and your thank-you text. It does not mention the amount. It is sent under your organization’s name through Kayabyte’s mail service, and replies go to the reply email you set under Wall & privacy.

On the donor wall, a tribute line such as “In memory of Anna Berg” appears only if you turned tribute lines on and the donor agreed to be shown; an anonymous gift shows no dedication.

Gifts that came in through the standard Wix Donations form, or by cheque, can get a tribute too: you add it to the gift in the dashboard.

Honest limits

You need the Wix Donations app and a payment provider that accepts donations. The app adds no payment method of its own.
Tributes and tribute cards are part of the Pro plan ($9.99 a month, or $7.99 a month billed yearly, with a 14-day trial).
Cards are never sent automatically. One card per gift, sent by your click, with a daily limit per site. A person who unsubscribed gets no further cards.
The card is an email. The app does not print or post paper cards.
No tax receipts. If your donors need a receipt for tax purposes, issue it your usual way.
No peer-to-peer fundraising: supporters cannot open their own tribute pages.
Tributes, like funds and offline gifts, are kept in the app and do not appear in Wix Donations’ own reports.
The app is on the Wix App Market.

FAQ

Can donors dedicate a donation in Wix Donations? Not with a dedicated field. Wix suggests turning on the notes field so donors can write the dedication there.

Does the family see how much was given? Not in a card sent with Fundraising Toolkit: the card does not mention the amount. If you write by hand, leave it out unless the donor asked otherwise.

Is the card sent as soon as the donor pays? No. You send it with one click after looking at the preview. Nothing goes out by itself.

Can I record a memorial gift that arrived by cheque? Wix Donations cannot record offline gifts. In Fundraising Toolkit you add it as an offline gift with its tribute.

More: How to set up a donation campaign on a Wix site · How to show a donor wall on a Wix site