When someone pays for a donation through Rhythm, you do not have to enter the gift by hand. If the paid order includes a fund, Rhythm creates the gift automatically when the order is fulfilled. If that order is later changed or cancelled, Rhythm keeps the gift aligned with the order. This article explains where a gift on a donor’s record came from and what to expect when its order changes.
A Paid Order Becomes a Gift on Its Own
Every fund is backed by a fundraising product, so giving to that fund means buying that product on an order. When an order includes at least one fundraising product and is fulfilled, Rhythm creates one gift from that order. Fulfilled means the order has been paid, or completed in the way its payment type requires.
You do not need to enter the gift separately. Rhythm connects the order and gift automatically, and the gift uses the order’s identifier. If you know the order number, you can look up the gift directly. A gift created this way always traces back to one order.
One Gift per Order, Even Across Several Funds
An order can include more than one fundraising product, such as a donor giving to a Building Fund and a Scholarship Fund in the same transaction. Rhythm still creates only one gift for that order. The first fundraising line, based on the order’s own line order, sets the gift’s main amount and fund. Each additional fundraising line becomes a split on the same gift, with its own fund and amount.
For example, an order with a $70 Building Fund product and a $40 Scholarship Fund product creates one $110 gift to the Building Fund, with a $40 split to the Scholarship Fund. Because Rhythm builds the gift this way, you cannot choose to record one gift per line. If a donor’s giving to several funds in one transaction should appear as separate gifts, each gift needs its own order.
Which Fund and Giving Process the Gift Uses
Each split is credited to the fund tied to the fundraising product it came from. If Rhythm cannot find the product’s fund, it retries before setting the message aside for review, so it does not create the gift without a main fund. In the rare case where a fund is missing only from a later split line, that split is left without a fund.
The gift also carries a giving process, which controls its receipt wording and other giving-form behavior described in Giving Processes and Donation Forms Explained. If the order names a giving process, the gift uses it. If the order does not name one, the gift uses your account’s default giving process. If donation-product orders are also being converted to gifts, a separate setting controls that path, which runs alongside this one.
Which Donor the Gift Is Credited To
Rhythm finds or creates the donor for the bill-to customer on the order, whether that is a contact or an organization, and credits the gift to them. If that person or organization has never given before, Rhythm creates a donor record for them at that point. See Donors Explained for how a donor relates to its contact or organization record. Choices the giver made on the giving form, such as which campaign to credit or a tribute in someone’s memory, also carry onto the gift, along with any splits and soft credits from the shared giving process rules.
What Else Happens When the Gift Is Created
Creating the gift starts several other steps, usually in this order:
- If the order asked for a recurring gift, Rhythm starts a recurring gift and links it to this first payment.
- If the giving process has gift receipts turned on, has a receipt template, and the gift’s contact has an email address, Rhythm emails a receipt automatically. If the order was placed with confirmation emails switched off, Rhythm withholds the receipt instead.
- If the gift is a tribute and the donor asked for the honoree to be notified, Rhythm sends that notice as long as the giving process allows it.
- If the order came from a giving form and asked for no confirmation, Rhythm honors that request the same way for the tribute notice.
These follow-up steps are not guaranteed to finish just because the gift was created. They run separately after the gift is saved, so in rare cases a gift can exist without a receipt or notice being sent. If a paid order has a gift on the donor’s record but no receipt appears to have gone out, that is the most likely reason. Contact Support with the order number if you need the receipt resent by hand.
Tip
Gifts created this way are not the same as pledges. Rhythm sends a gift receipt only after the order is actually paid and fulfilled, never when someone first fills out a giving form to arrange payment later. If a donor chooses to pay on a schedule instead of giving right away, Rhythm does not create a gift or receipt at that point. It creates a pledge instead, and each payment against that pledge produces its own payment gift and receipt after the payment is collected. See How Pledge Payments Become Gifts for that path.
Pledges and Unpaid Orders Are Left Alone
This automatic gift-creation rule applies only to orders that have a payment type and are not pledge orders. An order for a fundraising product produces no gift here if it has no payment type yet, or if it is specifically a pledge order. Rhythm leaves those orders for the pledge process to record instead.
Warning
Support has occasionally seen a donation paid with existing account credit appear to succeed, with the credit applied and the order looking paid, without a gift being created or the order status changing to closed. This has not been confirmed as expected behavior. If a donor reports giving but you cannot find a matching gift, check whether the payment used account credit, and contact Support if it did.
Warning
In some cases, an order for a Fundraising Product that was created with pay later does not create the expected donor gift record once payment is received afterward. This does not appear to happen when payment is taken at the time the order is created. If a pay-later fundraising order's payment does not result in a visible gift, contact Support with the order number.
Warning
In some cases, a gift that Rhythm did create can be visible from order-related locations but still not appear on the donor's Gifts tab. If you can confirm through the order that a gift exists but it is missing from the Gifts tab, contact Support instead of creating a duplicate gift by hand.
If a gift is missing for an order, the fix depends on the order's status. An order still in Awaiting Payment can usually be canceled and recreated, which lets current gift-creation logic run again. An order that is already paid or completed needs Support's help, since recreating missing gifts for a completed order is not a self-service action.
What Happens When the Order Is Changed
Because the gift is tied to its order, cancelling or reducing that order changes the gift too:
- The whole order is cancelled. Rhythm deletes every gift recorded under that order’s identifier. A deleted gift leaves no trace on the donor’s record. If that order started a recurring gift, Rhythm deletes the recurring gift too, but only when the cancelled order is the original order. Cancelling a later installment’s order removes only that installment’s gift, because the later installment has its own identifier separate from the recurring gift.
- Only some of the order's fundraising lines are cancelled. Rhythm reduces the gift instead of removing it, dropping the cancelled lines’ amount from the gift.
- An order with no gift lines, or a pledge order, is cancelled. Fundraising does not change, because no gift was tied to the order in the first place.
Rhythm handles a cancellation that affects several gifts together. If reversing one gift fails, Rhythm retries the whole cancellation instead of applying the rest and skipping the failed one.
Related
See the related articles for how donors are identified and created, the rules every gift follows no matter how it was recorded, how a pay-later gift becomes a pledge instead, how donation-product orders are converted the same way, and how staff process a gift with payment directly in the Console.