Starting from your giving platform.
If your donor list lives in the tool that takes your gifts, start there. Connect it in Settings with your organization's own key, and Steward reads your past gifts in and keeps reading new ones. It never moves a dollar.
Four tools, read only.
Stripe
Create a restricted key in Stripe with read access to Charges, Subscriptions, Invoices and Customers, and paste it into the Stripe card. The first read brings in your past charges, and monthly gifts come across as monthly because Stripe names the subscription. Taking card gifts on Steward giving pages is a separate Stripe connection, for new gifts only.
PayPal
Create an app in PayPal with Transaction Search switched on, and paste its Client ID and Secret into the PayPal card. PayPal can take up to a day to allow this, and Steward keeps trying. The first read reaches back as far as PayPal allows, about three years. For older gifts, download your PayPal activity as a CSV and import it. A payment that arrives both ways lands once.
Givebutter
Create an API key in Givebutter and paste it into the Givebutter card. The first read brings in your past transactions, with monthly plans named as monthly. Or drop in Givebutter's own export as a file: Steward knows its columns.
Square
Copy your production access token from Square's developer dashboard into the Square card, then choose which locations take donations. Square cannot tell a donation from a lesson fee, so Steward brings in nothing until you choose. For gifts older than the first read brings, export them from Square as a CSV and import the file.
How a giving tool becomes a donor list
Each payment comes in as a gift on the donor's profile. A payment whose email matches someone already in Steward attaches to that person. Anyone else becomes a new person, and a name that only looks like someone on file is never merged on a guess: it lands as its own person and is reported to you.
The first read is history. It drafts no thank-yous and starts nothing on its own. After that, Steward checks every six hours, and a new gift gets a thank-you drafted for a person on your team to read and send. Transfers to your bank, payouts and fees are not gifts and are left out.
Steward reads these tools and never writes to them. It cannot refund, charge or change anything in your account, and the keys are encrypted for your organization and never shown back in the browser.
Using another tool too?
Export your donors and past gifts as a CSV and import the file. See moving from a spreadsheet for the columns to bring.
Three steps, one afternoon.
Tell us where you are
Choose your current system or a spreadsheet. Steward knows the export format for common donor systems and maps the fields for you.
Drop in the export
Donors, households, gifts, recurring plans and notes come across together. Possible duplicates are flagged for you to review.
Check the Move Report
Every count and every dollar from your file, side by side with what landed in Steward. If anything is off you see it before you rely on it.
Good questions.
[ 1 ]Do we have to stop using our giving tool?
No. Keep taking gifts the way you do today. Steward reads the tool on a schedule, and every gift still goes straight to your organization.
[ 2 ]Where do we connect it?
In Settings, under Connections. Stripe, PayPal and Givebutter are under Giving, and Square is under Point of sale. Each card says when it last checked and whether anything needs attention.
[ 3 ]Will a gift be counted twice if we also import a file?
A gift is matched on the tool's own payment ID, so a PayPal statement and the PayPal connection carrying the same payment land as one gift.
[ 4 ]Will Steward email our donors?
No. Steward drafts thank-yous for new gifts, and a person on your team reads each one and sends it from their own email.
Bring a giving export to a 20-minute demo. Or run the free Lost & Found audit on it first. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Every donor is a person. Keep them.
Book a 20-minute demo with your own file, or start free for 30 days.