How to Edit Who Gets Donation Notifications in Donorbox

Managing donation notifications in Donorbox is a straightforward process once you know where the settings live — but the right configuration depends heavily on your organization's structure, team size, and how you handle donor communications internally. Here's a clear breakdown of how the notification system works and what factors shape your setup.

What Are Donation Notifications in Donorbox?

When a donor completes a transaction through a Donorbox campaign, the platform triggers two categories of email notifications:

• Donor-facing confirmations — receipts and thank-you emails sent to the person who gave
• Admin/staff notifications — alerts sent to people inside your organization to let them know a donation came in

The second category is what most organizations want to customize. By default, Donorbox sends these internal notifications to the account owner's email. If you have a finance team, a development director, or multiple campaign managers, you'll likely want to broaden or redirect who receives these alerts.

Where to Find the Notification Settings 📋

Donorbox notification recipients are managed at the campaign level, not globally across your account. This is an important distinction. There is no single master switch that controls notifications for all campaigns at once — each campaign has its own notification list.

To access these settings:

1. Log in to your Donorbox admin dashboard
2. Navigate to Campaigns in the left sidebar
3. Select the campaign you want to edit
4. Click Edit Campaign
5. Look for the Notification Emails or Admin Notifications section within the campaign settings

Inside that section, you'll see a field where you can enter one or more email addresses. These are the addresses that will receive an alert each time a donation is processed for that specific campaign.

Adding or Removing Notification Recipients

The notification email field typically accepts multiple addresses, separated by commas. This means you can add a team inbox, a specific staff member, or even a third-party tool's email address (such as a Zapier relay or CRM intake address) alongside or instead of the account owner.

To make changes:

• Add a recipient: Type the new email address into the field, separated from existing entries by a comma
• Remove a recipient: Delete their address from the field entirely
• Replace the default: Clear the field and enter only the address or addresses you want going forward

After editing, save your changes before navigating away — Donorbox does not auto-save campaign edits.

The Campaign-by-Campaign Factor

Because notification settings are campaign-specific, organizations running multiple campaigns simultaneously need to update each one individually. A nonprofit running a general fund campaign, an annual gala campaign, and a recurring donor drive will have three separate notification lists to maintain.

This becomes especially relevant when:

• A new staff member joins and needs to be added across all active campaigns
• A team member leaves and needs to be removed to prevent data exposure
• Campaigns are assigned to different departments with different points of contact

There is no bulk-edit tool for notification recipients across campaigns in standard Donorbox accounts, so changes require going into each campaign individually.

Role-Based Access and Account Structure

Who should receive donation notifications often intersects with who has account access in Donorbox. The platform supports multiple user roles, including admin and more limited access levels. However, having access to the dashboard and being on the notification list are separate things — someone can receive email alerts without having login credentials, and vice versa.

This creates flexibility but also introduces management complexity. A volunteer coordinator might need notifications for a specific campaign without needing full admin access. A board treasurer might want email confirmations but never log in to the platform. Both scenarios are supported through the notification email field alone.

Variables That Affect the Right Setup 🔧

The correct notification configuration isn't the same for every organization. Key variables include:

Donorbox Plan Tier Considerations

Certain advanced notification features — such as custom email templates, webhook triggers, or integrations with external platforms — may be available only on higher-tier Donorbox plans. If your team needs notifications to flow into a CRM automatically or wants to trigger workflows based on donation activity, the standard email notification field may not be sufficient on its own.

In those cases, Donorbox's API or third-party integrations (via tools like Zapier or Make) extend what's possible beyond simply adding email addresses to a campaign field.

What This Means for Your Specific Setup

Most organizations can handle their notification routing through the campaign-level email field with minimal friction. But the right list of recipients — and whether the built-in notification system is enough or needs to be supplemented with integrations — depends entirely on how your team is structured, how many campaigns you're running, and what downstream systems need to know when a donation arrives.

That combination of factors is unique to your organization, and the notification settings that work well for a two-person nonprofit will look very different from those needed by a development team managing a dozen simultaneous campaigns. 🎯