Ring donations: choosing a policy

If your organization has rings, you decide how donations work on their pages. The setting is at the bottom of the organization's Settings → Donations, under Ring donations.

Only the organization Owner can change it.

The three options

Org button only (the default)

Ring pages show your organization's donate button — funds go to the org.

One Stripe account, one set of books, one person reconciling. Donors can give from any ring's page, and it all arrives in the same place.

This is the right choice for most organizations.

Rings run their own

Each ring can set up its own donations with its own connected account.

Each ring connects its own Stripe account and keeps what it raises. Use this when a ring genuinely has separate finances — a chapter in another city, a program with its own budget and its own treasurer.

Be clear-eyed about what it costs: every ring needs its own Stripe onboarding, its own bank account, and its own person answerable for the money. If that isn't already true of your rings, this option creates work rather than solving a problem.

No donations on rings

Ring pages show no donate button.

Useful when rings are social sub-groups rather than fundraising entities, and a donate button would just confuse people. Donations still work on the organization's own page.

Saving

Pick an option and click Save policy. The button stays disabled until you've actually changed something. You'll see Ring-donation policy saved.

What ring organizers see

Until you choose Rings run their own, a ring organizer opening their ring's Donations page gets:

Ring-run donations aren't enabled for this organization. An org admin can turn them on in the organization's ring-donation policy.

That's the only route for them — they can't enable it themselves.

One thing to watch when switching back

If a ring has already connected its own Stripe account and you then move the policy away from Rings run their own, the ring's donation settings page goes dark — but the connected account itself stays linked and still shows as connected.

It isn't taking new donations through Gathrings, but it hasn't been disconnected either, and any recurring donations set up while the policy was open keep charging. If you're deliberately pulling fundraising back to the org, check each ring's recurring donors rather than assuming the policy change handled it.

Changing your mind later

The policy can be changed any time, and it doesn't touch money already raised. What it changes is where the donate button points from here on.