For donors
You gave through Aurora. Here is where the money went.
Aurora is the software a nonprofit uses to show supporters the specific things it needs. We are not the charity, we are not a party to your gift, and at no point did your donation belong to us.
Never holds your gift · Never sees your card number · Not the recipient
Follow the gift
Four things happened after you pressed the button, in this order.
You paid on Stripe or PayPal, not on Aurora
Whichever button you pressed, the payment form was hosted by the processor itself. Aurora never receives your card number and has no field to store one in. What comes back to us is a reference to a payment that already succeeded.The money settled into the organization's own account
Nonprofits connect their own Stripe or PayPal account and go through that processor's identity checks themselves. Aurora holds no donation at any point — there is no Aurora balance for your gift to sit in and no Aurora payout for it to wait on.One deduction left the gift, and it was the processor's
On every plan an organization can sign up for, Aurora takes nothing out of a donation — not a smaller share, none — so what came off your gift was the processor's own charge for handling the payment, and that is the whole of the deduction. A small number of organizations are still on an older arrangement, closed to new sign-ups, where Aurora takes 3% + $0.30 of a gift; it is the one case where part of that deduction is ours, and the organization can tell you if you ask. Through PayPal there is no case at all — Aurora's share is nothing on every plan, old and new, because there is no mechanism in the software for us to take one.The charge on your statement carries their name
The nonprofit is the settlement merchant on the payment, so the name your bank shows you is theirs and the checkout page you paid on was branded as theirs. If the name looks unfamiliar it is far more likely to be their registered name than a different organization.
If the checkout asked you to add a little for Aurora
Some organizations use Aurora for free, and the supporters who check out on their donation forms are what pays for it. If you were asked, this is exactly what you were asked for — and what happened when you said no.
It was added on top, never taken out
Whichever way you answered, the organization received your gift in full. The contribution was a second amount beside it, for us. Declining did not make their share smaller — it made ours nothing, which is the arrangement they agreed to when they chose this plan.An amount was suggested, and the total was on the button
One of the suggested amounts is already selected when that step appears, so it is fair to say you had to notice it. What you could not miss is the total: the gift and the contribution are listed separately and their sum is on the button before you press it. The way past is a button labelled “Not this time”, and nothing about your gift changes when you press it.It went to Aurora, and your receipt says so
On your receipt and on your card statement it appears under its own name, “Contribution to Aurora”, apart from the gift. The receipt states in plain words that the amount is not part of your donation, because it is a payment to a software company and only the organization's share is a gift to them.Not every checkout asks
Only an organization using Aurora on the Free plan asks, and that request is the whole of how the plan pays for itself. An organization paying us in any other way cannot show the step at all — the software refuses it rather than trusting anyone to remember. A gift given through PayPal never carries one either.
Who saw what
The short version: the processor saw your card, the nonprofit saw your name, and Aurora stored the part in between.
Your card number
Seen by Stripe or PayPal and by nobody else. It is not in Aurora's database, it is not in the nonprofit's, and neither of us could produce it if asked.What the organization keeps
Your name, your email address, the amount, which need you filled and when. The same things they would have from a cheque and a note, and they need them to thank you and to keep their books.Whose data it is
Theirs, held on their behalf. Aurora does not sell it, does not share it, and does not email an organization's donors on its own initiative. They can export or delete their records themselves.Everyone else involved
Short and named: the payment processor, the database and file host, the hosting provider, and the service that sends this mail. Each one is listed with what it does, and every one of them is visible in the product rather than being a list of vendors we might one day use.
What should be in your inbox
A receipt
Sent as soon as the payment settles, with a receipt number, the date and the amount. Keep it — it is the document a finance office or an accountant will ask you for.
A thank-you naming what you funded
A second, separate email that says which need your money covered rather than only what it cost. If you filled several in one go, it lists them. This is the entire reason Aurora exists, so we would rather it arrived twice than not at all.
If your employer might match the gift
Some organizations connect a matching-gift service, and those receipts carry a link to check whether your employer will double what you gave. Following it shares your name, email address and gift amount with that service, which is the nonprofit’s partner rather than ours. Ignore the link and nothing is shared with anyone.
If you set up a monthly gift
You will have had a confirmation naming the amount and the next charge date, and you get a fresh receipt every time it renews. There is no cancel link in those emails, and we would rather say so here than have you look for one: the organization stops or changes the gift for you, from their own dashboard.
If you need something
Almost every question about a gift is answered by the organization rather than by us, and that is not a brush-off — they are the ones holding it.
You need a receipt
Check for the receipt email first — it carries a receipt number and the date, which is usually what a finance office is asking for. If it never arrived or you have lost it, the organization can resend it. We cannot issue one, because the gift is theirs and not ours.You want a refund
Ask the organization. They took the payment, they hold the money, and their processor is the only place a refund can come from. If you cannot reach them, write to us and we will help you find them.You want to know if it is tax-deductible
Only they can tell you. It depends on their registered status and on where you live, and a software company guessing at that answer would be doing you no favours. Aurora is not a charity and is not a party to your gift.You want to stop a monthly gift
Contact the organization directly and they can change or cancel it for you. There is no Aurora account for you to log into — we never made you one — so there is nothing here for you to hunt for.
If something looks wrong
A charge you do not recognize, an amount that is not what you agreed to, or a page that looks like it is impersonating a charity — tell us. We read everything sent to the contact address, and a page abusing our software is our problem to fix.
Two places to go from here. Neither of them asks you to make an account.