How it works
From a gap in your budget to money in your account
Your side of the setup is an afternoon: list what you need, paste one line into the website you already have, and connect the account you want the money in. Here is every step, including the one that is not up to us.
Three steps, start to finish
Nothing here asks you to move your website, replace your donor records, or learn a platform.
List what you need
In your dashboard, add the specific things your community needs right now. Group them into initiatives — a food pantry, a winter drive, a scholarship fund — so each widget can feature the right work.- Give each need a title, a short story, a photo and a price
- Name the person it is for, or leave it unnamed
- Offer it once, or as an ongoing monthly sponsorship
- Set a goal, and the need retires itself from the widget once it is met
Paste one line of code
Drop a single snippet anywhere on the website you already have — your homepage, a campaign page, a blog post. The widget renders in place and takes its styling from attributes on that one div.- No developer, no platform migration, no change to how your site is hosted
- Set the accent color, light or dark appearance, corner style and font
- Build several widgets, each featuring different initiatives, each with its own key
Donors give, you get paid
A supporter picks a need to fulfill, or gives any amount, and pays on the processor's own checkout. The money settles into your organization's account and the gift is recorded against the need it filled.- Six needs show at once by default, reshuffled every load across price points and programs
- The rest stay reachable behind a “see more needs” button
- Several needs from one initiative can go in a basket and be paid for together
- Donors get a receipt with a receipt number, and a separate thank-you naming what they funded
- Export every donor and donation as a CSV whenever you want
If you can paste, you can launch
Copy your widget's embed code from the dashboard and paste it into your site. That is the entire technical setup. The data-sg-accent attribute — and three more like it, for appearance, corners and font — let you match your brand exactly. Anything you leave off falls back to what the widget has saved, so you only need one when a single page should differ from the rest.
<!-- Paste where you want the widget to appear --> <div data-widget="pk_your_widget_key" data-sg-accent="#ea580c"></div> <script src="https://www.auroradonate.com/embed.js" async></script>
The donor experience
A working copy of the widget your supporters interact with. Fulfill a need or give an amount — the behavior is real, the payment is not.
Fulfill a need
A warm winter coat
Maria walks her kids to school each morning. A coat keeps her warm all season.
A week of groceries
Between paychecks, a full pantry takes the pressure off a family of five.
A monthly bus pass
Reliable transit gets James to job interviews and his new shift on time.
Or give any amount
Secure checkout · Powered by Aurora · Interactive demo
Sample needs written for this demo. The people are not real; the widget's behavior is.
Into your account, not ours
Aurora is not a payment processor and never holds a donation. Gifts are processed by Stripe or PayPal and paid out to the account your organization connected.
You connect the account yourself
Stripe runs its own onboarding, on its own domain, and Aurora never sees a bank account number or a password. PayPal works the same way and is available on every plan, including the free one. Connect either, or both, and you choose which one donors are offered first.The payment happens on their side
Every gift runs through Stripe Checkout or PayPal's own checkout. Card details never reach Aurora's servers, which is also the reason we could not leak them if we tried.You are paid on their schedule
Stripe deposits to the bank account you connected. PayPal credits the PayPal balance you withdraw yourself. Either way the account carries your organization's name, and Aurora is not in the middle of it.Nothing of ours comes off the gift
Aurora takes no share of a donation on any plan you can sign up for, so the one deduction against a gift is your processor's own and the rest of it is yours. Whatever Aurora costs is settled between us and you, never taken out of what a supporter gave — and on Free it is not settled with you at all: your donors are offered the chance to add something for us at checkout, and they are free to decline.
What Aurora charges — and what is left of a gift once the processor has taken its own cut — is worked through on a real $100 gift on the pricing page.
How long it actually takes
Creating an account, adding your first few needs and building a widget is an afternoon, and most of that is writing the needs. Pasting the snippet is one edit to one page: on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or Webflow it goes in the HTML or embed block, and nobody technical has to be involved. Worth checking before you start, though — a few site builders keep that block behind their paid tiers.
The part that is not up to us is identity verification. Stripe and PayPal each decide for themselves when an organization is cleared to take money, and until they do, your dashboard shows payouts as pending and your widget cannot accept a gift. That is usually quick and occasionally slow, and it depends on the paperwork they ask your organization for — not on anything Aurora can escalate.
So: start the processor onboarding first, then write your needs while it clears. That ordering is the single thing that makes the difference between launching this week and launching next week.
Put your first need in front of a donor
Create your account and build a widget for free. Aurora takes nothing out of a donation on any plan — and on Free there is no bill either, because we ask your donors for an optional contribution instead and they can decline.