Setting Up Donation Notification Emails for Staff

Setting Up Donation Notification Emails for Staff

When a donor completes a gift, you may want your team to know immediately. Glass Register includes a built-in donation notification email that alerts staff when a new donation comes in — so you can follow up, thank major donors personally, or simply stay informed.

This is separate from the confirmation email your donors receive. Notification emails go to your staff; confirmation emails go to donors.

The Default Notification Template

Glass Register includes a default notification template called Default Online Donation Notification.

To see it:

  1. Go to Email Templates in the left sidebar
  2. Look for Default Online Donation Notification in the list

This template is sent to the configured notification recipients every time a new donation is received through any form.

Configuring Who Receives Notifications

Notification recipients are managed in Settings, not in the email template itself.

  1. Go to Settings → My Account Settings → Notifications in the sidebar
  2. Here you can configure your personal notification preferences — including whether you receive donation alerts and by what method

For organization-wide notification settings (e.g., which email addresses receive notifications), check Settings → Glass Register Settings → General or Settings → Donation Forms.


Notes
Tip: Not every staff member needs donation notifications. Consider limiting notifications to:> Executive Director / CEO> Development Director> Major gift officers (for gifts above a certain threshold, if filtering is available)

Editing the Default Notification Email

You can customize the notification email to include whatever information is most useful for your team.

  1. Go to Email Templates
  2. Click Default Online Donation Notification
  3. Edit the template

The notification email typically includes:

  • Donor name
  • Donation amount
  • Date and time
  • Which form was used
  • Payment method

You can use merge fields to display these values dynamically. Common ones:

Merge Field 

Inserts 

{{donor_first_name}} 

Donor's first name 

{{donor_last_name}} 

Donor's last name 

{{donor_email}} 

Donor's email address 

{{donation_amount}} 

Gift amount 

{{donation_date}} 

Date of donation 

{{form_name}} 

The form they donated through 



Creating Custom Notification Templates for Specific Campaigns

If you want different staff members to be notified for different campaigns (e.g., your events team gets notified about event-related donations while the development team sees everything else), you can:

  1. Create a new email template with Template Type: Notification
  2. Associate it with the relevant donation form(s)

See Creating Custom Email Templates for Specific Campaigns for the full process.

Reducing Notification Fatigue

If your organization receives many donations daily, constant email notifications can become overwhelming. Consider:

  • Batching notifications — Check if your platform settings support sending a daily digest instead of per-donation emails
  • Using the Donations view — Staff can check Donations in the sidebar to review recent gifts without relying solely on email alerts
  • Filtering by role — Only route notifications to staff who genuinely need to act on them


My Account Notification Settings

Each user can also control their own notification preferences:

  1. Go to Settings in the sidebar
  2. Under My Account Settings, click Notifications
  3. Adjust your personal alert preferences

This is covered in more detail in Notification Preferences.

  • Customizing Donation Confirmation Emails
  • Creating Custom Email Templates for Specific Campaigns
  • Notification Preferences


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