Online Donation Platforms: Who Issues the Tax Receipt?

A deposit lands from a platform with fifty names attached, and one of them emails to ask where their receipt is. Whether you issue it depends on what actually changed hands, and there are four arrangements that look identical in your bank account and are not the same at all. Getting this wrong produces either two receipts for one gift or none. This guide sets out who issues the receipt in each model, and what you record when the answer is not you.

What is the rule that decides who issues the receipt?

Only your charity can issue official receipts for gifts your charity receives, and it cannot surrender control of receipting to anyone. A charity that lends its registration number for receipting can have its registration revoked.

You can still work with outside organisations. A charity may engage a third party as its agent or contractor to organise fundraising, provided the charity keeps control over all the money raised and over the receipts issued. Where the charity is not running the activity substantially through its own staff and volunteers, it should have a written agreement setting out the arrangement, and it must be able to give CRA a full accounting of the funds and the receipts. Because the agreement is what shows CRA that control stayed with you, it is worth having charity legal counsel review it before you sign. 

The second rule is about the person, not the platform. A receipt is issued in the name of the true donor, and who that is turns on the facts rather than on whose name appears on the transfer.

Your annual return asks about both. Question C7(d), line 2800, asks whether third-party fundraisers issued official receipts for your charity. Question C14, line 5820, asks whether your charity issued receipts on behalf of another organisation. Answer them from what actually happened.

What happens when the platform is itself a registered charity?

The platform receipts the donor, and the money reaches you as funds from another registered charity. You do not receipt it, and you do not receipt the individual donors either.

Several Canadian giving platforms are themselves registered charities. When a donor gives through one, the gift is made to that charity, which issues the receipt and later grants the money onward to you. What you receive is a transfer from another registered charity.

That amount reports on line 4510, funds received from other registered charities, separate from line 4500, and official receipts are never issued for it. Issuing one would double the receipting on a single gift and put your reporting out of step with the platform's.

Donor names may still arrive with the disbursement report, and they are useful for stewardship. They do not change the receipting answer.

Read your platform agreement rather than assuming, because the same brand can operate more than one arrangement, and terms change. The question to answer is who the donor transferred the money to.

What if the platform only processes the payment for you?

Then your charity received the gift and your charity issues the receipt. A payment processor moving money into your account has not become the donee.

In this model the donor gave to you, the platform took a fee, and the deposit is net of it. The receipt is for the amount the donor transferred, not the amount that landed in your account. Recording the deposit as the gift understates both your revenue and the receipt.

Some platforms will issue receipts on your behalf under an agreement, using your registration number and your serial number sequence, with your charity retaining control. That is the agency arrangement, and it needs the written agreement and the full audit trail described above.

Either way, the receipt has to carry everything a receipt normally carries, including the eligible amount, and it has to be traceable to a transaction in your records. Our page of receipt examples shows the required elements.

Where a donor received something in return, such as an event ticket bought through the platform, the advantage rules apply as they would in person.

Who is the donor on a crowdfunding page?

Whoever transferred the property, which is a question of fact. A supporter who collects money from other people and forwards it to you is acting as a trustee or agent, not as the donor. Forwarding money does not make the person who forwards it the donor, and a good deal of published advice says otherwise.

CRA's own examples make the consequence clear. When a store collects donations from customers at the till, the customers are the donors and the store cannot be receipted. When someone raises money from friends at a party and brings you the cash without knowing who gave what, the donors cannot be named, so no receipt can be issued to anyone.

That gives you a practical test. You can receipt the underlying contributors where you hold evidence of each person's identity and the amount they gave, which a platform report often provides. Where the contributors cannot be identified, no receipt is issued. The organiser is receipted only for money that was their own.

Where the facts are unclear, ask for a written declaration from the person who collected the money identifying the true donors before you issue anything.

How do employer matching gifts get receipted?

Each party is receipted for the amount that party actually transferred. The employee gave their gift and the employer gave the match.

So the employee is receipted for the employee's amount and the employer for the employer's amount, where both were transferred to your charity. Two donors, two receipts, one campaign.

The complication is the middle layer. Many corporate giving programmes run through a workplace giving charity or an administrator, and where that intermediary is itself a registered charity, the money arrives from another registered charity and is not receipted at all. The administrator handles the employee receipting.

Payroll deduction giving is different again. Amounts received through payroll deductions from an employee charity trust are reported on the receipted gifts line of your return, and the employer's own reporting to the employee is part of that arrangement.

The rule underneath all three is the same one: identify who transferred the property, and receipt that person for that amount.

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What do you record when you did not issue the receipt?

The money still runs through your books, on a different line. Not receipting something is not a reason to record it loosely.

Use the platform’s disbursement report as your source document and keep it with the deposit. Reconcile three things every month: the platform report, your receipt register and the ledger. If nobody on your team clearly owns that monthly task, outsourced charity bookkeeping can take it on. Keep receipt copies for two years from the end of the calendar year the donations were received, and the platform reports for six years from the end of the fiscal period. Differences are normal because of fees, timing and the receipting model, but each one should have a name. 

Amounts from another registered charity go to their own revenue line. Unreceipted fundraising revenue, including gifts you could not receipt because the donors could not be named, goes to line 4630. Receipted gifts go to the receipted gifts line and should agree with your receipt register.

Fees are an expense, not a reduction of revenue. The mechanics of splitting settlement and fees are covered separately, along with reconciling the deposit to the donor detail.

Year-end cutoff depends on the model, because the donation date attaches to the organisation that actually received the gift. Where a processor acted as your agent, the date the donor's gift was received governs, not the date the platform settled with you. Where the platform was itself the recipient charity, what you received is a grant from another charity, dated when it reached you, and the individual donor's original date is not yours to use. A separate account for online receipts makes both visible at year end.

How do you answer a donor who expected a receipt from you?

Tell them which organisation received their gift and who issues the receipt in that arrangement. Most of these conversations are about a missing document, not a dispute.

Have a short written answer for each platform you use, so whoever is on email in January is not improvising. Include how to retrieve a receipt from the platform where the platform issued it.

Where your charity should have issued a receipt and did not, issue it. Where the donor already holds a receipt from a platform that is itself a registered charity, do not issue a second one for the same gift.

Say something on your donate page about which route issues receipts. It prevents the question rather than answering it, and it is a reasonable thing for a donor to want to know before giving.

An ordinary nonprofit that is not a qualified donee cannot issue official receipts through any platform, and no platform arrangement changes that. Questions about specific arrangements are the kind we take on our FAQ page, and setting the reconciliation up once is what ongoing bookkeeping support is for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we let a platform issue receipts using our registration number?

Only under an agency arrangement where your charity keeps control of the funds and the receipts, with a written agreement and a full audit trail. A charity that substantially hands over its receipting function risks its registration.

A supporter ran a birthday fundraiser and sent us $800 from forty friends. Can we receipt her?

Not for the $800. She collected it as agent for the people who gave it. You can receipt those contributors if you have evidence of who they are and what each gave, and you can receipt her for any part of the $800 that was her own money.

Do we receipt money that arrives from a workplace giving charity?

No. Funds received from another registered charity are reported on their own line and are never receipted.

The deposit is net of fees. Do we receipt the net amount?

No. Receipt the amount the donor transferred. The platform's fee is an expense of your charity, not a reduction of the gift.

A donor has a receipt from the platform and wants one from us too.

Do not issue a second receipt for the same gift. Confirm which organisation received the gift, and explain that the receipt they hold is the valid one.

Where do we find out which model our platform uses?

Your platform agreement, and the platform's own charity registration status if it has one. Do not rely on how the deposit appears in your bank feed.

This article covers which party issues the official receipt when gifts arrive through third parties, as at September 2026, following Policy Commentaries CPC-010 and CPC-026 and CRA's guidance on identifying the true donor. It does not describe any named platform's current terms, which change and should be read in your own agreement. Settlement timing and processor fees are covered separately.

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