Giving on Homeward

Giving on Homeward moves money from a donor profile to a missionary or organization, and usually to a specific fund. This article explains the model in brief and maps the four giving pages. If you want to make a gift right now, see Making a gift.

How giving works

A gift starts in the Donate window, which you can open from the site header, from any person or organization profile, from a fund page, or from the Make a donation button on the Giving overview. You build a cart of one or more recipients, choose how often to give, pay, and receive a receipt by email.

Every gift is broken into allocations — one line per recipient and fund. If you give to two organizations in one gift, your receipt and your history show two allocations. Each allocation must be at least $5.

Gifts are tax-deductible. Homeward is recognized as tax-exempt under IRC Section 501(c)(3), and every receipt and annual statement carries that notice.

Whose gift is it?

Giving is scoped to the profile that is open in the dashboard — your personal profile, or an organization profile you manage. Donation history, scheduled gifts, wallet defaults, and receipt addresses all belong to that profile, not to your login.

This matters in practice. If you give while your organization’s profile is open, the gift is recorded as the organization’s, and it appears in that organization’s history and statements. Check the profile switcher at the top of the sidebar before you give.

The four giving pages

You find all four under Giving in the dashboard sidebar.

Giving overview — a one-screen summary of what this profile has given, whom it supports, and what is scheduled next.
Scheduled & Recurring — view, change, pause, or cancel recurring gifts. See Scheduled and recurring gifts.
Donation activity — the full ledger of past transactions, with filters and receipt downloads. See Donation history, receipts, and annual statements.
Wallet — saved cards, billing addresses, and this profile’s default giving preferences. See Wallet — cards, addresses, and giving defaults.

Two more pages serve people and organizations who receive money: Funds, fundraisers, and receiving donations and Balance and payouts.

Reading the Giving overview

The page opens on four stat tiles:

Given YTD — everything this profile has given since 1 January.
Lifetime giving — the total across all years.
Scheduled monthly — your recurring commitments normalized to a monthly figure, so a quarterly gift counts as a third of its amount each month.
Pending receipts — gifts whose receipt has not been issued yet. The tile is highlighted when the count is above zero.

Below the tiles:

Organizations & Individuals You Support — a card per recipient showing the total given, the date of your last gift, and a link to their public profile. Each card carries a Field update emails switch that controls whether this profile receives that recipient’s email updates. It is on by default; turn it off and you stay connected without the email.
Monthly giving — last 12 months — a bar chart, one bar per month, with a dashed line for the average across months that had giving. Hover a bar for the exact total and the change from the previous month.
Where your gifts went — a donut of this year’s giving by organization. The top five recipients get their own slice; the rest are grouped as Others.
Recent activity — the latest transactions, with a View all link to Donation activity.
Coming up — your next scheduled charges, with a Manage link to Scheduled & Recurring.
Quick actions — shortcuts to set up a monthly gift, add a payment method, download your tax letter, or update your receipt address.

Things that apply everywhere

A few rules hold on every giving page:

$5 minimum per allocation. Any amount you enter below $5 is rejected, in the donate cart and in a recurring schedule alike.
Transaction status is authoritative. Pending, failed, refunded, and cancelled records are not gifts. Only succeeded transactions count in your totals and statements.
Currency belongs to each record. Homeward does not apply a profile-wide currency preference, and historical gifts are never converted when a currency changes.
A public profile does not mean money can flow. Recipient eligibility, fund status, receiving configuration, and a verified legal entity are four separate controls (see Funds, fundraisers, and receiving donations).

Making a gift covers the donate window end to end. Donation history, receipts, and annual statements explains the ledger and the PDFs. Wallet — cards, addresses, and giving defaults covers saved cards and your giving defaults.