How do we track donations made on another platform?
By Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAAdapted from Chapter 4 of The Nonprofit Ad Grant Handbook · Checked against Google's rules November 3, 2026If people finish on someone else's website, assume your tracking can't see them until you've proven otherwise. Close the gap with the first route your platform supports. Embed the platform's form on your own site, switch on the platform's own Google connection, use cross-domain measurement in Google Analytics, or have the platform send donors back to your thank-you page.
Why the donations go missing
A result goes missing when a person finishes somewhere your tracking isn't watching. If donors finish on a giving platform's website, assume your tracking can't see them until you've proven otherwise.
This hand-off is one of the most common places for results to disappear, and it's easy to overlook, because the money keeps arriving. Ticketing systems, event registration tools, volunteer databases and membership platforms all do the same thing.
What Google requires of the ad itself
What Google actually says. Google's Ad Grants website policy requires that your ads point to a domain your organization owns, and it doesn't allow that domain to redirect visitors automatically to a third-party platform. On donations it is specific: "Donation links must work and go to a secure page dedicated to donations."
The ad lands on your own site. In practice, a giving platform can be the next step after your page. It can't be the destination of the ad.
Four ways to close the gap
Work down the list and use the first one your platform supports.
- Embed the form on your own site. Most giving and ticketing platforms offer an embeddable version of their form. Put it on a page of your own website, and donors finish on your domain, where your own thank-you page or event records the gift. This is usually the cleanest option for a grant account, because the whole journey stays on the site your ads point to.
- Switch on the platform's own Google connection. Many platforms have a setting for Google Analytics or Google Ads tracking, sometimes both. You enter your measurement ID or conversion ID, and the platform reports completed gifts for you. Its help center will have the steps.
- Use cross-domain measurement in Google Analytics. This lets one Google Analytics tag follow a visitor from your site to the platform's and back. It only works if the platform lets you install your own tag on its pages, so check before you start.
- Send donors back to your site. Ask the platform to redirect donors to a thank-you page on your own website after they give, and track that page like any other finish line.
An illustration from the handbook. The animal shelter is a composite, not a real organization.
A small animal shelter took donations through a popular online giving platform. The money arrived every week, and Google Ads showed no donations at all, month after month. The platform had a Google Analytics connection tucked into its settings. Switching it on took ten minutes. A test gift that afternoon showed up in Google Analytics within minutes, and within a couple of weeks Google Ads started reporting donations from people who had arrived through the ads.
Two more things to check
Each donation should arrive with its amount, so you know what it was worth.
Each donation should be credited to the visit that brought the donor. If Google Analytics starts listing the platform's website as the source of your donations, add that domain to the unwanted referrals list in your Google Analytics tag settings, so a donor returning from the platform keeps credit for how they first arrived.
When the platform won't cooperate
Many "embedded" forms are really a window onto the platform's own website, set into your page. Your tag sees someone arrive on the donation page and nothing after that. If your embedded form behaves this way, you're back to the platform's own Google connection or a redirect to your own thank-you page. The platform's help center usually says which kind of embed it offers.
If the platform has no Google connection and won't redirect, ask its support team anyway. Features change. If the answer is still no, you have a real choice to make. Keep the platform and accept that those results stay invisible to Google, or move that action to a tool that can be tracked. For a small share of your results, living with the gap can be reasonable. For your main donation form, it usually isn't, because bidding can't learn from what it can't see.
When you don't know where the platform sends people
If you don't know where a platform sends people at all, make a real test donation, with a small amount, and watch where you land. Then ask the platform's support team to confirm it, because some platforms send people to different places depending on the payment method.
Write down what you find in a finish-line inventory, a list of every way a person can finish an action with you and whether Google can see it. Make one row for every combination of action, language and platform. Fill in where each one finishes, whether Google Ads can see it today, and what needs fixing if it can't. Remember the event and ticketing tools, too. A gala's ticket page, a 5K registration and a class sign-up through a scheduling tool each need their own row.
Section 4.4 of the handbook walks through building the finish-line inventory and keeping it true, including thank-you pages in every language and the quarterly walk-through of every row.
Questions
We take gifts through several platforms. Do we track all of them?
Track the ones your ads actually send people to. A text-to-give number on a printed flyer isn't part of the grant's job.
Why does Google Analytics show the giving platform as the source of our donations?
Each donation should be credited to the visit that brought the donor, not to the platform. When the platform shows up as the source, add that domain to the unwanted referrals list in your Google Analytics tag settings, so the donor keeps credit for how they first arrived.
Can our ads point straight to the giving platform?
No. Google's Ad Grants website policy requires your ads to point to a domain your organization owns. A giving platform can be the next step, but it can't be the destination of the ad.
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Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAJose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTA, is the CEO of 3nity. He founded the company in 2001 to serve the people who serve people, after working as Internet Director at a media network. He built a career website that was acquired by Salem Communications in 2004, and created the 3nity Web Presence Platform. Through Nonprofit Marketing Center, a division of 3nity, he and his team help churches and nonprofits of every kind bring resources and awareness to their missions, including by helping them get the most from the Google Ad Grant.