Give Google Analytics Donation Tracking

A donor's renewal happens while your site is empty

A monthly donor came once, filled in a form and has not visited since. Their gift keeps arriving every month, but there is no visit behind those charges. If you measure fundraising only by watching what happens on the page, that repeated income risks staying out of the story Analytics tells you.

Google Analytics Donation Tracking sends Google Analytics the ecommerce data of each donation made with Give, and in GA4 it includes renewals too. That way you can read your fundraising in the same revenue report a store uses.

That changes the useful question for an organization. Knowing how many people saw the campaign matters less than knowing which form, gateway and source brought in money, and whether it was a one-time gift or one that repeats.

What GA4 receives from each donation

• Form: its ID as the item ID and its title as the name.
• Organization: the site title as affiliation and "Fundraising" as the brand.
• Category: "Donations" as the main category.
• Gateway: the payment method, in Item Category 2.
• Gift type: one-time, subscription or renewal, in Item Category 3.
• Source: four dedicated parameters, give-campaign, give-content, give-medium and give-source.

With utm_content tracking you can tell which specific content, such as a Facebook post or an email, led to the donation.

The optional GA4 settings let you decide whether test donations and refunds are recorded, along with other values.

Where to read the results

To separate one-time gifts, first subscriptions and renewals, build your own report:

1. Open the Explore tab and choose a Free Form report.
2. Add the Item Category dimensions.
3. Add the Ecommerce Revenue metric.

With that table you can compare how much comes from one-off campaigns and how much from commitments that repeat.

Analytics and Recurring Donations come separately

• Analytics on your site: it assumes Google Analytics is already running on your site, connected by another method. Without that connection there is no base to measure on.
• Gift type: Item Category 3 needs the Recurring Donations add-on.
• GA4 only: renewals and gift type.

Connecting Give to your GA4 property

You need Give active, a Google Analytics account and Analytics already connected to the site.

1. Install and activate the add-on.
2. Go to Give > Settings > Google Analytics.
3. Copy the Measurement ID from Admin > Data Streams > your stream.
4. Copy the API secret from Measurement Protocol API Secrets, in that same stream, or create one if none exists.

The rest of the settings are optional. When testing, open the site logged out: some analytics solutions only record people who are not logged into WordPress, and you might not see real-time data.

Measuring from WordPress or completing the connection

MonsterInsights connects GA4 without touching code and, with its eCommerce addon, detects GiveWP and shows reports inside WordPress, instead of making you open Analytics. GA Google Analytics Pro connects WordPress to Analytics and lets you exclude users and content, so it can serve as that prior connection. Give Recurring Donations measures nothing on its own, but it is what adds recurring gifts to your forms.

When setting up tracking on your forms

Does it work with every form template?

Yes, with all those available, and GA4 tracking also covers forms created with the visual builder.

Do I need to set up anything extra for recurring donations?

No. They are handled automatically through item categories, as long as Recurring Donations is active.

Can I send more data to GA4?

Yes. A developer can add it with the give_google_analytics_ga4_purchase_event_data filter.

Why do I see no real-time data?

Check that you are not browsing logged into WordPress and repeat the test from another browser.