Splitting a Gift Across Multiple Designations (Multi-Designation Allocation)

Multi-designation allocation lets a single donor gift be split across more than one designation (fund). Instead of one gift going entirely to one designation, the donor's total is divided into separate allocations — one for each designation they chose. This article explains how it works, how to turn it on, what donors experience, and how to read the resulting allocations in your dashboard.

What an "allocation" is

An allocation is one slice of a gift assigned to a single designation. When a donor splits a $100 gift between two missionaries, that gift creates two allocation records: one for each missionary, each with its own amount. The original payment total stays the same — it's simply tracked as the sum of its allocations.

Every allocation records four things:

• Amount — the portion of the gift assigned to that designation

• Donor — the supporter who gave

• Designation — the fund the slice is assigned to

• Allocatable — what the allocation belongs to (for example, Transaction – 29767339). This links the allocation back to the specific payment it came from.

A single payment can therefore have several allocation rows, all pointing back to the same transaction but each tied to a different designation.

Turning multi-designation on

Two things must both be enabled for multi-designation giving to work:

1. Organization-level access. Fund allocations must be enabled on your account. This is not on by default and is turned on by the WeGive team. If you don't see the option described below, this is likely why — reach out to support to have it enabled. Depending on your existing CRM or data structure, the multi-designation approach may not be compatible with your organization's set up.

2. Checkout-level setting. On the relevant checkout, go to Settings → Designations and check "Allow supporters to select multiple designations."

On that same Designations settings page you can also control whether a designation is required, which designations are available to donors, and how they're displayed (a minimal dropdown or a prominent select input).

Note: Multi-designation must be enabled on your prior to going live with WeGive.

What the donor sees at checkout

When multi-designation is enabled, the donor flow gains an allocation step:

1. The donor selects more than one designation and enters their total gift amount.

2. They're taken to an Allocations step, where the total is automatically split evenly across the designations they picked.

3. The donor can manually adjust each amount before confirming, as long as the slices still add up to the total.

The system handles uneven splits cleanly. A $100 gift across three designations auto-distributes as $33.34 / $33.33 / $33.33 — the few cents left over from rounding are added to the first designation so the allocations always sum exactly to the total.

How processing fees appear

How donor-covered processing fees show up depends on your fee setting:

• Fees split across designations. The fee is divided proportionally and folded into each designation's allocation. You won't see a separate fee line — each allocation amount simply includes its share of the fee.

• Fees sent to a dedicated fee fund. The fee becomes its own allocation pointing at the fund you've configured for fees. This is why you may see a separate row like "Donor-Covered Processing Fees" alongside the donor's chosen designations on the same transaction.

Either way, the allocations (including any fee allocation) always add up to the full amount charged. These fee settings can be configured under Profile Settings > Fees.

How it looks in the dashboard

All Allocations table

The All Allocations view lists every allocation across your organization. Each row is a single slice of a gift, showing its ID, Amount, Donor, Designation, the Allocatable it belongs to (the linked transaction), and when it was created. For a split gift you'll see multiple rows that share the same transaction in the Allocatable column but point to different designations — for example, a donor's chosen designation plus a separate "Donor-Covered Processing Fees" row tied to the same transaction.

Payment detail

On an individual payment, the Allocations section (in the right-hand navigation of the payment record) shows how that one payment was divided. The payment's headline amount is the total; the allocations show where the money was directed.

Designation detail

Open a designation and its Payments list shows the gifts that contributed to it. With multi-designation giving, a payment can appear under more than one designation because its total was split — each designation reflects only its own slice.

Recurring gifts

For recurring or scheduled donations, the donor's chosen split is saved on the recurring plan. Each time an installment is processed, the system copies that same set of allocations onto the new transaction (re-applying fee handling as needed). So every payment in the series is split the same way the donor originally set up, and each installment generates its own allocation records.

Things to keep in mind

• It must be enabled by WeGive. Multi-designation is not on by default. If the checkout setting isn't available, account-level access likely hasn't been turned on yet.

• DonorPerfect. Multi-designation does not sync to DonorPerfect because of limits in their integration. Organizations using DonorPerfect will need to choose between that integration and multi-designation giving.

• Allocations always reconcile to the total. Rounding remainders are absorbed into one allocation and fees are accounted for, so the slices always sum to exactly what the donor was charged.