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Overview

If you notice that donation confirmation emails look different for different donors — one looks fully styled with images and buttons while another is plain text — this is almost always expected behavior, not a bug. This guide explains the most common reasons and how to check your setup.

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Why it happens

WeGive sends donation confirmation emails through Triggered Messages tied to the “Donation Success” event. Your organization may have more than one Triggered Message for this event — for example, one per checkout page or per fund. Each of these messages is styled independently, so formatting differences between donors typically mean they are receiving different messages, not the same message rendered differently.

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Common causes

  1. Multiple Donation Success messages with different styling. If your organization has several checkout pages, you may have duplicated the original Donation Success message for each one. If only some of those copies were designed in the BeeFree visual editor while others were left in their default state, donors completing different checkouts will receive emails that look noticeably different.
  2. Editor differences between messages. A message designed in the BeeFree drag-and-drop editor produces a fully-styled HTML email with your branding, images, and layout. A message created or left in the basic rich-text editor produces a simpler, minimally-styled email. If you have a mix of both, the formatting will differ.
  3. BeeFree block structure differences. Even within the BeeFree editor, how you arrange your content affects the final email. Placing all your body text in a single Paragraph block produces a different layout than splitting the same text across multiple separate Paragraph blocks — the spacing, padding, and visual weight will differ. If two messages contain the same text but were built with different block structures, they will look different.

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How to check

  1. Go to Communications > Triggered Messages in your dashboard.
  2. Filter for messages triggered by the Donation Success event.
  3. Check how many active messages exist — you may have one per checkout page or fund.
  4. Open each message and note which editor it uses (look for the visual editor canvas vs. a plain text input area).
  5. If you want consistent formatting across all checkouts, edit each message in the BeeFree editor and apply the same template design.

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How to fix inconsistent formatting

  • Use the BeeFree editor for all Donation Success messages. Open each one, click to edit in the visual editor, and apply your branding consistently.
  • Use the same block structure. When building your email in BeeFree, use the same arrangement of Paragraph, Image, and Button blocks across all your Donation Success messages.
  • Consider using a shared Email Template. Create one polished Email Template and build each Donation Success message from it, so they all start with the same design foundation.

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Not the same as receipt emails

Donation confirmation emails (Triggered Messages) are separate from tax receipt emails. Tax receipts always render as styled HTML using a fixed format — they are not affected by this issue.
Last modified on October 19, 2026