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Overview

Sometimes a supporter’s name shows as Anonymous (with no avatar) in a fundraiser or checkout’s Recent Activity feed, or on a Top Donors leaderboard — even on a gift where that specific donor did not check the “give anonymously” box and did not check out as a guest. This is expected behavior, not a display bug. The name/avatar masking is a property of the supporter as a whole, not of the individual gift you happen to be looking at.

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Why this happens

A supporter’s name and avatar are masked everywhere their activity is shown if either of these is true:
  • The supporter has chosen to keep their overall giving amount private in their donor-portal privacy settings, or
  • Any single gift, anywhere in that supporter’s full giving history, was given anonymously.
That second condition is the one that catches people off guard. It doesn’t matter whether the specific transaction you’re reviewing was anonymous — if that supporter gave anonymously even once, on any other gift, their name and avatar are masked across every Recent Activity feed and every Top Donors leaderboard, everywhere, going forward.

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What to check

If a supporter’s name is unexpectedly masked:
  1. Don’t stop at the one transaction. Look at that supporter’s full giving history, not just the gift you’re currently reviewing — the anonymous gift causing the masking may be a completely different, older transaction.
  2. Check their privacy settings. A supporter can also mask their own giving amount from their donor-portal privacy preferences, independent of any single gift’s anonymous flag.
  3. This is correct, expected behavior, not an error to fix. If a supporter wants their name to display normally going forward, the anonymous flag needs to be corrected on whichever historical transaction is causing the masking — or the supporter needs to continue appearing masked as long as that record exists.
There’s currently no indicator in the dashboard that tells you which specific transaction is causing a given supporter’s name to be masked — you’ll need to review their transaction list directly to find it.