Beacon CRM integration

Beacon is a modern CRM built for charities, and a lot of UK fundraising teams run on it. The weak point in most Beacon set-ups is not Beacon; it is the gap between the donation form on the website and the CRM, usually bridged by a connector service, a nightly import or someone with a spreadsheet. Tinwell closes that gap. When a donation is made on your WordPress site, Tinwell writes it into Beacon through Beacon’s official API in under three seconds, and the record is right the first time.

What gets written to Beacon

• The donor. Name, email, address and phone as entered on the form, matched to an existing person record where one exists so you do not get duplicates. New donors become new people.
• The donation. Amount, date, payment method (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Direct Debit), the campaign or fund pot it was given to, and the Stripe or GoCardless reference for reconciliation.
• The regular schedule. For monthly gifts, the schedule with its amount and collection date, and then each collected payment as it happens, so regular giving figures in Beacon are live rather than estimated.
• Consent. The contact preferences the donor gave on your form, so Beacon’s communication rules apply from the first email.
• Gift Aid. Whether a valid declaration is in place, so the donor’s Gift Aid status in Beacon matches Tinwell’s and the claim export.

How matching works

A donation from someone already in Beacon merges into their existing record rather than creating a second one. Lifetime value, last gift date and giving frequency update in Beacon exactly as they would if a member of staff had entered a postal gift by hand. Households and relationships you have set up in Beacon are respected. If Tinwell cannot be confident of a match, it creates a new record and flags it for review rather than guessing, which is the behaviour a database manager wants.

Timing

The write happens when the payment succeeds, typically within three seconds. There is no polling schedule and no nightly batch, so a fundraiser looking at Beacon during an appeal sees the gifts as they arrive. If Beacon’s API is temporarily unavailable, Tinwell queues the record and retries, and the donation itself is never affected because the payment has already been taken by Stripe or GoCardless.

What you do not need

No Zapier or Make scenario, no CSV export and import, no mapping spreadsheet to maintain when a field changes, and no reconciliation of two systems at month end because the Stripe reference is on the Beacon record. For a small team the practical effect is that the CRM is always current and nobody owns a weekly import job.

Setting it up

1. In Beacon, create an API key for Tinwell with permission to read and write people and payments.
2. In Tinwell’s settings, open Integrations, choose Beacon and paste the key.
3. Map your Tinwell campaigns and fund pots to the Beacon funds or campaigns you report on. Tinwell suggests matches by name.
4. Make a £1 test donation and check the person, the payment and the consent in Beacon. Refund it in Stripe.

The set-up docs for the donation plugin have the detail, and with the free onboarding add-on at checkout our team will connect Beacon for you.

Rather see Tinwell than read about it? Open the live demo to try the donation form, the donor portal and the admin dashboard with sample data.

Why keep the form on WordPress

Beacon offers its own hosted donation pages, and if your website is not WordPress they are a sensible choice. If it is, Tinwell lets the donor give on your own page, in your own theme, with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Direct Debit through GoCardless, and still have everything land in Beacon. You get the conversion and analytics benefits of a form on your own domain without giving up the CRM you chose. The fee calculator includes Beacon’s own donation pricing so you can compare.

What is shared, and on what basis

Tinwell sends Beacon only what the donor entered on your form and what the payment produced: identity and contact details, the gift, the regular schedule, the consent choices and the Gift Aid declaration status. It does not send card or bank details; those stay with Stripe and GoCardless. Your charity is the data controller for both the website and Beacon, so the transfer is between two of your own processors and should be described in your privacy notice as part of how you process donations. A line such as “we record your donation and contact preferences in our supporter database” covers it; your data protection lead may want the exact wording.

Reconciliation at month end

Because every payment written to Beacon carries the Stripe or GoCardless payment reference, finance can tie the CRM to the payout statements without a mapping spreadsheet. The usual month-end routine becomes: export the period from Stripe and GoCardless, compare the totals with Tinwell’s dashboard and with Beacon’s reports for the same dates, and investigate only the lines that differ, which are nearly always refunds or failed Direct Debit collections. Tinwell marks refunds and failures on the donor record so they are visible in both places.

Before you go live

• Agree which Beacon funds, campaigns and codes each Tinwell campaign and fund pot maps to, and who owns changing the mapping when a new appeal starts.
• Decide how new, unmatched donors should be handled: created and flagged for review, or created silently. Tinwell’s default is to flag.
• Run a £1 test as a brand-new donor and again as an existing supporter, and check both records in Beacon before refunding in Stripe.
• Set up a monthly test gift and confirm the schedule appears in Beacon, then cancel it in the donor portal and confirm that is reflected too.
• Add the website donation process to your data protection records and privacy notice.

Frequently asked questions

See all integrations, the features, or pricing. Everything here is included in the licence.