Some gatherings are priced low on purpose. A donation-based kirtan, a community sit, a class where the teacher would rather people come than pay — the ticket price is set to remove a barrier, not to cover what the evening costs to run.
BrightStar's tip jar and donation prompt let buyers close that gap themselves, at checkout, without you raising the price for everyone. When either is on, checkout adds a short support step after the tickets and before payment: a few suggested amounts, your message about what the giving supports, and a one-click way to skip. Whatever the buyer chooses is added to their order total. Nothing is preselected.
How the support step fits into checkout
The support step sits in one place in the checkout flow, and only when you've turned a tip jar or donation prompt on for the event:
- 1Buyer chooses their tickets, as in any BrightStar checkout.
- 2The support step appears before payment, with your suggested amounts and your message.
- 3Buyer picks an amount, types their own (if you allow it), or skips in one click.
- 4A running summary shows ticket, tip and donation before the card form, so nothing on the receipt is a surprise.
- 5Buyer pays as usual; the tip and donation are part of the same payment.
Where the money goes
Both go to you, the organizer, with the rest of that sale's money — BrightStar keeps none of either and charges no platform fee on them. Our fees are worked out on the tickets only.
A tip is yours: appreciation for the gathering. A donation is earmarked for the cause you name when you set it up, and the buyer sees that cause and recipient before giving — but BrightStar has no way to pay a third party directly, so the donation reaches your account and passing it on to the cause is yours to do. If the recipient is a charity, check what it needs from you to acknowledge the gift; BrightStar doesn't issue donation receipts.
If an order contains tickets from more than one organizer, the support step shows the first organizer's tip jar, and the whole tip and donation go to that organizer.
Setting it up
Both settings live together in the event's Elevate step:
- 1Open your event in the dashboard → Edit → Elevate.
- 2Turn on the Tip Jar, then open Tips & donations. Set your suggested tip amounts in dollars (for example 10, 25, 50), choose whether buyers can enter their own amount, and write a short message.
- 3For a donation, turn on the donation prompt, name the cause and the recipient, and set its suggested amounts.
- 4Open your event page and walk through checkout once to see exactly what buyers will see.
Why nothing is preselected
The support step never starts with an amount chosen, and getting past it without giving takes one click. A preselected amount nudges people to pay more than they meant to, and a buried skip turns generosity into friction. The point is to make giving easy for those who want to give, and to leave everyone else at the ticket price they saw.
Which events can use it
The tip jar and donation prompt are Elevate (and Amplify) features, set up in the event's Elevate step. On a Seva event the tip jar never appears at checkout. If you're pricing a sliding-scale or donation-based gathering, check your event's plan before you publish.