Giv eth's donation process is not complicated: connect your wallet, choose a project, and click donate. What really takes time is the screening step—the "Verified" tag on Giveth does not mean a project is reliable; it only means it has passed Giveth's verification process. Matching funds are not automatically given to you; they depend on who you donate to, how many projects you support, and whether you operate in the correct round. As for receipts, Giveth does not provide tax receipts in the traditional sense. Your on-chain transaction record is your only complete proof.
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Project Screening: Verified Is a Starting Point, Not the Finish Line
Projects on Giveth do not need special charitable or tax status to start fundraising. The so-called "Verified" tag is a label given by the Giveth team after reviewing a project's legitimacy and impact claims. Some projects come from a pre-vetting partnership with Endaoment. This tag means Giveth has looked at the project materials, but it does not mean the project is consistently doing work, nor does it mean your money will definitely produce the claimed effects.
When screening, look at these specific signals: Number of contributors and cumulative funds raised. A project with more than 70 contributors and several thousand dollars raised has at least a checkable history. Project update frequency. Giveth project pages have an Updates tab. A project that updates regularly is more worth considering than one with no activity for months. On-chain address. Each project page lists the wallet address and network that accepts donations. You can use a block explorer to check whether that address has actual outgoing transaction records.
A safer approach is cross-verification. If a project claims to be a registered charity in the UK, search its registration number on the UK Charity Commission website. If it has an independent website, check whether the impact data is specific, such as "cost per intervention and number of people covered," rather than just slogans. The "Verified" tag on Giveth is Giveth's judgment; your money is your own judgment.
Donation Process: On-chain P2P, No Middleman
Donations on Giveth are peer-to-peer. Funds go directly from your wallet to the project's wallet, and the platform does not hold custody. Giveth's official documentation clearly states that "100% of donations go directly to projects with zero platform fees."
After connecting your wallet, click DONATE on the project page. Confirm the network before donating. Giveth supports Ethereum mainnet, Gnosis Chain, Polygon PoS and zkEVM, Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, Celo, Solana, Stellar, and other networks. Some projects only accept donations on specific networks. If the network you are connected to is not on the project's accepted list, the page will show a warning. To switch networks, click your avatar in the top right corner and select "switch network" from the dropdown menu.
Stellar is an exception—it does not require connecting a wallet. If you choose Stellar for donation, the page will generate a QR code or address. You can scan the code or copy the address in a Stellar wallet such as Lobstr, Beans, or Freighter. If there is a Memo field, you must fill it in; if not, the page will clearly state that no memo is needed. The QR code is valid for 15 minutes. If it expires, generate a new one.
An easily overlooked detail: If you directly transfer funds from your own wallet to a project's Polygon address, the money will indeed reach the project, but this donation will not appear on Giveth's donation counter. If you care about being recorded as a donation on the platform (which affects matching eligibility), you must go through Giveth's UI rather than transferring directly.
Matching: Mechanism and Conditions
Matching on Giveth mainly happens through Quadratic Funding (QF) rounds. The matching pool comes from sponsors such as Public Nouns, Glo Dollar, Sandbox DAO, and others. Each round has a fixed total amount and duration.
The core logic of QF is to reward "number of people" rather than "amount." A $10 donation from 100 people will receive far more matching than one person donating $1000. Giveth uses Cluster Match QF (COCM), which groups people with similar donation patterns and counts each group as one "unique donor." The purpose is to prevent Sybil attacks—if multiple addresses show exactly the same donation behavior pattern, they will be collapsed into one donor, greatly reducing matching effectiveness.
This means your matching amount cannot be precisely calculated in advance. The "estimated matching" shown on Giveth is only a rough estimate based on current donation data. The final amount is determined only after the round ends and the COCM algorithm is applied. Factors that affect your matching amount include: how many projects you donated to, how many other unique donors the projects you donated to attracted, and the GIVpower ranking of the projects you donated to.
Participating in QF rounds usually has additional conditions. Taking a recent round as an example, Oak Security stated in its announcement that to qualify for matching, donors need to donate to at least 3 projects and complete KYC verification on Giveth. Conditions may differ between rounds, so check the specific rules on the round page before participating.
Receipts and Rewards
Giveth does not provide traditional tax receipts. Its positioning is "global paperless donations," bypassing the tax certification systems of various countries' nonprofit organizations. Your on-chain transaction record (tx hash) is the only complete proof of where funds went. Giveth project pages are also public, so anyone can see a project's cumulative fundraising and donor list.
GIVbacks are donor rewards, not tax deductions. Addresses that donate to Verified projects are eligible to participate in GIVbacks. After November 2024, this changed to a lottery system: each eligible donation (above $5) earns one lottery ticket, with draws every two weeks and a maximum prize of 500,000 GIV. Before the lottery system, the GIVbacks rule was to return 50%–80% of the donation value in GIV, with the exact percentage depending on the project's GIVpower ranking—the higher the ranking, the higher the GIVbacks percentage for its donors. Now this mechanism has become a lottery, so GIV is no longer a guaranteed return.
The network on which you receive GIV depends on your donation network. Donations on Gnosis Chain correspond to GIV on Gnosis Chain; Polygon zkEVM corresponds to Polygon zkEVM; donations on other chains receive GIV on OP Mainnet.
Completion Criteria
A donation is considered "complete" when the transaction is confirmed on-chain and you see your record in the contributor list on the Giveth project page (if you used the Giveth UI). If you transferred directly, on-chain confirmation means completion, but there will be no record on the Giveth page. Matching and GIVbacks lottery results will only be revealed after the round ends, not at the moment of donation.
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References
- Giveth Official Documentation · GIVbacks Rules, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · The ABCs of Donating on Giveth, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Let's Air Run Blog · How to Donate Crypto to a Verified High-Impact Charity, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Platform · Valencia DANA Victims Aid Project Updates Page, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Platform · Hand Protocol Project Updates Page, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Documentation · Donation Operation Rules, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · Introducing the 1st Causes QF Round, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · Loving on Public Goods QF Round Results Wrap-up, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · Innovations in Quadratic Funding: Giveth's Trailblazing Approach, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Oak Security Announcement · Help Us Unlock Matching Funds, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · GIV Tokens: A Global Paperless Alternative to Tax-Deductible Donations, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
- Giveth Official Blog · Recurring Donations Now Come with SUP Rewards, page publication or update date: not stated; verification date: 2024-12-20.
