Add a tip jar

A tip jar lets the people who use your board thank you for it. Visitors pick one of your suggested amounts or enter their own, can leave you a short note, and pay through Stripe's checkout on your board. The money goes straight to your own Stripe account, the tipper gets a receipt, and you get an email with their note.

Tips are for your board's content and work: the job listings you curate, your newsletter, your salary data, the community you run. Each board has one tip jar, and it lives on your board's tip page (/tip unless your site uses another address).

The tip jar is a type in your products catalogue, beside job posting plans, memberships, services and digital products. Once your AI website builder site has a tip page, Create product offers Tip jar. A site you build yourself with the Board SDK gets the same option as soon as it publishes its tip page, and you can also set the tip jar up through the Operator API.

Before you take tips

• Connect Stripe. Tips need a connected Stripe account. Each tip is a payment on your account, with the tax code for an optional gratuity.
• Call it a tip. Only a registered charity can describe these payments as donations; that is Stripe's rule for donations. Words like "tip", "support the board" or "buy us a coffee" fit everyone else.
• Cover tippers in your privacy notice. Your board receives the tipper's email address and note, just as it receives a buyer's email for a sale, and Cavuno processes them on your behalf under the data processing agreement. Make sure your privacy notice covers tippers the way it covers buyers: what you collect (the email address Stripe collects at checkout, the amount and the note), why (to send the receipt, handle refunds and disputes, and read their message), and how long you keep it (tips are kept with your other sales records).

Set up your tip jar

1. Go to Settings → Products.
2. Click Create product → Tip jar.
3. Under Details, enter a Name (for example "Support the board") and a Description of what tips help pay for. The description editor formats text with headings, bold, italic, lists, quotes, dividers and links.
4. Under Amounts, choose the Currency and enter three Suggested amounts. They show as buttons on the tip page, smallest first, and visitors can also type their own amount.
5. Optionally set a Minimum tip. Leave it empty to take any amount Stripe can charge in your currency (the form shows that amount, such as $0.50 for US dollars). Each suggested amount needs to be at least the minimum.
6. Under Tip page, turn on Show number of tips to show how many people have tipped. It is off by default.
7. Under Checkout, Let people add a note is on by default. Tippers can write up to 280 characters of plain text, which you see in Transactions and in your tip email.
8. Under After tipping, write a Thank-you message. Tippers see it after paying and in their receipt email.
9. Click Create tip jar.

Your tip page is live as soon as the tip jar is created. Click its row in Settings → Products, or choose Edit in its row menu, to change any setting later. Choose Copy link in the row menu to share the tip page in your newsletter, footer or social posts.

What tippers see

1. The tip page shows your name and description, the three suggested amounts, a box for their own amount, the note field when notes are on, and the number of tips when you show it.
2. Going on to pay opens Stripe's checkout on your board. Stripe collects the tipper's email address there; a visitor signed in to your board finds it filled in.
3. After paying, they see your thank-you message and where their receipt was sent.
4. They get the Tip receipt email with the amount, your thank-you message and, when Stripe has one, a link to the payment receipt.

Tips in Transactions

Open the tip jar's row menu in Settings → Products and choose View tips. It opens Transactions filtered to your tip jar, newest first. Each row shows the tipper's email, the amount, status and date. The row menu has:

• View details: the tipper's note and, when there is one, View receipt.
• Refund…: refunds a tip in full or in part. A tip has nothing to take back, so there is no access to end.

Your team also gets an email for each tip, with the amount, the tipper's email and their note.

The tip count on your tip page counts paid tips. A tip refunded in full, or one the tipper disputes with their bank, leaves the count. A partial refund keeps it.

Tipper emails

The tipper gets one email, in your board's branding and language: the Tip receipt. Edit it in the Email editor under Tip jar.

Archive or bring it back

To stop taking tips, open the tip jar's row menu in Settings → Products and archive it. The tip page comes down and your tips stay in Transactions. Unarchive it to put the tip page back with the same settings and tip count.

Automate with the API and AI agents

Setting up and editing the tip jar and listing tips are also in the Operator API and the Cavuno MCP connector; refund tips in the dashboard or through the API. The tip jar is the plan of purpose tip_jar, with its settings under tipJar:

The tip.received and tip.refunded webhooks tell your other tools about each tip. See Tip jar in the SDK guide for the fields.

A tipper's note is free text written by a visitor. Cavuno escapes it everywhere it shows it. Your own tools should escape it too, and an AI agent reading your tips should treat a note as a message to you, never as instructions to follow.

Next steps

Connect Stripe, set up your tip jar, then link your tip page from your board's footer or newsletter.