Updated 30th June 2026

Google Analytics 4 for charities: A beginners guide to GA4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the current generation of Google's free analytics platform, and for charities it's the main way you'll understand how supporters find you, what they do on your site, and which channels are driving the donations, sign-ups and event registrations that actually matter.

It works very differently to the Universal Analytics many people knew before. New interface, new terminology, and a whole new way of thinking about how supporters interact with your website.

This guide is a practical walk-through for anyone in a charity who has just opened GA4 and isn't sure where to start. It covers what GA4 is and isn't good at, the core concepts to get your head around, how to find and customise reports, how to read source and medium data, how the donations and Explore sections work, and which metrics actually mean what for fundraising and engagement.

What is GA4?

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics, which Google sunset in July 2023. The biggest shift is the underlying model. Universal Analytics was built around sessions and pageviews. GA4 is built around events - every interaction, whether that's a page view, a scroll, a click or a completed donation, is recorded as an event with parameters attached to it.

That change makes GA4 more flexible. It also makes it more confusing if you're used to the old way of doing things, because reports, metrics and even the navigation look very different.

The pros and cons of GA4 for charities

Pros

• Free, with no real catch - the standard version is free and includes a BigQuery export that used to be paid-only. There's a paid GA4 360 tier for very large organisations, but most charities will never need it.
• Works with Google Ad Grants - if you have a Grants account, GA4 is partly where you'll see how that free advertising actually performs and which campaigns drive donations or sign-ups, not just clicks.
• Event-based model - you can measure almost any supporter interaction, from a donation to a brochure download to a volunteer enquiry.
• Cross-device and cross-platform - track the same supporter across web and app where signed-in data is available, which matters for journeys that start on mobile and finish on desktop.
• Privacy-first by design - works with consent mode and is built for a world with less third-party data, which is important for the trust your supporters expect.
• Predictive metrics - Google's machine learning produces signals like 'likely to convert' that can power retargeting to warm supporters.
• Powerful Explore reports - custom analysis that goes well beyond the standard report templates, useful for digging into donation funnels and supporter journeys.

Cons

• Steep learning curve - the terminology and interface are very different from Universal Analytics.
• Default reports feel sparse - the out-of-the-box reports are less detailed than their UA equivalents.
• Historical UA data is gone - Google deleted Universal Analytics data in July 2024, so if you didn't export it, it's lost.
• Data thresholding and sampling - on smaller segments GA4 may hide or sample data to protect user privacy, which can be frustrating for charities with smaller audiences.
• Doesn't cope well with missing data - when consent is declined, third-party cookies are blocked or attribution breaks down, GA4 fills the gaps with modelled (estimated) data and tends to bucket unattributed visits into 'Direct'. The reports still look complete, but a chunk of what you're looking at is GA4's best guess rather than observed behaviour.
• Numbers don't always match Google Ads - different attribution models and counting methods mean conversions and donation values can differ between the two.

Events and key events

Because GA4 records everything as events, understanding how events work is the foundation of using the platform well.

An event is any interaction GA4 captures - a page view, a scroll, a video play, an outbound link click, a form submission, a completed donation. Each event carries parameters that describe it (page title, donation value, currency, appeal name and so on). Out of the box, GA4 collects a useful set of events automatically, including page_view, session_start, first_visit, scroll and outbound clicks via its Enhanced measurement settings on the web data stream.

You'll set additional events up yourself (typically through Google Tag Manager) to capture interactions specific to your site, such as a 'donate' button click, a 'volunteer enquiry' form submit, a 'download impact report' click or an event registration.

Key events are the events that matter most to your charity - GA4's name for what used to be called 'conversions'. Typical key events are donations, newsletter sign-ups, volunteer registrations, event registrations and major content downloads. You mark an event as a key event in Admin > Events by ticking the 'Mark as key event' toggle. Once flagged, key events flow into your Advertising reports and into Google Ads (including Ad Grants) if the accounts are linked, where they're available as conversion actions to optimise towards.

Total users, active users, sessions and engagement metrics

GA4 reports several user and session metrics that look similar but mean different things. Knowing the difference saves a lot of confusion when you're reporting up to trustees or funders.

• Total users - every unique user who triggered any event in the reporting period.
• Active users - the headline 'Users' figure in most standard reports. Counts users who had an engaged session, were active for at least a moment, or triggered a key event. It strips out the noise of accidental landings that bounce in seconds.
• Sessions - a group of interactions by one user within a roughly 30-minute window of inactivity. The same supporter can have multiple sessions across the period.
• Engaged sessions - sessions that lasted 10 or more seconds, included a key event, or had at least two page or screen views.
• Engagement rate - engaged sessions divided by total sessions. It's essentially the inverse of the old Universal Analytics 'bounce rate'.
• Average engagement time - how long users were actively focused on your page (not just sitting on a tab in the background).

When you see 'Users' in a standard report, GA4 almost always means active users. Engagement metrics are GA4's preferred quality signal - far more useful than raw pageviews for working out whether an appeal page is actually doing its job.

Getting around the GA4 interface

Open a GA4 property and you'll see a slim navigation rail down the left of the screen. The sections you'll use most often are:

• Home - a customisable snapshot of headline metrics, recent insights and recommendations.
• Reports - the pre-built standard reports, grouped under Life cycle (Acquisition, Engagement, Monetisation, Retention) and User (Demographics, Tech), plus the Realtime report.
• Explore - the custom report builder where most of the real analysis happens.
• Advertising - attribution, channel performance and conversion path reporting, including Google Ad Grants performance once linked.
• Admin - property settings, data streams, events, key events, audiences, custom dimensions and integrations.

If you manage more than one site (for example a main charity site and a separate campaign or shop site), use the property switcher at the top of the screen to move between them.

Standard reports - editing and adding breakdown columns

GA4's standard reports are templated, but you can customise what they show and how they're laid out.

Editing a report

In any standard report (for example Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition), click the pencil icon in the top right to enter Customize mode. From here you can:

• Add or remove dimensions and metrics
• Change the chart type
• Reorder or hide the cards above the table
• Apply filters

When you're done, save changes back to the existing report or use 'Save as a new report' if you want to keep the original untouched. You'll need Editor permissions on the property to save.

Adding a breakdown column (secondary dimension)

This is one of the most useful tricks in GA4 and one of the first things you should learn. Adding a secondary dimension lets you slice your primary data by another variable in the same table.

1. Open a standard report, for example 'Pages and screens' under Engagement.
2. In the table, click the small blue '+' icon next to the primary dimension column header (e.g. next to 'Page path and screen class').
3. Pick your secondary dimension from the picker - common choices include 'Country', 'Device category' or 'Session source / medium'.

Now you can see, for instance, which sources are driving traffic to your top-performing appeal pages in a single view. Remove the breakdown by clicking the small 'x' on the secondary dimension column.

The pages and screens report

Found under Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens, this is the closest thing GA4 has to a classic 'top content' report and one of the most useful views in the standard set. By default it shows you, for each page:

• Views
• Active users
• Views per active user
• Average engagement time
• Key events (donations, sign-ups and so on)
• Total revenue, if you track donations as e-commerce events

It's invaluable for spotting which content actually pulls its weight. Combine it with a breakdown by 'Session source / medium' or 'Session default channel group' and it tells you which appeal pages convert paid vs organic traffic, where to invest in SEO, and which pages need attention because they're high-traffic but low-engagement.

Real-time reports

The Realtime report (Reports > Realtime) shows what's happening on your site right now, using data from the last 30 minutes. You'll see users active per minute, top countries, devices, source / mediums, top pages and screens, top events firing and top key events.

It's most useful for three things: confirming new tracking is working (publish a tag, then watch the event fire), monitoring traffic from an appeal email, social campaign or PR moment you've just launched, and getting a live read during big fundraising days like Christmas, Giving Tuesday or a match-funding window. There's also a DebugView (Admin > DebugView) that lets you see events from your own session in granular detail, which is invaluable when setting up new event tracking on your donation form.

Understanding source, medium and channel

GA4 keeps the source and medium concept from Universal Analytics, then groups combinations of the two into broader 'channel groups' for easier reporting.

• Source - where the traffic came from, for example 'google', 'facebook.com', 'justgiving.com' or 'mailchimp'.
• Medium - the type of traffic, for example 'organic', 'cpc', 'referral', 'email' or 'social'.
• Default channel group - GA4's grouping of source / medium combinations into broader buckets such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Organic Social, Paid Social, Email, Direct and Referral. See Google's default channel definitions.

Common examples a charity will see in reports:

• 'google / organic' - someone clicked your unpaid Google search listing.
• 'google / cpc' - someone clicked a Google Ads or Google Ad Grants campaign (auto-tagged via the Google Ads link).
• '(direct) / (none)' - someone typed your URL, used a bookmark, came from a private message, or scanned an untagged QR code on a leaflet.
• 'newsletter / email' or 'mailchimp / email' - traffic from a supporter email tagged with UTM parameters.
• 'justgiving.com / referral' - a supporter clicked through from your JustGiving page (without UTM tags).
• 'facebook.com / referral' - a Facebook click that wasn't tagged with UTMs, so GA4 falls back to the referring domain.

Use UTM parameters on every paid, email and social link, and on print campaign QR codes, so GA4 attributes traffic to the right channel rather than lumping it into 'Direct' or 'Referral'.

Session source vs first user source vs traffic source

GA4 records source and medium against three different scopes, which is a common source of confusion. The dimension you pick changes the answer you get.

• First user source / medium - where the supporter came from the very first time they visited. Best for understanding long-term acquisition - 'how did our donors first find us?'.
• Session source / medium - where this particular session came from. Best for day-to-day reporting on recent traffic and individual appeals.
• Source / medium (event scope) - the source attributed to the specific event. Used when looking at individual events rather than sessions or users.

'Traffic source' as shown in some reports usually refers to the session-scoped version. Stick with Session source / medium for most day-to-day reporting, and switch to First user source / medium when you want to see what originally brought your supporters in.

Tracking donations and other income in GA4

GA4's Monetisation reports are designed for e-commerce, but they work just as well for charities. The trick is to send a GA4 'purchase' event whenever a donation completes, with the donation amount as the value and details about the appeal, donation type or item in the items array. If you also sell physical items like Christmas cards, merchandise or event tickets, the same set-up tracks those alongside donations.

• E-commerce purchases - total income, average donation value, donations per donor and items sold, broken down by appeal name, campaign, donation type or product.
• Purchase journey - the funnel from session_start to view_item (appeal page view), add_to_cart (donation amount selected), begin_checkout (started entering details) and finally purchase (donation completed), showing the drop-off at each step.
• Checkout journey - a more granular view of the steps inside your donation form where supporters drop off.

For these reports to populate properly, your donation platform or website needs to send the recommended GA4 e-commerce events - view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase - with the items array attached (item_id, item_name, price, quantity and so on). Donation platforms like Enthuse, Raisely, Donorfy-powered forms, GoCardless / Stripe forms and custom donation pages can all push these events, often through Google Tag Manager. It's always worth verifying with DebugView that the events are firing with the right value and parameters.

Once donations are tracked, mark 'purchase' (or your custom donation event) as a key event so income flows through into your Explore reports and Google Ads. If you’re not using Google Ads Conversion Tracking, this is what lets Ad Grants and paid Google Ads optimise toward actual donations rather than just clicks.

Explore reports - where GA4 gets powerful

If the standard reports feel restrictive, Explore is where GA4 opens up. Found under Explore in the left rail, it's a custom report builder where you drag dimensions, metrics, segments and filters onto a canvas to build the view you want.

A few of the most useful exploration types for charities:

• Free form - your go-to for custom tables and charts. Works much like a pivot table over your GA4 data.
• Funnel exploration - visualise the steps supporters take towards a goal (the donation funnel is the classic example), see where they drop off, and segment by traffic source, device or audience.
• Path exploration - see the sequence of pages or events supporters move through, forwards from an appeal landing page or backwards from a completed donation.
• Segment overlap - compare audiences against each other, for example newsletter subscribers vs donors vs event attendees.
• User explorer - drill into individual anonymised supporter journeys when you need to understand specific behaviour.

You can save explorations and share them with your team. Because they're not bound by the limits of the standard reports, this is where most serious GA4 analysis ends up living.

Need a hand getting more out of GA4, or want help setting it up properly for your charity? Get in touch with the team at Atelier Impact.

FAQs - GA4 for charities

How do I track donations as conversions in GA4?

Send a GA4 'purchase' event when a donation completes, with the donation amount as the value and details of the appeal in the items array. Then mark 'purchase' as a key event in Admin > Events. Most donation platforms either support this natively or can be set up via Google Tag Manager.

Does GA4 work with Google Ad Grants?

Yes. Link your Google Ad Grants account to GA4 in Admin > Google Ads links, and your key events become available as conversion actions in Grants. This lets your Grants campaigns optimise towards donations, sign-ups and other goals, not just clicks.

What's the difference between an event and a key event?

An event is any tracked interaction. A key event is an event you've flagged as business-critical (what GA4 used to call a conversion). For most charities the key events are donations, newsletter sign-ups, volunteer registrations and event registrations.

What's the difference between total users and active users?

Total users counts every unique user who fired any event. Active users counts only users with a meaningful engagement (an engaged session or key event). Most standard reports show active users as 'Users'.

Why don't my GA4 numbers match Google Ads or my donation platform?

They almost never match exactly. Google Ads counts conversions at the moment of the ad click using its own attribution, GA4 counts them at the moment the donation happens, and your donation platform records what actually hit the bank. Different time zones, attribution windows, cross-device handling and refunds all add to the gap. The trick is to pick one source of truth for income (usually the donation platform) and use GA4 to understand the journey.

What counts as a session in GA4?

A session begins when a user opens or engages with your site or app, and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity by default. Unlike Universal Analytics, a new campaign source in the middle of a session no longer starts a new session.

How long does GA4 keep my data?

Event-level data is retained for 2 months by default, or up to 14 months if you change the setting in Admin > Data Settings > Data Retention. Aggregated reporting data in the standard reports is kept indefinitely.

Is GA4 really free for charities?

Yes. The standard version is free for everyone and includes the BigQuery export. There's a paid GA4 360 tier with higher limits, but most charities will never need it.