# Key Concepts
### What Is Chariot?
Chariot is a modern financial platform for nonprofits — a system that brings together traditionally offline donation payments and donor data in one place.
When you claim your account, you create a **Chariot Deposit Account\***
* A bank account in your nonprofit’s name
* Used to receive donations electronically
* Purpose-built for the nonprofit sector
Once claimed, [Payment Sources](/getting-started/payment-sources.md#chariots-grantmaking-partners) can electronically send funds directly into your account.
***
### Nightmare Of Donation Management
There are dozens of platforms (payment sources) that send money to nonprofits — DAFs, Workplace Giving Programs, Employee Matching Platforms, Crowdfunding Tools, and more.
Unfortunately, each of these payment sources has its own method of payment, access portal, and data format which leads to nonprofit overhead, security risk, delayed funds, and manual reconciliation.
At Chariot, our goal is to unify these [Payment Sources](/getting-started/payment-sources.md) into a single system.
***
### Delivery Of Funds
Whether funds and data land in your Chariot account depends on the connection status of your payment sources:
* **Connected Sources** [**\[Link\]**](/getting-started/payment-sources.md#connected-sources) **-** Both funds and donation data are delivered electronically into your Chariot account. Each donation line item is linked to a deposit, which represents the actual payment.
* **Unconnected Sources -** Funds for these donations will **not** be delivered into your Chariot account. Instead, they will be sent outside of Chariot, typically by check.
{% hint style="info" %}
If your organization uses [DAFpay](/dafpay/editor.md), you may see donation data in your Chariot dashboard from unconnected payment sources which means funds will arrive outside of your Chariot account. See [Using Chariot](/getting-started/using-chariot.md#received-outside-of-chariot)
{% endhint %}
***
### Donations & Deposits
The two core concepts in Chariot are **donations (data)** and **deposits (money)**, which together show what was given and how it was paid out.
When funds from [Payment Sources](/getting-started/payment-sources.md#connected-sources) are delivered into your Chariot account, they appear as a deposit line item. Every gift line item associated with a deposit appears as a donation, which includes donor information and other details.
A single deposit can include multiple donations. For example, a payment from a provider like Fidelity Charitable may arrive as one $10,000.00 deposit, but be associated with many individual donations:
* One deposit → many donations
* Each donation → belongs to one deposit
{% hint style="info" %}
In some cases, you may see donation data *without* a deposit. This typically only happens when a gift is initiated through DAFpay from an unconnected payment source.
{% endhint %}
At a high level, deposits represent what you would see on a bank statement while donations represent the individual gifts behind that payment.
Each deposit has a **Deposit ID**, which is shared across all associated donations. You can use this to:
* Match donations to a specific payment (deposit)
* Align records between your CRM and Accounting System
* Reconcile activity at month-end
***
### Donation Payment Statuses
Every donation has a **payment status** that tells you where the funds are at any given time.
* **Received In Chariot** — Money landed in your Chariot account
* **Incoming To Chariot** — Money is expecting to arrive in your Chariot account
* **Received Outside Chariot** — Money arrived outside Chariot (e.g. check)
* **Incoming Outside Chariot** — Money is expected to arrive outside Chariot
Payment status is primarily determined by whether the payment source associated with a given donation is **connected** to your Chariot account.
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