Beta. The DonorDock MCP connection is in beta, and the setup steps may change as we keep building. We'll update this article when they do.

Your donor data is in DonorDock. Your questions come up everywhere else, in the car before a board meeting, at your desk while drafting an appeal, on a Tuesday when someone asks who lapsed last spring.

The DonorDock MCP connection closes that gap. It lets Google Gemini read and update your DonorDock data when you ask it to, in plain language.

This guide walks you through setting it up.

What you'll need

A DonorDock account with permission to view your organization's data
A personal API key from DonorDock, which you'll create in Step 1
A Google account
Antigravity, Google's free desktop app, which you'll install in Step 3

Step 1: Create your DonorDock API key

Log in to DonorDock
Open your user profile settings
Find the personal API key section
Create a new key
Copy it and keep it somewhere safe for the next few minutes

Treat this key like a password. Anyone who has it can reach your donor data. Don't email it, don't paste it into a group chat, and don't share it with anyone outside your organization. If you ever think it's been seen by the wrong person, come back to this screen and create a new one.

Step 2: Know which tool you're installing

Google publishes several things under the Antigravity name, and they're separate downloads.

	What it is	Use this guide?
Antigravity	The desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The main one.	Yes. Steps 3 and 4 below
Antigravity for IDEs	An add-on for coding tools like VS Code and JetBrains	Only if your team already works in one of those. See the appendix
Antigravity CLI	A typing-only tool that runs in a terminal window	Technical teams only. See the appendix

Most people want plain Antigravity, the desktop app. Everything in Steps 3 and 4 assumes that's what you have.

Step 3: Install Antigravity

Go to antigravity.google and download it for your computer
Open the app once it's installed
Sign in with your Google account when it asks
Let it finish its first-time setup

Now quit Antigravity completely before moving to Step 4. This matters, because the app reads its connection settings when it starts up.

Step 4: Add the DonorDock connection

4a. Open the settings folder

Antigravity keeps its connection settings in a folder that's normally hidden. Here's how to get to it.

On a Mac:

Open Finder
In the menu bar at the top, click Go, then Go to Folder
Type this exactly, then press Return:
~/.gemini/config
A folder opens. Look for a file named mcp_config.json

On Windows:

Open File Explorer
Click the address bar at the top
Type this exactly, then press Enter:
%USERPROFILE%\.gemini\config
A folder opens. Look for a file named mcp_config.json

Don't see the file? Antigravity creates it the first time it runs, so go back and open the app once, quit it, then check again. If it's still missing, you can create it yourself. Make a new plain text file in that folder and name it exactly mcp_config.json.

4b. Open the file

On a Mac, right-click mcp_config.json, choose Open With, then TextEdit.

On Windows, right-click mcp_config.json, choose Open with, then Notepad.

Use TextEdit or Notepad rather than Word or Pages. Those add invisible formatting that breaks the file.

The file will either be empty or already have some text in it.

4c. Paste in the connection

If the file is empty, paste this in exactly as it appears:

{

"mcpServers": {

"donordock": {

"serverUrl": "https://mcp.donordock.com/mcp",

"headers": {

"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

}

}

}

}

If the file already has other connections in it, don't delete them. Add the "donordock" block inside the existing "mcpServers" section, and put a comma after the block that comes before yours.

Now replace YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with the key you copied in Step 1.

Save the file.

4d. Start Antigravity back up

Open Antigravity again. It reads your new settings as it starts.

To check that it worked, click Settings in the bottom left, then Customizations, then Installed MCP Servers. You should see donordock in the list.

4e. Ask your first question

Type a question into the agent panel. Try this one:

Who are my top five donors by giving this year?

The first time Gemini reaches for your DonorDock data, it will stop and ask your permission. That's on purpose, and it's a good sign. Approve it, and your answer comes back a moment later.

That's it. You're connected.

Everything DonorDock can do

When you connect, your AI tool finds 18 DonorDock tools. You'll never call them by name. You just ask for what you want in plain language, and the right one gets used. Here's the full list so you know what's on the table.

Looking things up

Tool	What it does
`query_donordock`	Searches your data and answers questions. This is the workhorse behind most of what you'll ask
`get_contact`	Pulls up one donor's full profile, along with their recent gifts, activities, and notes
`get_gift`	Pulls up the details of a single gift, including fund, campaign, and appeal
`get_activity`	Pulls up a single call, email, meeting, or task
`get_note`	Pulls up a single note

Adding records

Tool	What it does
`create_contact`	Adds a new donor or organization. It checks for a match first, so you don't end up with duplicates
`create_gift`	Records a donation against a donor
`create_activity`	Logs a call, email, meeting, or task
`create_note`	Adds a note to a donor's record

Updating records

Tool	What it does
`update_contact`	Changes details on a donor record, like an email, phone, address, or do-not-solicit status
`update_activity`	Updates a task or a logged interaction, for example marking a task complete or rescheduling it
`update_note`	Edits a note, pins it as important, or removes it

Organizing and segmenting

Tool	What it does
`add_badge_to_contacts`	Adds a badge to one donor or a whole group, like "Major Donors" or "Board Member". Creates the badge if it's new
`add_contacts_to_marketing_list`	Adds donors to a marketing list for an appeal, a newsletter, or a campaign. Creates the list if it's new
`add_tags_to_gifts`	Tags gifts for reporting, like "Year-End Appeal", "Match-Eligible", or "Stock Gift"

Working behind the scenes

These three run on their own to make sure answers are accurate. You won't ask for them directly.

Tool	What it does
`describe_entity`	Checks what fields exist on your records, including the custom fields your organization has set up
`list_enum_values`	Reads your dropdown options, like your fund names, badge names, and stages
`list_filter_operators`	Checks how to build a search correctly before running it

If something isn't working

You don't see donordock in Installed MCP Servers. Nearly always the file. Open mcp_config.json again and check three things: every opening { has a closing }, your key sits inside its quotation marks, and the word Bearer is still there with a space after it. Save, then fully quit and reopen Antigravity.

Gemini says it can't find any DonorDock tools. Quit Antigravity completely and reopen it. The app only reads that file at startup, so a change made while it's running won't take effect until you restart.

You're getting an authorization or permission error. The key itself is the usual culprit. Go back to your DonorDock profile settings, create a fresh key, and paste the new one in. It's quicker than hunting for a typo.

Everything looks connected but answers come back empty. Check that your DonorDock account has permission to see the records you're asking about. The connection can only reach what you can reach.

The connection worked and then stopped. Your API key may have been replaced or removed. Create a new one in DonorDock and update the file.

Still stuck? Reach out to our support team and we'll walk through it with you.

A few things worth knowing:

Your key is tied to you. It reaches exactly the data your DonorDock login can reach, nothing more.
You can turn it off any time. Delete the key in your DonorDock profile settings and the connection stops immediately. Nothing about your DonorDock account or your donor records changes.
Gemini asks before it acts. Creating a gift, logging an activity, or updating a record all require your approval first.
Your data isn't handed over in bulk. Gemini reads what it needs to answer the question you asked, rather than keeping a standing copy of your database.

Appendix: other ways to connect

Skip this unless someone technical is setting this up for you.

Antigravity for IDEs

If your team already works in VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Zed, or Xcode, the Antigravity extension for those tools has a built-in editor for this file, so you can skip the Finder steps above.

In the agent side panel, click …, then MCP Servers, then Manage MCP Servers, then View raw config. Paste the same block from Step 4c. The extension reads from the same ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json, so a connection set up here shows up in the desktop app too.

Gemini CLI

Gemini CLI works with DonorDock. Two things to know first.

Google no longer allows free personal Google accounts to sign in to Gemini CLI. Signing in the standard way returns an error telling you to move to Antigravity. To use the CLI you'll need a Google AI API key from aistudio.google.com, or a paid Google account that includes CLI access.

Gemini CLI turns off connections in folders it doesn't trust. If your connection shows as disabled, this is almost always why. Run it from inside a folder you've marked as trusted.

Setup:

gemini mcp add donordock https://mcp.donordock.com/mcp \

--transport http \

--scope user \

--header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

To use an API key instead of signing in, set security.auth.selectedType to gemini-api-key in ~/.gemini/settings.json, then put GEMINI_API_KEY=your-key in ~/.gemini/.env. Setting the key without changing that first setting won't work, because the sign-in method stays locked to the old one.

Check it with gemini mcp list. It should read Connected.

MCP Setup Guide