There is no "with (optional)" participants under the contribution entity. However, I was able to get what I wanted - see my answer.

I decided just to change the wording of the subject to "contribution" instead of "donation", that way it works for donations and purchases both!

Yes I am using a different financial type - do you know the code for "if financial type ="?

I wish I could say why there are so many - I just inherited that way! I see no reason to have so many, so will go the route of condensing them into a set that does show up on my contributions

the settings just say "contributions" and I can't edit that - I assume it should be valid on all contributions. There is a very good chance our developer has hidden it for some reason. Trying not to go through them - I might just move the fields inside the missing set to a different set I know shows on all contributions

the settings just say "contribution" so I assume it should be all contributions - I can't edit that part

Thank you! I'm not sending receipts since these contributions don't qualify for a tax receipt so I can't use the cc