Charitable – Donation & Fundraising Platform (Donation Forms, Recurring Donations & Fundraising Campaigns)
The best WordPress donation plugin. Create fundraising donation forms, accept recurring donations, easy donor management, add crowdfunding, and more.
Safe pick
Yes — Charitable is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 10K+ sites, is rated 4.9/5 and was last updated 4 weeks ago, and scores 94/100 on our health check.
- Proven at scale on 10K+ active sites
- Loved by users — 4.9/5 from 217 reviews
- Actively developed — last update 4 weeks ago
- Tested with the latest WordPress (7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Charitable stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| crowdfunding | #4 |
| donate | #3 |
| donation | #3 |
| fundraising | #2 |
| recurring donations | #2 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 from 217 reviews
About Charitable
From the official readme · v1.8.12.3Description
The Best WordPress Donation & Fundraising Plugin
Charitable is the best WordPress donation plugin that’s both EASY & POWERFUL. Add a simple donate button, create beautiful fundraising campaigns with smart donation forms, accept recurring donations with Stripe, PayPal, & Square, add crowdfunding / peer-to-peer fundraising, and other powerful donation features to your site in minutes with just a few clicks!
At Charitable, user experience is our #1 priority. Our pre-built donation form templates and workflows make Charitable the most beginner-friendly donation plugin on the market. You can create a fundraising campaign in less than 5 minutes with our drag & drop donation form builder or by using our pre-built donation campaign templates to get a head start.
Over 10,000+ nonprofits, charity foundations, clubs & NGOs get more donations from their websites with Charitable.
Charitable Pro
This plugin is the Lite version of Charitable Pro, which comes with additional email marketing & payment integrations, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising, automated workflows, and more. Click here to purchase the best premium WordPress donation & fundraising plugin now!
Fully Customizable Donation Forms with Drag & Drop
Create custom donation forms and donate buttons in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop donation form builder (no coding needed).
With Charitable donation form builder, you can:
- Add suggested donation amounts, allow people to donate custom amounts, or do both.
- Accept one-time donations and recurring donations.
- Add donation goals and display them in the donation widget.
- Easily collect all relevant donor details.
- Customize your donate buttons to match your design needs.
- Display donation forms in a popup modal, on a separate page, in a widget on your site, or on the same page as the campaign. You can embed donation forms anywhere on your site.
Optimized Fundraising Campaign Templates
Charitable comes with pre-built highly optimized donation & fundraising campaign templates to help raise maximum donations for your charity or nonprofit organization.
- Create unlimited fundraising campaigns for your charity (no extra costs).
- Create time-sensitive fundraising campaigns that end automatically when they’re finished.
- Set fundraising goals, display total donors (donor wall) for your campaigns, share donor comments, donation updates, fundraising video, and more.
- Add peer-to-peer fundraising (aka crowdfunding) to maximize your donations.
Comprehensive Donor Management Tools
Charitable makes it easy to manage day-to-day donor management operations. This is why over 10,000+ charity & nonprofit organizations choose Charitable as their donation platform.
- See a complete history of your donor activity, track donation goal progress, and more in a single dashboard.
- Send beautiful annual tax-deductible donation receipts for end of year tax reporting.
- Add donor profiles to highlight your top contributors and raise more donations toward your cause.
- Send personalized donor updates to keep donors informed about their donations & contributions to your nonprofit charity.
- Export all donation details in CSV to help with your workflow.
Over a Dozen Donation Payment Integrations
Charitable integrates with all the top payment providers including Stripe donations, PayPal donations, Braintree, Square payments, and 10+ more to ensure you can accept both one-time donations as well as recurring donations using the payment solution of your choice.
We’re proud to be a Stripe Verified Partner. This partnership allows us to build the best Stripe integration with early access to features. You can use our Stripe integration to accept both one-time payments as well as recurring donations while syncing all donation data to your Stripe account.
We’re also proud to be a Square Verified Partner. This partnership allows us to build the best Square integration with early access to features. You can use our Square integration to accept both one-time payments as well as recurring donations while syncing all donation data to your Square account.
Our PayPal integration is just as robust, allowing you to easily accept PayPal donations and manage them directly within Charitable. This makes offering PayPal as a payment option seamless for both you and your donors.
Our full list of payment integrations include: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Authorize.net, Braintree, PayFast, Payrexx, Mollie, PayUMoney, GoCardless, Paystack, Razorpay, and Windcave.
Our Donation Fee Relief feature allows you to ask donors to donate extra to cover payment processing fees to maximize the impact.
Peer to Peer Fundraising with Donation Teams & Ambassadors
Charitable’s Peer to Peer fundraising feature allows you to maximize your donations through the power of community, donation teams & ambassadors.
The peer-to-peer crowdfunding feature allows your supporters to raise donations on your behalf and gain incredible support for their cause.
Each donation or fundraising campaign can have leaders & ambassadors that invite others to their donation team to help you get more donations by leveraging the power of community.
Our crowdfunding peer to peer donations feature is great for community events like:
- Nonprofit Charity Walkathons
- Nonprofit Charity Carwashes
- Nonprofit Charity Fundraising Dinners
- Other non-profit charity events
Communication & Promotion Tools to Maximize Donations
Charitable comes with all the marketing and promotion tools you need to get maximum donations for your charity or nonprofit organization.
- Integrate with your favorite email marketing tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Campaign Monitor, and more.
- Give your fundraising campaigns a boost through Charitable videos.
- Enable Charitable Geolocation to geotag your donation campaigns to bring more awareness to the fundraising cause.
- Save time with smart donation workflow automation with Zapier, Zoho Flow, and Webhooks.
Easy to Customize and Extend
Charitable is a 100% open-source donation plugin for WordPress. You can easily customize your donation forms, fundraising campaigns, donate buttons, donation goal widgets, and everything else thanks to our built-in features.
We also know that our developer friends may want more control, so we have added tons of hooks and filters.
Full Charitable Feature List
- Donation Form Builder – powerful drag & drop donation form builder. Create smart donation forms, add custom donate buttons, accept donation payments, and more without writing any code.
- Visual Donation Form Builder – Design beautiful donation forms in minutes with a true drag & drop visual editor, live previews, and code-free customization.
- Page Builder & Analytics Integrations – Deeply integrated with Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, and Google Analytics 4 for seamless visual design and automatic conversion tracking.
- Secure Credit Card & Digital Wallet Payments – Securely accept credit cards and Apple Pay/Google Pay with built-in Square support, plus Stripe, PayPal, and more.
- Comprehensive Donor Management System – A full CRM to manage donor relationships, track activity, log offline gifts, and view donor history from a single dashboard.
- Donor Dashboard – Provide a dedicated, self-service portal for supporters to manage profiles, view donation history, and download receipts.
- Donor Leaderboard – Gamify fundraising by showcasing top supporters in list or card views to encourage friendly competition.
- Social Proof (DonorTrust) – Increase trust and conversions by displaying real-time popup notifications of recent donations to site visitors.
- Easy Data Migration – Import donors from other platforms or spreadsheets in minutes with the powerful CSV Importer.
- 100% mobile responsive.
- GDPR & CCPA friendly – full privacy compliance tools
- Pre-built Fundraising Templates – Get access to sleek modern fundraising templates that are optimized to help you raise more donations.
- Secure Credit Card Payments – securely accept credit card donations on your website with Stripe donations, Square donations, PayPal donations, and dozens of other payment gateways.
- Recurring Donations – accept recurring donations on your website with Stripe, PayPal, and other payment solutions. Turn one-time donors into repeat supporters.
- Offline Donations – accept offline donations from donors through other payment methods like cash, check, and wire transfer while keeping track of it in Charitable donation platform.
- Automatic Donation Receipts – automatically send PDF receipts for each donation to your donors (save time).
- Comprehensive Donation Management – easily manage and track all donor activity, donation amount, donor communication, and more from a single dashboard.
- Actionable Donation Reports – see all your donation reports in one place.
- Peer to Peer Fundraising – allow your community to raise more donations for your cause with crowdfunding.
- Donation Teams with Ambassadors – allow supporters and ambassadors to create donation teams to help raise more money for your nonprofit. Track progress through custom donate buttons for each team.
- Donation Fee Relief – allow donors to cover donation payment processing fees.
- Donation Goal Widget – Display public donation goals in a donation widget to motivate your donors and supporter.
- Annual Donation Receipts – help donors with annual tax planning with beautiful donation receipts.
- Anonymous Donations – allow donors to make anonymous donations.
- Gift Aid – allow donors to boost their donations through the government’s gift aid tax incentive.
- Spam protection built-in with support Google reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha.
- Workflow Automation to help you save time with Zapier, Webhooks, Zoho Flow, and more.
- Donation Recovery – automatically recover abandoned donations and failed payments to win back supporters and maximize revenue.
- Donations Feed – display a live, real-time donation feed to build momentum and social proof for your fundraising campaigns.
- Campaign Updates – post timeline-style milestones, news, and progress reports directly on your campaign page to keep donors engaged.
Donation Payment Integrations
Allow your users to donate with the payment solution of their choice to reach your donation goals faster.
- Stripe – We’re a Stripe Verified Partner for Stripe Donation payments. Easily accept credit card donations on your website with Stripe.
- PayPal – Paypal is a trusted and familiar way for donors to contribute. Easily accept PayPal donations on your website.
- Square – We’re a Square Verified Partner for Square Donation payments. Easily accept credit card donations on your website with Square.
- Braintree
- Authorize.net
- Mollie
- PayFast
- Payrexx
- PayUMoney
- GoCardless
- Paystack
- Razorpay
- Windcave
Marketing & Donation Workflow Integrations
- Mailchimp
- Campaign Monitor
- ActiveCampaign
- Zapier – connect with over 7000+ apps.
- Zoho Flow – connect with over 900+ apps.
- MailerLite
- MailPoet
- Mailster
- Webhooks
You can see why Charitable is the best WordPress donation plugin on the market! Want to unlock all the features? Upgrade to our Pro version.
Who is Charitable Donation Platform Built For?
We built Charitable to help anyone who wants to fundraise online, and Charitable supports both one-time donations and recurring donations. Below are the common use-cases:
- Charities
- Non-profit Organizations
- Political Fundraisers
- Foundations, Clubs, & NGOs
- Individuals looking to raise money (i.e weddings, birthdays, etc)
Credits
This plugin is built by David Bisset and Syed Balkhi.
Branding Guidelines
Charitable® is a registered trademark of WP Charitable LLC. When writing about the donation form plugin by Charitable, please make sure to the letter casing is spelled correctly.
- Charitable (correct)
- WPCharitable (correct)
- WP Charitable (incorrect)
- wpcharitable (incorrect)
What’s Next
Help make Charitable make a bigger impact around the world by translating our donation plugin in your language. Contribute to the translation project in your language.
Love Charitable? Leave us a review – it’s really motivating for our team.
Recommended Resources
- AIOSEO – free WordPress SEO plugin for nonprofits (trusted by over 3 million sites).
- Duplicator – free WordPress backup plugin to help you protect your donations and nonprofit website (trusted by over 1 million sites).
- WP Mail SMTP – free plugin to help improve email deliverability.
- Sugar Calendar – free event management plugin. Great for organizing nonprofit fundraising events.
- SeedProd – Create beautiful landing pages for your nonprofit donation campaigns with this free drag & drop page builder.
- MonsterInsights – best free analytics plugin for nonprofits & charity websites.
- WPForms – best contact form and survey plugin for nonprofits.
Visit WPBeginner to learn from their free WordPress video courses and see their pick for best WordPress plugins.
Installation
- Install Charitable either via the WordPress.org plugin repository or by uploading the files to your server. (See instructions on how to install a WordPress plugin)
- Activate Charitable.
- Navigate to the Charitable menu in your WordPress admin area and create your first campaign.
- Want more features? Purchase Charitable Pro!
Frequently asked questions
Can I accept donations directly on my site?
Yes you can! If you use Stripe, donors will be able to make credit card donations right on your website. If you use PayPal, donors will be redirected to PayPal to complete their donation. You can also use the Offline Donations gateway to allow your donors to create a donation and make the payment via cheque or bank transfer (you can display your payment details to them). Want to accept credit card donations from other payment gateways? Upgrade to Charitable Pro.
How do I add a grid of fundraising campaigns to my page?
Easy. Just add [campaigns] into your page content. Read more.
How do I add a donation form to a page?
You can use the [charitable_donation_form] shortcode to embed a particular campaign’s donation form on a page. Read more
Can I collect recurring donations with Charitable?
You can accept monthly, quarterly or semi-annually or annually recurring donations with the Recurring Donations extension. This works with PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.Net and PayFast.
Can I run peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns with Charitable?
Indeed you can! Charitable is the best way to run peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns with WordPress. Peer-to-peer fundraisers are supported with our Ambassadors extension
Can I let donors pay the gateway processing fees?
Yes. Our Fee Relief extension adds support for this, with the option to set how fees are calculated for different payment gateways. Read more
Can I add donors to my newsletter or email marketing list?
You certainly can. The Newsletter Connect extension supports MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, Mailerlite, MailPoet and Mailster.
Does WP Charitable work with WooCommerce?
No. WP Charitable is a standalone donation and fundraising plugin and does not integrate with WooCommerce.
Can I translate Charitable into my language?
You can. Charitable has full localization support through the charitable textdomain. All Charitable extensions are also fully translatable. Contribute to the translation project in your language and help us make Charitable better for everyone!
How do I get support?
You can post in the support forum or reach us via our support form.
Changelog
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.12.3
- FIX: Improved support for Campaign builder text fields and non-Latin characters such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.
- FIX: Updates involving campaign headline color in the builder and resolved builder preview memory issue, which was happening in some scenarios.
- FIX: Improved Donate Button block’s label in terms of readability in certain scenarios.
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.12.2
- FIX: Reports > Overview no longer times out on long date ranges. If a report does fail, the figures are cleared and an error shown.
- FIX: The Refunds and Net columns in the Reports > Overview breakdown read zero for ranges outside the current year, and merged refunds across years.
- FIX: The optional description beside each suggested donation amount now appears in the Donate Amount block.
- FIX: Campaign template stylesheets now locate their shared helper reliably, so a campaign’s colours no longer depend on the server’s working directory.
- FIX: Security: the sort setting on the donor list shortcode is now restricted to standard sort directions, so it cannot be used to read information from the database.
- FIX: The setup wizard no longer says you have been logged out when its final step cannot reach your site. It now explains what happened and offers to retry or finish from the dashboard.
- FIX: A campaign embedding a shortcode that points back at itself, or two campaigns referencing each other, no longer loops until memory runs out.
- FIX: Removed PHP warnings and general cleanup.
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.12.1
- NEW: Added a
charitable_campaign_description_limitfilter so developers can change the word limit on the campaign description shown on the campaign page. - IMPROVED: More consistent brand colors in admin UI.
- FIX: The 24-hour limit on re-running Site Analysis is no longer reset by clearing Charitable’s cache from Settings > Advanced, or by changing a setting, a campaign, or an add-on.
- FIX: Site Analysis now tells you that you have reached the analysis limit when the service is rate-limiting your site, instead of reporting that the service is unavailable and inviting a retry that keeps the limit in place.
- FIX: Security: links on Site Analysis recommendations are now restricted to standard web addresses, so a spoofed or compromised response cannot place a script link on the screen.
- FIX: Donation CSV export no longer shows inflated “Donation Total” and “Donation Subtotal” amounts (such as 10 178,00 instead of 101,78) on sites that use a comma as the decimal separator.
- FIX: Campaign Hero background images now appear on the front end for every campaign template.
- FIX: Campaigns created with a duplicate title now have the campaign ID appended, so the two can be told apart.
- FIX: Removed PHP warnings logged the first time a campaign containing a Progress Bar block was saved.
- FIX: The fundraising progress bar now displays correctly with themes that apply their own global progress bar styles (for example Avada).
- FIX: The login prompt on the donation form now returns a failed login to your custom Charitable login page instead of the default WordPress login screen.
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.12
- NEW: Beacon (2 Columns) campaign template – includes Campaign Hero block and Mini Donation Widget (used internally).
- NEW: Free Site Analysis (Reports > Site Analysis). Get a free Fundraising Score across four areas (Activation, Health, Growth, and Optimization) with specific, prioritized recommendations.
- IMPROVED: Campaign builder rows now support a
background_imageproperty (renders as a CSS background on the row wrapper) and alockedproperty (prevents the row and its contents from being moved or deleted in the builder). - IMPROVED: Live-preview updates for campaign-hero settings — background image, logo, title, accent (theme primary), donation amounts, and donate button all reflect in the builder preview as you edit.
- IMPROVED: Cross-tab goal sync — changing the campaign goal in the Settings tab updates the Campaign Hero raised band in the Design tab preview, even before saving.
- FIX: Square — donations and refunds now handle zero-decimal currencies, and dashboard-initiated refunds are logged in the site currency.
- FIX: Donation forms on block themes now honor the
amountandperiodURL parameters. - FIX: Security hardening across the addon installer, campaign builder debug endpoint, and donation import/donor-lookup handling.
- FIX: Square (Core) – unsigned webhooks are now rejected, closing a donation-status forgery on sites with no signing secret stored.
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.11.3
- FIX: Hardened Square (Core) payment webhook processing.
Donation Form & Fundraising Campaigns v1.8.11.2
- FIX: Hardened profile avatar handling to prevent unauthorized attachment deletion.
- FIX: PayPal Commerce onboarding reliability improvements.
Screenshots
![A grid of donation form campaigns, added using the [campaigns] shortcode.](https://ps.w.org/charitable/assets/screenshot-5.png?rev=3079577)
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Best Charitable alternatives
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FAQ
Charitable: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 26, 2026
Is Charitable free?
Yes. Charitable is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Charitable safe to use in 2026?
Yes — Charitable is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 10K+ sites, is rated 4.9/5 and was last updated 4 weeks ago, and scores 94/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Charitable?
Charitable is active on 10K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 1,206,210 times since it launched in August 2015. It was downloaded 14,815 times in the last 30 days.
Does Charitable work with WordPress 7.1?
Yes. The developer has tested Charitable up to WordPress 7.1.2, the latest release. It requires WordPress 5.9 or newer.
What PHP version does Charitable need?
Charitable requires PHP 7.4 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.
When was Charitable last updated?
The latest version, 1.8.12.3, was released on August 28, 2026 (4 weeks ago).
Who makes Charitable?
Charitable is developed and maintained by Syed Balkhi.
What are the best alternatives to Charitable?
The most popular alternatives to Charitable are GiveWP (100K+ installs), HelloAsso (4K+ installs) and WP Crowdfunding (2K+ installs).
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