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May 22, 2024

7 Best Crowdfunding Plugins for WordPress

At WPBeginner, we’ve helped many nonprofit and small business projects get off the ground, and we’ve seen how the right crowdfunding tools can make all the difference.

Sifting through the many crowdfunding plugins for WordPress can be a headache, and let’s face it: not all plugins are up to par. The right tool allows you to easily launch and scale your campaigns with minimal difficulty or fees.

That’s why we’ve done the research and put together a list of the best WordPress crowdfunding plugins so that you can find the right fit for your next venture.

What Is a Crowdfunding Plugin, and Why Do You Need One?

Fundraising can be a challenge, especially for entrepreneurs and small businesses. You might have the perfect business plan and website, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t have the funds to start it.

That’s where crowdfunding comes in. It involves raising awareness about a new business venture that you are considering developing and getting small contributions from people.

Rather than go to sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, which take a cut of your funds and restrict your ability to add customizations, a crowdfunding plugin gives you full control.

There are many advantages to crowdfunding in WordPress, such as:

Access to capital: Crowdfunding allows you to get access to capital when it may not be feasible or easy to secure funding from traditional sources like banks or other lenders.
Market validation: By presenting your idea to the public, you can gauge the interest and see if your product is something that people would actually pay for. For example, you can accept donations and include a survey form so that your team can collect valuable feedback from contributors.
Audience building: Crowdfunding allows you to reach a large number of people so you can generate awareness and build an audience. Those who contribute to your campaign will likely be loyal customers and advocates. It’s a good idea to use a plugin like MemberPress so you can give contributors a place to share their thoughts and ideas in a private forum.
Customization: You have control over your enter campaign design and branding. You can even combine other plugins to help boost your crowdfunding efforts. For example, you could use other plugins like RafflePress to incentivize others to share your campaign to increase awareness.
Data ownership: When you choose WordPress, you own the data. You can build your email list with plugins like OptinMonster, which allows you to send updates to your subscribers about your new business venture.

With all said, let’s dive into the best tools building for starting your crowdfunding campaigns.

1. Charitable

Out of all the options we tried, Charitable is the best crowdfunding plugin for WordPress. It allows you to create peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns without using a separate hosted fundraising platform, and it doesn’t charge transaction fees.

It allows you to easily build attractive fundraising pages and forms on your website. Plus, it lets you set up peer-to-peer fundraising and build brand awareness much faster, which ultimately can get you more funding for your business venture.

Charitable offers a wide range of add-ons, making it possible to handle just about any use case. For example, you can find addons like Donor Comments to add testimonials. You can also add a video introducing what your new business project is all about. It’s a great way to get people excited about the idea and increase conversions.

Here’s an example of a video, description, and donation button added to the crowdfunding form on Charitable.

Charitable comes with other cool extensions like PDF receipts, so contributors can keep their invoices for tax write-offs. Plus, you’re able to connect the plugin to email marketing services so that you can send subscribers updates about your venture, which keeps them informed and excited about what’s going on.

Pricing: Charitable starts at $69 per year. There’s also a free version of the plugin.

Pros:

Lots of add-ons to increase functionality
Plenty of payment methods
Easy to use crowdfunding form editor

Cons:

You will need to pay for the premium versions to get access to the add-ons.

Why We Recommend Charitable: Charitable is the best way to raise money with crowdfunding in WordPress. Since you can set up peer-to-peer fundraising, it allows businesses to leverage their networks to reach more people.

2. WP Simple Pay

WP Simple Pay is the best Stripe payments plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily accept donations and other types of fundraising payments on your site. One of the best things about this plugin is that you won’t need to set up an online store or even a checkout page.

You can build a crowdfunding form and embed it anywhere on your site. Plus, with its advanced form builder, you can customize it however you like. There are plenty of text fields, dropdowns, and price options to add.

The flexible donation and fundraising forms offer cool features to help drive more conversions. For example, you can create a predefined suggested donation amount to increase the average donation.

We particularly appreciated how WP Simple Pays offers recurring donations because this allows you to create a steady stream of funding for your organization. Best of all, the plugin accepts 13+ payment methods, so you can appeal to a wide range of donors from around the world.

Pricing: WP Simple Pay starts at $49.50 per year, but there is a free version available as well.

Pros:

Accepts 13+ payment methods and multiple currencies.
You can provide customizable receipts that help contributors for tax purposes.
The advanced form builder is easy to use.

Cons:

It doesn’t offer any community-building features.

Why We Recommend WP Simple Pay: We like WP Simple Pay as a quick and easy solution for accepting donations. You can choose to create payment forms or an entire donation page, and the payment process is seamless.

3. GiveWP

GiveWP is another donation plugin for WordPress with a variety of crowdfunding features. Like many of the other plugins on our list, it comes with an easy-to-use form builder so that you can easily customize the donation form without any code.

One of the best aspects of GiveWP is its mobile donation capabilities. Mobile-friendliness is integral for any business, let alone a new venture you’re starting.

The easier you can make it for contributors to donate, the better. GiveWP offers easy-to-pay options like Venmo Donations, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and even Text-to-Give. That means, with a simple text message, donors can easily contribute to your new venture anytime from anywhere.

Inside the plugin dashboard, you’ll receive real-time crowdfunding reports, so you can view metrics like top donors, average donation amounts, and more. This allows you to optimize campaigns and tweak your form or page for better conversions.

Pricing: GiveWP is free to start, but the basic plan starts at $149 per year.

Pros:

GiveWP offers a few mobile-pay options.
It provides in-depth reporting.
Easy-to-use plugin.

Cons:

The plan is pricey once you upgrade to the paid version.

Why We Recommend GiveWP: GiveWP is a comprehensive tool that gives you all the essentials for crowdfunding. It’s great if you want to prioritize mobile donations since users can easily pay through texting or popular apps like Venmo.

4. WPForms

WPForms is a contact form plugin for WordPress that can accept crowdfunding payments and other transactions. With crowdfunding forms, you can accept donations through a wide range of payment gateways, such as PayPal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.net, and others.

Chances are, if you’re building a new product or business, you’ll need other form types as well. That’s where WPForms excels. You can create forms for all sorts of purposes, like contact forms, newsletter signups, surveys, registration forms, and more. It’s an all-in-one form builder with over 1700+ templates to choose from, which is more than any other plugin on this list.

Out of all the plugins we tried, WPForms is the best for collecting user responses in your crowdfunding forms. That’s because advanced features like the smart logic condition allow you to collect relevant information based on the contributors’ responses.

For example, depending on the contribution level, you may consider adding a reward.

Let’s say VIP contributors will get access to a special launch event. In that case, you’d need to collect information about them so they can RSVP. Or if you’re sending physical rewards like gifts or merchandise, then the smart logic would prompt users to provide their shipping address for delivery purposes.

WPForms comes with a wide range of add-ons like email marketing so you can send donors updates. There are plenty of integrations with third-party apps to enhance functionality. For instance, adding integration with CRM apps allows you to follow up with contributors once your business launches.

Pricing: You can get started with WPForms for $49.50 per year, but there’s also a Lite version.

Pros:

WPForms comes with 1,700+ templates.
Smart logic is a great option for showing or hiding fields based on responses.
There are plenty of third-party integrations to increase functionality.

Cons:

It’s not a dedicated crowdfunding platform.

Why We Recommend WPForms: We like WPForms because of its wide range of templates and customizations. Beyond that, smart logic is an excellent way to show only relevant fields, which is great if you offer reward-based crowdfunding.

5. WP Crowdfunding by Themeum

WP Crowdfunding is a crowdfunding plugin that leverages the power of WooCommerce to accept and manage pledges from backers.

It’s great because it integrates with all of your other products and categories.

For example, let’s say you have a dropshipping store but want to build your own branded products and start private labeling them. Rather than investing time and resources into products your customers aren’t interested in, you can raise money to help support items that people are willing to pay for.

You can even add all of your crowdfunding campaigns in one place, similar to Kickstarter or Indiegogo. That way, visitors can see which product to support.

The plugin also has its own Native Wallet system, which tracks all of the proceeds that are raised on the crowdfunding project. That way, you don’t mix up online sales with donations. You’ll get stats along with a list of backers, so you know all the contributions made.

Pricing: WP Crowdfunding costs $149 per year for a single site.

Pros:

WP Crowdfunding connects with your WooCommerce store.
It helps you decide which products to launch.
Backers can donate visibly or anonymously.

Cons:

It only uses Stripe.

Why We Recommend WP Crowdfunding: This plugin is a great choice for online stores that want to start selling their products. Visitors can see all of the crowdfunding campaigns available to contribute to and see the progress towards each goal.

6. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is another form builder plugin, like WPForms. It comes with a wide range of donation forms, payment forms, calculator forms, contact forms, and more.

With this plugin, you can easily create donation and fundraising forms that accept payments via Stripe or Authorize.net. When using Formidable Forms, you’re taken to a visual form styler, giving you plenty of customization options. You can add a donate button, custom amounts, and just about any field you’d like.

While it is a contact form plugin, you can still view donation stats based on all the contributions made. There are beautiful graphic charts that help you visualize your campaign’s performance.

It also has integrations with powerful apps like Zapier, so you can automate workflow tasks. For example, you can set it up so that all contributors receive a thank-you message via email or text.

Overall, we found that Formidable Forms had lots of built-in customization choices. After thorough testing, we do like that it has advanced calculation features. For example, for large donations, you might include a calculator to estimate the tax-deductible portion of the donation.

Pricing: Formidable Forms starts at $39.50 per year but also offers a free version.

Pros:

Lots of form templates.
A visual form styler to customize the fundraising form to fit your brand identity.
Visual reporting to easily see campaign performance.

Cons:

It’s not specifically designed for crowdfunding purposes.

Why We Recommend Formidable Forms: This plugin could be a good choice if you need a customizable tool for collecting donations. It supports all the popular payment gateways, and you can add advanced features like calculators to your donation forms.

7. Patreon WordPress

Patreon WordPress is a fundraising plugin that allows you to connect your WordPress site to your Patreon account to boost your pledges and patrons.

Let’s say you already have a built-in audience on Patreon but want your visitors to also have access to your community. Then, you can easily import your existing Patreon posts and content.

The plugin will sync data automatically to WordPress. When donors pledge and subscribe to your Patreon, they can easily access everything from your website.

You might have a new business idea. All contributors can be added to your Patreon community, giving them exclusive access to your gated content. You can choose to restrict any single post or all of your posts. In addition, you can select the tiers or minimum pledge amount needed to access any custom post or type of post.

Pricing: Patreon WordPress is a free plugin.

Pros:

Good for creators and existing Patreon users.
It syncs from Patreon to WordPress.
You can choose to lock or unlock any single post or all posts.

Cons:

It’s not useful for anyone who doesn’t plan on using Patreon.

Why We Recommend Patreon WordPress: This is the perfect plugin for creators, artists, musicians, bloggers, and other creatives who are already on Patreon. You’ll be able to bring the power of Patreon onto your website and integrate the platforms.

How Do You Choose the Best Crowdfunding Plugin?

The right crowdfunding plugin will depend on your needs. Some plugins are specifically designed for crowdfunding, while others offer fundraising forms as part of their larger offering.

If you offer other products or services or want to set up different types of forms on your website in addition to the fundraising form, then using an all-in-one plugin could be the more cost-effective solution for you.

Beyond that, it’s vital that you provide donors with a fast and easy checkout experience. That means you should offer a wide range of payment gateways so contributors can pay using their payment method of choice.

If you’re only planning to build a few pages to gauge interest level with any of these plugins, you may want to use SeedProd. It is the best page builder plugin on the market, with a powerful drag-and-drop editor that allows you to easily create any type of page, like a landing page or a custom homepage.

That way, you don’t have to spend time building out your entire website around a particular plugin or system until you have contributors rolling in to support your business idea.

Which Is the Best Crowdfunding Plugin for WordPress?

Through all of our testing, we’ve found that the best crowdfunding plugin for WordPress is Charitable. It has all the tools you need to set up a fundraising campaign. With the peer-to-peer fundraising capability, you can have ambassadors spread the word and increase your donation amount. Beyond that, you can accept recurring donations, connect them to your newsletter software, and more.

If you just want to simply add a crowdfunding feature to your existing website, WP Simple Pay or WPForms are good, cost-effective solutions. You can add a simple crowdfunding payment form to any part of your website and start raising money.

We hope this article helped you find the best crowdfunding plugins for WordPress. You may also want to check out our list of the best WordPress themes for crowdfunding and our guide on how to increase your blog traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Crowdfunding Plugins for WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 1, 2024

How to Create a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress (Step by Step)

Do you want to create a recurring donation form in WordPress?

The right WordPress plugins allow you to easily accept recurring donations on your website. That way, your organization can gain consistent funding to help with budget planning and executing long-term projects.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a recurring donation form in WordPress.

Why Create a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress?

Recurring donations are contributions made by donors on a regular basis to support a non-profit or cause.

Instead of a one-time donation, supporters opt to set up automatic payments at specific intervals, like weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.

When running a non-profit organization, your donors are the heart and soul of your cause. One-time contributions are great, but they might not give you the predictable funding source you need.

Recurring payments provide a reliable income stream so that you can better budget and allocate financial resources. For example, you can better plan where your marketing efforts will go or how you could use that money to help those in need.

Plus, it also adds convenience. Donors can make automatic payments without manually initiating each payment. Most contributors may forget to submit a donation, so a recurring form lets them opt-in, and the payment processor will charge their card automatically.

It’s a good way to gamify contributions as well. For example, you could create a membership site using a plugin like MemberPress. The more donors contribute, the better rewards they can earn. You could add a leaderboard, and the top contributors become your VIP guests at events and receive extra recognition or other perks.

With all that said, we’ll dive into three different ways to create a recurring donation form in WordPress. Feel free to use the links below to jump to each method.

Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with Charitable
Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with WP Simple Pay
Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with WPForms

Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with Charitable

The best way to start accepting recurring donations is with Charitable. It is one of the most trusted plugins for non-profits to grow through online fundraising.

Besides building your donation form, they offer a wide range of features. For example, they include addons like Newsletter Connect so you can keep donors up to date using your email marketing service.

You can also leverage peer-to-peer fundraising, which is great if you have multiple projects or causes to support. This will allow users to choose which opportunities they want to donate to.

Plus, they offer $0 in transaction fees, meaning all of your donor’s generous donations won’t be taxed by the software.

To get started, you’ll need to download the Charitable plugin. For more details, check out our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once activated, you’ll need to go to the Charitable » Addons page. Then go ahead and click on ‘Install’ or ‘Activate’ next to the ‘Charitable Recurring Donations Addon.’

activate Charitable recurring donations addon

In addition, you’ll need to go to the Charitable » Settings page.

Under the Payment Gateways tab, click on ‘Connect with Stripe.’

Here, you’ll be taken to a setup wizard. Simply follow the walkthrough process by entering the email that is connected to your Stripe Account.

If you don’t have one, you’ll need to create one to start accepting donations.

Once you’ve connected your Stripe account to Charitable, you’ll be redirected back to the settings page.

Under Connection Status, it should say that your Stripe is ‘Connect In live mode.’

Next, we can move on to creating your donation form. Go to Charitable » Add New.

Then, a pop-up will appear, asking you to name your campaign. Give it a name and then hit ‘Create Campaign.’

Next, you’ll be taken to a window that shows you all of the available templates you can use so that you don’t have to start from scratch.

That said, they also have blank, simple 1- or 2-column layouts you can use if you don’t see something that fits your use case.

For this example, we’ll use the ‘Club / Organization’ template. Hover over the template and click ‘Create Campaign.’

create campaign from template in Charitable

You’re now ready to start editing the look and feel of your form. You can add additional form fields, edit texts, add buttons, images, and videos, or tinker with the layout.

Everything is drag and drop, so to add a form field, just drag it from the left-side panel to the right-hand editor in the position you’d like it to be.

If you want to edit an existing field, just click on the element in the editor.

Then, you can make adjustments as to what appears on the form, like the text, colors, alignment, etc. All customizations will show up in the ‘Layout Options’ tab.

Next, you’ll head over to Settings » Donation Options. Here is where you can toggle all of the options when it comes to defining the donation parameters.

Scroll to ‘Recurring Donations.’ Then turn on the option ‘Allow Recurring Donations. In addition, it’s a good idea to turn on the ‘Allow Recurring Custom Donations’ as well. That way, donors can set a custom amount that they’re comfortable with.

You may want to choose the ‘Recurring Donation Amounts’ under the Default Tab to encourage repeat contributions. If you’d like to give donors complete freedom, you can allow donors to choose their donation period.

If you continue to scroll down the page, there are also options to customize the default period and select how often donors should be billed.

This will depend on your specific cause, but in many cases, it’s good to set donation periods to at least a month or longer.

If you’re happy with how the recurring donations form looks, you’re ready to publish. Just hit the ‘Save’ button first.

Then, select the dropdown menu under draft and click on ‘Publish.’

publish recurring donations form charitable

Once you’ve published your fundraising campaign, you can now embed the form onto any page or post.

Click the ‘Embed’ button at the top.

embed recurring donations form Charitable

Then, choose ‘Select Existing Page’ to add it to a page on your website. Or if you don’t have one set up yet, hit ‘Create New Page.

From here, just choose the page to which you’d like to add the form.

Once you’ve landed on your WordPress page’s edit screen, click on the ‘+’ icon.

Then, find and add the ‘Charitable Campaign’ block to your page.

Select the campaign that you’ve just created.

Finally, hit the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to add the recurring donations form to your page.

Make sure to preview the form live to ensure that everything is working.

You might want to submit a test payment as well so that you can check that all donations go through to your Stripe account.

That’s all for creating a recurring donation form using Charitable!

Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with WP Simple Pay

WP Simple Pay is another good choice for accepting recurring payments. With over 13+ payment methods and 135+ currencies in 45+ countries, they offer the most flexibility.

That’s because you’re not just limited to credit card payments. For example, you can accept mobile payments such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, or even Venmo payments. In addition, they support ACH Direct Debits, Afterpay, Klarna, and others.

Step 1: Install the WP Simple Pay Plugin and Connect Your Stripe Account

To begin, you’ll need to download the WP Simple Pay plugin. Once activated, you’ll need to go through the WP Simple Pay Setup Wizard, which will walk you through the process step by step.

It’ll also lead you to connect WP Simple Pay with Stripe. All you’ll need to do is enter the email address that’s linked to your Stripe account.

But if you don’t have an existing Stripe account, then you can just set one up.

Now, you’re ready to create a donation form. Navigate to the WP Simple Pay » Add New page.

Step 2: Create Your Recurring Donations Form

You’ll be directed to select a template. Choose a template that fits your needs. For this tutorial, we’ll select the Mission Trip Fundraising Form. Simply hover over the option and select ‘Use Template.’

use mission trip fundraising form template

Once you’ve chosen the template, you’ll be sent to the form builder to configure the options inside.

You can feel free to customize the title and the description of the form. As for the ‘Type,’ you can leave it as an on-site payment form.

Also, you can choose to add a CAPTCHA to the form to avoid spam from bots.

From here, you can navigate to the ‘Payment’ tab to ensure you charge recurring donations.

Under the ‘Price Options,’ expand the dropdown options for each donation amount. Or if there’s a different payment amount you’d like to add, click ‘Add Price.’

Once you’ve expanded the dropdown, feel free to give it a label if necessary or leave it blank. Then click on the ‘Subscription’ button instead of one-time, so that all donors will charged on a recurring basis.

In addition, make sure to check the box “Allow amount to be determined by user” if you want to give them the flexibility to choose their contribution amount.

Setting a minimum amount is a good idea, too, since that ensures you at least get a contribution that is meaningful to your cause while still allowing donors the freedom to pay an amount they’re comfortable with.

Then, scroll to the ‘Billing Period’ and select the frequency of each payment. You can choose to charge the donor daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

For the invoice limit, you can set a limit on how many times they will be charged. This is good if you’d like to send an end date for recurring payments. For instance, if a mission trip has a defined deadline, you can choose to charge donors monthly payments up to 12 times. You can also leave this option blank.

Additionally, you can give users a free trial option or add a setup fee.

At the bottom of the screen, you can also select the various payments you’d like to accept.

More payment options can improve your conversion rates and allow more contributors to choose their preferred payment method.

If you head over to the Form Fields tab, you can also customize the field options in your donation form. Just expand each field to make adjustments.

If you want to add a field to the existing form template, just select the dropdown menu next to the ‘Add Field’ button.

For instance, if you wanted to contact all donors via the phone, you could ask for their phone number. Or, if you want to send all donors a gift package for large contributions, you can ask for a shipping address.

It’s a good idea to also add a thank you message once donors have made their contribution. It gives them confidence that their funds have been received.

Just go to the Confirmation Page tab and type the message you want to appear after they’ve made their donation.

Step 3: Publish the Recurring Donation Form.

Once you’re happy with the recurring donations form, you’re ready to publish it.

On the right side of the screen, hit ‘Publish.’

Next, go to your donations page or any existing post or page to which you’d like to add this form.

Click on the ‘+’ icon and select the WP Simple Pay block.

From there, you can choose the form you’ve just created.

And then click on ‘Publish’ or ‘Update.’

publish mission trip recurring donation form

Make sure to preview the form to see if everything looks right and that donation payments are going through to your Stripe account.

There you have it for this method!

mission trip fundraising recurring form preview

Creating a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress with WPForms

You can also use WPForms to accept recurring donations. WPForms is the best WordPress form builder with 1,500+ templates, including a variety of donation forms.

It’s a good method if you need to also create other forms, such as contact forms, opt-in forms, multi-page forms, user registration forms, surveys and polls, etc.

Step 1: Connect WPForms to Stripe

To begin, download the WPForms plugin. Upon activation, go ahead and WPForms » Settings. Then, head over to the Payments tab.

The default currency is configured to US dollars; however, you can change it to any currency if you’d like. Then scroll down and click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button. This allows you to connect WPForms to your Stripe account to collect credit card payments.

From here, you’ll need to enter your email address or create a new Stripe account.

Make sure to follow the instructions laid out in the Stripe Connect setup wizard to finish the process.

After you’ve gone through the process, you’ll be sent back to the WPForms setting page in your WordPress dashboard.

In the Payments tab, you’ll see a green checkmark indicating that Stripe is connected to WPForms.

Once connected, you’re ready to start building your recurring donations form.

Step 2: Create a Recurring Donations Form

Next, go to WPForms » Add New. This takes you over to the drag-and-drop editor to build your new form.

Go ahead and enter a name for your form so that you can keep track of it should you have to make edits in the future.

Then, search and select the Variable Donation Form template. There are other donation form templates you can also use, so you might want to experiment with them to see which is right for you.

Click on ‘Use Template.’

Now, you can customize the form and add any additional fields that make sense for your donations page.

You can edit any existing field by clicking on the element and then making the changes under the ‘Field Options’ tab.

Since you’re automatically charging donors credit cards, you probably want to make it crystal clear that you’ll be taking recurring payments.

You can make a note in the description tab as a disclaimer.

You can also go to the ‘Add Fields’ tab to add any additional fields that aren’t already on the form template.

For example, there’s a wide range of options you may want to consider, like adding a reCAPTCHA for security measures or a phone number if you plan on contacting your donors individually.

Simply drag the buttons to the editor to add the desired field option.

Step 3: Enable Recurring Payments

Next, head over to the Payments » Stripe tab. Then, turn on the option to ‘Enable recurring subscription payments.’

enable recurring subscriptions in WPForms

Once activated, you’ll have more options appear. You’ll be able to edit the Plan Name, which is a title that appears in your Stripe transactions.

Also, you can edit the Recurring Period. This is how often the credit card will be charged for recurring donations. In the dropdown menu, select the time periods available, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.

Once that is done, all you have to do is add the form to any WordPress page. Click ‘Save’ at the top to save all the changes you’ve made.

Then, click on the ‘Embed’ button.

Assuming you already have a donations page, you can choose ‘Select Existing Page’ and pick the page you want to add the form to.

But if you don’t have one, hit the ‘Create New Page’ button.

Now that you’re on the page, click on the ‘+’ icon.

Then, add the WPForms block to the page.

From here, select the recurring donations form you’ve just created.

Then hit ‘Publish.’

Lastly, go ahead and preview the page to make sure that everything looks good.

Also, check that you can accept payments to your Stripe account.

On the WPForms Payments page, you’ll be able to see all of the total payments, sales, and subscriptions you’ve received.

That way, you can track the performance of your donation form.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a recurring donation form in WordPress. You may also want to see our detailed guide on how to speed up your WordPress site or our tutorial on how to start an online store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Recurring Donation Form in WordPress (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 24, 2022

Awesome Motive Acquires WP Charitable Plugin

Awesome Motive, makers of popular plugins like OptinMonster, WPForms, and MonsterInsights, acquired WP Charitable this week. The plugin is used by more than 10,000 non-profits for creating fundraising campaigns and collecting online donations. It does not charge any transaction fees and currently has a 4.9/5-star average rating on WordPress.org.

“Wes and I launched Charitable in 2015 because we were tired of seeing non-profits use hosted fundraising platforms that charge hefty fees and strip them of the ability to brand and control their donation pages,” WP Charitable co-founder Eric Daams said in his farewell post.

“After being a small team splitting our time on the product as well as our agency business for the last 7 years, we are ready to pass the reins to someone who shares the same passion and has the resources to make Charitable even better than it is today.”

Awesome Motive CEO Syed Balkhi said the company’s non-profit users had long been requesting a beginner-friendly donations plugin. They could either acquire one or build one from scratch. WP Charitable’s timing to sell coincided with Awesome Motive’s next move on expanding tools for non-profit customers.

“As you know, at Awesome Motive, our mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys,” Balkhi said. “Our software today powers over 20 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.

“Along with our core mission, we believe that companies should be forces for good.

“The WP Charitable plugin allows us to use our knowledge, experience, and resources to empower those who are changing the world for good.”

WP Charitable’s chief competitor is GiveWP, a donation plugin and fundraising platform with more than 100,00 users. While WP Charitable doesn’t collect any transaction fees whatsoever, one of the big differences with GiveWP is that it collects a 2% fee on Stripe donations taken via the company’s free Stripe integration with GiveWP core. There are no fees for GiveWP’s commercial Stripe add-on.

Demonstrating one of the more endearing aspects of the WordPress ecosystem where competitors often support each other, GiveWP co-founder Matt Cromwell congratulated WP Charitable on the acquisition.

WP Charitable co-founders said current users can expect “business as usual” without any interruptions. They will be helping the transition process but moving on to their own new endeavors. David Bisset will be leading product development moving forward with Awesome Motive. Balkhi said he has an “an extensive list of ideas and a feature roadmap” that the company will begin working on with the plugin’s new team.

June 22, 2022

Welcome WP Charitable to the WPBeginner Family of Products

Today, I’m extremely excited to share that WP Charitable is joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

WP Charitable is a top-rated WordPress donation and fundraising plugin. Over 10,000+ non-profit organizations and website owners across the world use Charitable to create fundraising campaigns and raise more money online.

Welcome WP Charitable to the WPBeginner Family

Introduction to WP Charitable – Quick Overview

WP Charitable makes it easy for non-profits and fundraisers to collect more donations worldwide.

Unlike other non-profit donation platforms, Charitable does not charge any transaction fees, so more money can go towards supporting your great cause.

Charitable is a top-rated WordPress donation and fundraising plugin because it’s both easy and powerful. It comes with all the features you need including fully customizable donation forms, ability to accept one-time or recurring donations, easy donation management dashboard, GDPR compliance, annual donor receipts, gift giving in honor of someone else, fee relief which allows donors to cover payment process fees, and more.

You can also use Charitable for peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, and it even lets you create your own crowdfunding platform like GoFundMe or Indiegogo.

Peer to Peer Fundraising in WordPress with WP Charitable

Charitable supports multiple currency and payment gateways, so you can accept donations from anywhere in the world.

The plugin has built-in payment integrations for Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, Braintree, Mollie, GoCardless, Paystack, Payfast, Payrexx, Windcave, and more.

WP Charitable Payment Gateway Integrations for WordPress

You can also stay connected with your donors through the email marketing feature which integrates seamlessly with Mailchimp, MailerLite, Active Campaign, Campaign Monitor, Mailster, Mailpoet, and 5000+ other marketing automation platforms using either Zapier or Webhooks.

And if you’re a developer, WP Charitable comes with custom hooks, filters, donation fields API, and extensive developer documentation, so you can customize the plugin based on your project needs.

To celebrate this big occasion, we’re offering up to $100 off on WP Charitable.

Get WP Charitable Plugin →

You can also use the free version of Charitable to get started.

Background Story – Why WP Charitable?

As you know, every year I do a WPBeginner reader survey where I ask for your suggestions on what new tutorials we should write, plugins we should build, new features we should add to our existing plugins, and so on.

For the last three years, the number of requests from our non-profit users to build a beginner-friendly WordPress donation plugin has been increasing.

Our first response to the survey request was to create a discounted WPForms plan for non-profits that makes it easy for non-profit organizations to create online donation forms while also getting access to all the powerful features of WPForms form builder which is used by 5 million websites.

This was much appreciated by a lot of users, but some organizations still didn’t have a budget for a discounted plan.

So last year, we acquired WP Simple Pay, which as the name suggests is a simple online payment plugin that lets you accept payments using Stripe credit card, ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.

It even has a free version which solved the problem for a lot of smaller non-profit organizations that were on a tight budget.

The downside for a group of organizations was that it’s restricted to Stripe payment gateway only, and it lacked all the other powerful features that one would expect from a full donation & fundraising platform.

So after reviewing the 2022 WPBeginner reader survey results along with the WPForms user feedback, we decided that it was finally time for us to build a WordPress donations plugin that’s both easy and powerful.

We had two options, build from scratch or see if there was an existing solution in the market that we could simply acquire and add the features you all have been asking for.

Luckily, the timing aligned with the founders of Charitable, and we were able to make the deal happen where WP Charitable would join the Awesome Motive family of products.

The two co-founders will not be joining the team as they are focusing on other ventures instead.

I was able to convince one of the most highly respected and well-known WordPress developers, David Bisset, to join our team and lead the WP Charitable project.

David and I have known each other for nearly a decade. We both live in Florida, and we were co-organizers of the WordCamp Miami event.

I am excited to work alongside David as we work to build the best online fundraising platform for WordPress and the web.

As you know, at Awesome Motive, our mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Our software today powers over 20 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.

Along with our core mission, we believe that companies should be forces for good.

The WP Charitable plugin allows us to use our knowledge, experience, and resources to empower those who’re changing the world for good.

What’s Coming Next?

Our work is just starting.

We have an extensive list of ideas and feature roadmap from the feedback that you, the WPBeginner audience, have shared with us in the survey.

I’m looking forward to making those ideas come to life.

This is truly going to be a game changer!

If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the WP Charitable plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

Lastly, I just want to say how humbling it is to have this opportunity to serve so many great organizations and make a positive impact in our world.

The impact WP Charitable will have on the world is part of YOUR legacy too.

WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.

Thank you so much for your continued support of WPBeginner and me over the last 13 years.

And I look forward to continue serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

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