Have you ever heard about crowdfunding, that is gaining large sums of money from online supporters. For bloggers and small business owners, it’s important to be aware doing this kind of fundraising. But the truth is it’s also hard for them to implement fundraising campaign WordPress plugin well.
Fundraising Campaign helps non-profit organizations to easily support fundraising campaigns on their website. It’s a free, open source WordPress plugin providing users with all tools necessary for online fundraising.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Donation Plugin
There are dozens of WordPress donation plugins available in the market. The problem is that not all of them are easy to use, and a lot of them lack customization options.
Accepting donation payments on your WordPress website is an extremely important task.
You need a donation plugin that is reliable, works on mobile as well as desktop computers, supports your preferred payment gateway, sends receipts to donors, allow donors to make recurring donations, and is customizable enough to look good on your website.
On top of all that, you want a WordPress donation plugin that charges the least amount of fees. Ideally it should either be free or fixed yearly payment vs something that charges a percentage fee on all your donations.
We used the above criteria to compare the best WordPress donation plugins for non-profits and charities.
Here’s our editorial pick for the top WordPress donation and fundraising plugins.
1. WPForms
WPForms is the most beginner friendly drag & drop form builder for WordPress. It comes with a built-in form template to create an online donation form on your website.
A lot of smaller charities and non-profits don’t need a full-featured giveaway platform. Instead they just want a simple and easy to customize donation form that can accept one-time and recurring donations.
WPForms offer you just that. It integrates with both PayPal, Stripe, and Square integration, so you can securely collect donations via credit card right on your website.
Since WPForms is a more comprehensive form builder, it can also serve multiple purposes for a charity website such as contact form, survey forms, polls, email newsletter signup form, volunteer signup form, etc.
WPForms seamlessly integrates with all major email marketing services and CRM platforms like Constant Contact, SendinBlue, AWeber, MailChimp, and hundred others.
WPForms free plugin is used by over 4 million websites, but you will need their payment addons to accept online donations. They offer a special discounted license for non-profits at only $99 / year which is 75% off their regular price.
This gives you all of their Pro features that lets you build donation forms as well as other types of forms that we mentioned above. You can see the full list of over 300+ form template demos here.
Note: WPForms is a sister company of WPBeginner. The plugin was co-created by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi.
2. WP Simple Pay
WP Simple Pay is another popular WordPress payment plugin that’s specifically designed to help you collect one-time or recurring payments.
Many non-profit organizations use WP Simple Pay because their payment forms are optimized for mobile, and it comes with built-in support for credit card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH debit payments, and more.
The best part about WP Simple Pay is that it has full multi-language and multi-currency support.
Although WP Simple Pay doesn’t charge any processing fee, you will still have to pay the bank processing fees which you do with every other platform. However WP Simple Pay makes it easy for you to add an option for donors to cover the payment processing fees.
There’s also a free version of WP Simple Pay available that lets you do one-time donation payments. However if you want to accept recurring payments, then you will need to upgrade to Pro.
3. GiveWP
GiveWP is one of the best WordPress plugins for non-profits to accept donations and raise funds for your cause.
Although the interface isn’t as easy as WPForms, GiveWP offers a way to create a custom donation form inside WordPress to accept one-time donations as well as recurring donation options.
You can integrate with a wide variety of payment gateways to accept credits card donation payments including Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal, 2Checkout, Braintree, Mollie, Paytm, PayFast, Square, AmeriCloud, Paymill, and many more.
GiveWP also allows you to fine-tune just about every aspect of your donation process with features like customizable donation tributes like “in honor of”, multi-level donations, campaign level donation goals / incentives, currency switcher options, tax deductible donation receipts, and more.
It comes with a complete donor management area with full-featured reporting, so you can easily manage all your donations (both online and offline donations).
GiveWP integrates with all major email marketing services, so you can easily communicate with your donors about seasonal gift giving campaigns.
If you run an online store with WooCommerce, then GiveWP allows you to add a donation upsell on the checkout screen, and they have seamless Google Analytics integration with enhanced eCommerce tracking.
GiveWP’s offers a free WordPress donation plugin, but you will have to upgrade to their yearly paid plans to unlock all the powerful addons and features. Basic paid plan starts at $240 / year, but you will need the Plus plan ($360 / yr) to get all their add-ons.
4. Easy PayPal Donation
Easy PayPal Donation is a free WordPress donation plugin that lets you add a PayPal donate button on your website.
Your website visitors can click on the button and send donations using their PayPal account or credit card.
This is a very simple donation plugin that comes with 7 button templates, and you also have the option to upload a custom button style to match your design.
The goal of this plugin is to make it easy to connect your PayPal account with WordPress and receive the donations. This plugin also allows visitors to choose recurring monthly donation options.
We have this plugin listed as #3 not because it’s the most feature-rich, but because sometimes you may not need all the features that plugins GiveWP and WPForms offer.
If you don’t want to customize your donation form and want a straight-forward solution that’s completely free for accepting one-time donations, then this plugin can do the job for you.
For setting up recurring donations, you will need their Pro version which costs $59.95 / year at which point you’re better off going with WPForms because you get a lot more value.
5. WP Crowdfunding
WP Crowdfunding is a powerful WordPress fundraising plugin that helps you create a fundraising backer site like GoFundMe or KickStarter.
You can use the crowdfunding campaign style only for your charities or even offer an aggregate fundraising platform for other charities in your network.
It integrates with Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and all WooCommerce gateways if you choose to process your payments with WooCommerce. WP Crowdfunding Native wallet system allows you to track pledges for each campaign and distribute funds accordingly to individual stakeholders.
If you’re looking to create an aggregate crowdfunding site like GoFundMe, then you also have the option to charge a commission fee for helping other charities collect donations.
The base plugin is free, but you will need to upgrade to the paid plan to unlock full features which starts at $149 / year.
6. Charitable
Charitable is an easy WordPress donation plugin that allows you to create unlimited fundraising campaigns and set goals for your cause.
You can select a fixed donation amount, add a custom amount, or both. You can embed the donation form on your pages, posts, sidebars, and modal popups.
While the base plugin is free, you do have to upgrade to their Plus plan ($99 / year) to unlock their payment gateways like Stripe, Authorize.net, etc as well as newsletter sign up forms.
If you want recurring donations, crowdfunding, peer to peer fundraising, donor fee relief, and other powerful features, then you will need their Pro plan which costs $249 / year.
7. Cryptocurrency Donation Box
As the name suggests, Cryptocurrency Donation Box focuses on helping you accept donations via various cryptocurrencies, with support for 50+ different cryptocurrencies.
You can use the plugin’s settings to add the wallet address(es) where you want to accept payment. Then, you can easily display them anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
If you want to accept donations via multiple currencies, your visitors can use the tabbed interface to see the wallet for their preferred currency. The plugin also displays a QR code so that people can donate more easily.
Overall, it’s quite simple, but it gives you exactly what you need to accept cryptocurrency donations on WordPress.
💵 Price: Free.
👍 Pros:
- Supports 50+ currencies.
- The QR code makes it easy for people to donate.
- Very simple.
👎 Cons:
- No special donation features – it just displays wallets.
GET CRYPTOCURRENCY DONATION BOX
8. Your Favorite Form Plugin
Ok, this one isn’t a single plugin. But I think it’s worth pointing out that most quality WordPress form plugins can also make a great solution for donations if you just need an easy way to create a donation form.
They’ll let you create a custom donation form using their drag-and-drop form builders. Then, you can hook that form up to your preferred payment gateway to process the payments. For example, check out this tutorial from the Gravity Forms team.
Here are some popular form plugins that can make a good option for donations:
Basically, as long as your chosen form plugin supports payment forms, you can use it as a WordPress donation form plugin.
Price: Most form plugins only offer payment integrations in their premium versions, so expect to pay $49+.
👍 Pros:
- Use your existing form plugin – no need to add a new plugin.
- This approach is very flexible.
- Most form plugins make it easy to connect to Zapier or third-party tools.
👎 Cons:
- Most form plugins charge for payment integrations.
- Not 100% focused on donations.
Which Is the Best WordPress Donation Plugin?
The best WordPress donation plugin for you really depends on what you’re looking for:
- Are you a non-profit looking for a tool to help you run your fundraising efforts? Or do you otherwise need a tool that can help you manage full-service fundraising campaigns?
- Are you just looking for a way to add a simple donation button or form for your website?
Best WordPress Fundraising Plugin for Nonprofits
If you need a full-service WordPress fundraising plugin, GiveWP is the overall best option because of its user-friendly interfaces and advanced features, while Charitable can be good if you want to save money and/or need peer-to-peer fundraising.
Donorbox could also be an option here if you like the SaaS approach, but remember that you’ll have to give up 1.5% of your donations on top of payment processing fees.
Conclusions
Here it is, the mother of all fundraising campaigns. If you’re doing this the old-fashioned way, using paper lists, you are seriously missing out on some big benefits. But what really makes this plugin stand out is how it’s designed to thrive without needing updates. When you design for the future, your work becomes easier and has higher lifetime value. This plugin will be around for a very long time.