How to Accept Donati...
How to Accept Donations with WordPress – Best Donation Plugins
How to Accept Donations with WordPress – Best Donation Plugins
Whether you’re a nonprofit organization that relies on fundraisers or a blogger with an appreciative reader base, donations are a great way to be rewarded for your hard work. They can even help with the upkeep costs of maintaining a website. However, figuring out how to accept them on your site can be tricky.
Fortunately, if you have a WordPress site, plugins offer a simple solution. Fundraising and donation plugins give you the ability to accept payments in different currencies, create multiple campaigns, and so much more.
In this post, we’ll explain the benefits of using a donation plugin for your WordPress site. Then we’ll share six of the best donation plugins that will help you collect your funds in an effective manner. Let’s get started!
One of the biggest advantages of using WordPress is the plethora of plugins available. These extensions are a powerful way to expand the functionality of your site. So if you’re looking for a method of accepting payments, donations plugins are a smart solution.
There are many reasons to use a donation plugin. It gives you the opportunity to:
- Accept payments from multiple payment gateways, allowing donators to use their preferred method.
- Make it easy for people to donate from both desktop and mobile devices.
- Quickly and easily integrate your WordPress site with payment gateways.
If you’re a charity, donations are, of course, a major part of being able to run your organization. However, even if you’re not a non-profit, there are still many reasons to consider using a donation plugin.
Running a website can get expensive quickly. If you’re providing your audience with meaningful and unique content, you should be compensated for your work – even if you’re not providing a product for them to purchase.
Many people are more than happy and willing to show their support for websites they frequent or organizations they believe in through monetary donations. Adding a donation plugin to your site is a gentle yet effective way to inform readers that you accept donations while also making it easy for them to contribute if they wish.
Making the decision to use a WordPress donation plugin is easy. What’s more difficult is figuring out which one is best for your site.
The good news is that you have a solid selection to choose from. Let’s take a look at six of the best WordPress donations plugins to choose from in 2020!
1. Give Donation Plugin
Give is the new-ish contender to the list. Its authors are Matt Cromwell and Devin Walker, who are behind some of the most popular plugins available in the WordPress directory. They also run a small theme and plugin shop called WordImpress (and yes, they do create impressive stuff).
It markets itself as the most robust and flexible solution for accepting donations via WordPress. While this particular plugin doesn’t have many active installs as other plugins listed here, the people who have tried it seem to really like it, and it is pretty clear from the reviews on WordPress repository.
Some features that distinguish Give from other solutions include reporting of forms and exporting of forms by date range (both as CSV & PDF).
The core includes all the essential features such as:
- Standard PayPal payment gateway
- Test mode
- History of donations
- Import and export function
If you want to extend the functionality or want to add another payment gateway, you will need addons, which can be a bit pricey.
This plugin provides an intuitive solution for raising money without taking any cut from the money raised. What I like most about the plugin is its simplicity and clean design. Another great thing is that it can be used for accepting any type of payment and works smoothly with all the major payment gateways.
The Give plugin follows the ‘freemium’ model, which I think is a win-win for both the makers and the people who use it.
However, not everyone likes freemium model, and some even feel cheated for not including all the features in core solution. Another thing about the Give plugin is that it is one the newest contenders in the market, so it lacks some features like anonymous donations and profile pages.
2. Charitable
WPCharitable and Eric Daams joined forces to create the powerful and extendable fundraising plugin Charitable. Charitable is a one-of-a-kind donation plugin that gives you full control over your WordPress site’s donations.
The plugin’s key feature is that it is designed to be extremely developer-friendly and provides you with full control over your site’s fundraising and donations module. Charitable has over 10,000 active installs and boasts a full five-star rating from users. The plugin is incredibly easy to use and presents an intuitive interface for users to work with – you can have your first fundraising campaign set up and ready to go in less than five minutes!
Unlike most other donation plugins, Charitable doesn’t charge users a fee on every transaction they make. The plugin is available for free and there are no hidden transaction fees – it’s a no-brainer!
Another amazing feature about this plugin is that you can set up as many fundraising campaigns as you like and customize them according to your preferences. The extendable plugin comes with a ton of extensions for users to pick from, as well.
You won’t have to worry about the plugin’s compatibility with your site’s theme as it is designed to work with all WordPress compliant themes seamlessly.
The Charitable plugin supports donations made via PayPal right out of the box. However, if you’d like to enable more payment gateways, you will have to purchase the plugin’s premium add-ons which allow donations to be made through Stripe, Authorize.Net, and PayUMoney.
3. Paypal Donations
With over 50,000 active installations, Paypal Donations is among the most popular donation plugins in the WordPress directory. As the name suggests, the plugin is specifically designed for accepting payments via Paypal, the most recognized online money transfer service. The donation button can be added anywhere on your website including header, page, posts, sidebar, and footer using a simple shortcode.
It does a good job of collecting money. You can set the minimum or default payment, currency of your choice, button style, country, and language.
While this may be the most popular plugin in this category, it definitely lacks a few things. One of them is no simple feature to thank donors, though there is a workaround: you can create a ‘thank you’ page and redirect the donors to there.
4. Donation Thermometer
As the name suggests, this plugin adds a custom thermometer image charting the amount of donations raised. The plugin uses a simple shortcode to display classic-style thermometers on your WordPress site for your fund-raising activities.
Donation Thermometer is a simple plugin and doesn’t have a lot of features, which is okay for someone with very basic needs. The plugin does the job of displaying a simple thermometer for collecting donations quite well.
With shortcode available, you can display it anywhere you like. You can also specify the width and height of the image in the shortcode itself.
Additionally, the plugin is super easy to customize. You can easily make modifications such as changing the color and text on the image.
5. Donation Content Locker
Donation Content locker allows you to hide this particular part of your content so it ‘s only visible to those who have made donations on your site. This may not be the best way to go about collecting donations, as you are indirectly asking for a premium fee. The better option would be to turning your site into a membership area.
The plugin works similar to how most social content locker plugins do. You have to wrap the protected content with the [donationlocker] content [/donationlocker] shortcode. If people want to view your content, they must donate a small amount.
You can set the minimum amount for users. One big advantage of this plugin is that it comes with five payment gateways:
- PayPal
- AlertyPay
- Payza
- InterKassa
- Authorize.Net
After successfully making the donation, donors will receive an activation link to make the locked content visible. Donation Content Locker is a perfect way to monetize and extend the functionality of your website.
6. Donation Manager Pro
Donation Manager Pro is another great plugin that handles the donation for you. However, it is paid one and doesn’t include any support for 2Checkout. The plugin is easy to set up and comes with regular updates and support.
The plugin allows your visitors and readers to donate. Once they do, it will add them to list of donators. Currently, it supports PayPal, InterKassa, Authorize.net, EgoPay, and AlertPay.
Final Thoughts
Raising money via your site is an easy job, but it could be made that much easier by using a combination of plugins. Donation plugins make it easy for site owners, bloggers, or anyone
looking to raise money for their business venture or non-profit organization.
In this post, we discussed six of the best WordPress donation plugins to consider adding to your site:
- Give: A great overall solution that lets export report forms as both CSV and PDF.
- Charitable: A more advanced donation solution with different payment gateways, unlimited campaigns, and offline payment options.
- PayPal Donations: A simple plugin that is great if you’re looking for PayPal payments specifically.
- Donation Thermometer: A fully customizable plugin that includes an aesthetically pleasing visual of donations raised.
- Donation Content Locker: A unique donation plugin that only shows the donation content to those who have donated to your site.
- Donation Manager Pro: A premium plugin that lets you choose from an extensive list of payment gateways to connect with.
Do you have any questions about WordPress donation plugins? Let us know in the comments section below!
