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Nonprofit organizations help make this world a better place to live. They play a vital role in helping the society engineer a positive change amongst the masses. In order to spread awareness about their cause, many nonprofit organizations have to rely on their website – as a sole source of collecting funds – in today’s digital landscape. Although many nonprofit organizations operate on a limited budget, that shouldn’t stop them from running a powerful website.

A scalable Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress can help you spread awareness about your cause and WordPress donation plugins can help you raise funds with ease. It doesn’t matter whether you volunteer, work with a philanthropist, or are bootstrapping on your own, this article will help you to identify the best WordPress donation plugins for your nonprofit organization so that you can generate funds with minimum effort.

The Science behind a successful Nonprofit Website:

In simple terms, the science behind any nonprofit website revolves around two components. One is an effective CMS and the other one is a reliable web hosting solution.

Let’s delve deeper!

You cannot undermine the power of a well-built website, and WordPress is an excellent choice for nonprofit organizations, regardless of their size. At some point or the other, your volunteers, partners, donors and every person who shows interest in your cause will visit your website for additional information, henceforth, you must prepare yourself.

Why Nonprofit Organizations should use WordPress?

Amongst the obvious, the following are the primary reasons why nonprofit organizations must consider WordPress to build an engaging website and highlight their cause.

• • It’s free to download and customize
  • It’s easy to learn and use, compared to other CMSs
  • A wide range of WordPress themes for nonprofit organizations is available
  • Various WordPress plugins for nonprofit organizations allow them to add powerful features on their website

• A huge online community of WordPress experts is available to help you support, document, and code so that you can come up with the best website possible.

Web Hosting for Nonprofit Organizations

Shared hosting or dedicated hosting is not viable for nonprofit organizations as they are heavy on the budget and can’t sustain the sudden traffic spikes. Henceforth, cloud hosting is the ideal solution that can allow nonprofit organizations to scale their website.

Cloud hosting is pocket-friendly, scalable, and optimized for fast performance. One of the top cloud hosting providers available today include DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Engine. Cloud hosting can be technical for some, however, you can always opt for a managed cloud hosting platform like Cloudways that offers managed WordPress hosting solutions.

Payment Gateways

A payment gateway technically is a fraud prevention technique practiced by international payment processors. They protect your donors’ credit or debit card information during and after the donation process which goes like this:

• Step 1: Donor makes a contribution
• Step 2: Information goes into the payment gateway
• Step 3: Donation transferred into the payment processor’s account
• Step 4: Donor information goes into a database
• Step 5: Money is deposited in the nonprofit’s account

To list a few, some top payment processors for nonprofit organizations available today are iATS Payments, BluePay and ClearView CRM.

WordPress Donation Plugins for Nonprofit Organizations

WordPress plugins can enhance the functionality of your website which the basic themes are unable to do so. Considering different aspects such as quickly indexing on SERPs or fundraising, the arsenal of WordPress plugins can provide you more control of your website. However, my goal here is to provide you with a list of the best WordPress Donation Plugins for Nonprofit Organizations. Thence, without further ado, consider the following donation plugins as one amongst the best available today.

1. Give

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 60,000

WordPress Version: 4.8 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

Give WordPress plugin is one of the most downloaded WordPress donation plugins. You can install Give and purchase additional add-ons to extend the functionality of your website.

Overall, this plugin provides an ample amount of functionalities so that you can customize your fundraising platform as per your requirements. It lets you easily integrate various third-party payment gateways and services like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net. You can also keep a track of your donations via Google Analytics.

Furthermore, it lets you receive donations with the assistance of customizable donation forms. It also generates tax deducted receipts for your donors. With a complete donor management system, you can analyze various reports that deliver a complete summary of the donation activities. You can also add goals, your terms, and conditions, alongside the option to donate multiple amounts.

Pricing

Basic: $20 per month (billed annually)

Plus: $30 per month (billed annually)

Pro: $40 per month (billed annually)

2. Charitable

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 10,000

WordPress Version: 4.1 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

Charitable donation plugin is both developer-friendly as well as user-friendly. Its users can work with a comprehensive interface and get their fundraising campaign up and running within minutes. Great thing is that it’s compatible with almost every standard WordPress theme.

With more than 10,000 active installs, Charitable boasts a 5-star rating from its users.  Unlike other top donation plugins for WordPress, it doesn’t charge its users a fee on every donation/transaction.

Pricing

Starter: Pay What You Want (Min $19)

Plus: $99 per year

Pro: $249 per year

3. PayPal Donations

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 50,000

WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

PayPal Donations plugin is a popular donation plugin in the WordPress directory. As the name suggests, this trending WordPress donation plugin can accept payments or donations via Paypal – the most trusted global money transfer service.

This free WordPress plugin lets you add a donation button on any web page, post or sidebar by using a simple pre-generated shortcode or widget. Also, the option of changing different settings, comprising currency, custom payment page style, and the return page truly sets it apart from the rest.

Pricing

Free

4. Seamless Donations

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 10,000

WordPress Version: 3.4 or higher

Rating: 4 stars

This great WordPress donation plugin is free and offers an extremely quick set up process. Your non-profit business website will be ready to accept donations within five minutes after installing this plugin.

Seamless Donations offers its services in more than 20 currencies. Your donors can choose whether to make a one-time donation or a recurring donation, depending on your cause. Also, it lets you send custom thank you emails once the donation has been made. Moreover, it’s premium add-ons can extend your website’s functionality and help you make the most out of your fundraising campaigns.

Pricing

Free

5. Woo Donations

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 1,000

WordPress Version: 3.0.1 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

If you’re running an online store on WooCommerce, you can make Woo Donations a part of your nonprofit website and accept donations through your ecommerce store.

The core functionality of this WordPress plugin is that it adds the donation as a regular product. Your customers can add the donation/product to their shopping cart, and pay for it without any actual product in return unless you choose to offer giveaways against a donation for your cause.

When the customer actually purchases a tangible product from your online store and also donates to your cause in the same transaction, Woo Donations adds everything to the customer’s total amount. It creates and delivers reports on the backend, which also informs you how many donations you have collected, and how much revenue is coming in from regular sales.

Pricing

Free

6. Smart Donations

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 3,000

WordPress Version: 3.1 or higher

Rating: 4 stars

This unique WordPress donation plugin proudly promotes itself as an ‘all-in-one donation plugin’. Smart Donations lets you create customizable donation forms for various nonprofit causes, analyze the results of the fundraising campaign, and later on send thank you emails to generous donors.

As soon as you install it, you can create different donation campaigns, set various goals, create custom donation forms, as well as automate thank you emails. Regardless, talking about compatible payment gateways, Smart Donations only accepts PayPal and Stripe for the time being.

Pricing:

Personal: $19.99

Pro: $29.99

Unlimited: $49.99

7. Donorbox

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 5,000

WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

It is another freemium WordPress donation plugin that only charges a 1.5% platform fee when you receive a donation of over $1000 per month. Donorbox will allow you to seamlessly embed a custom donation form on your nonprofit website where you can customize each and every field.

You can deploy Donorbox form(s) in 15 minutes, and brand your donation page with your own brand’s color scheme, styling or logo. You can customize input fields in order to make your donation forms more comprehensive and quick to complete. You can set amounts for donors to choose from whereas they can specify their own amount of donation as well.

Donorbox accepts a range of currencies via Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. With a quick and easy checkout process, you can double your donations with its seamless employer donation matching feature. Their forms are localized in various languages like English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

Pricing:

Free

8. Cryptocurrency Donation Box

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 700

WordPress Version: 4.5 or higher

Rating: 4.5 stars

With cryptocurrencies taking the world wide web by storm, you might consider adding Cryptocurrency Donation Box to your nonprofit website. Despite you’re generating funds for a noble cause, or just wish to keep your website alive, this suitable WordPress donation plugin offers an innovative approach to attract donors who are willing to donate via crypto coins.

This donation plugin exclusively accepts over twenty different cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and many more. With its beautiful crypto donation box design and mobile-friendly responsiveness, you can generate donations in the form of crypto coins with ease.

Pricing:

Free

9. YITH Donations for WooCommerce

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 800

WordPress Version: 3.5.1 or higher

Rating: 4 stars

One of the best WooCommerce donation plugins is YITH Donations. You can use it in your online stores to generate more revenue or raise funds for a nonprofit cause. As soon as you install and activate this donation plugin, you can start raising donations immediately.

You can associate the donation form to a single product or multiple products by ensuring you name each donation project differently. Additionally, this plugin comes with a donation widget which you can easily attach on to your sidebars or footer section.

Pricing:

Single Site: € 49.99 ($55 approx)

Six Sites: € 99.99 ($110 approx)

Thirty Sites: € 169.99 ($188 approx)

10. Direct Stripe

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: 3,000

WordPress Version: 4.7 or higher

Rating: 4.5 stars

Stripe itself is a popular payment gateway. If your nonprofit organization is seeking donations for a cause with just one payment provider i.e. Stripe, then this is the perfect WordPress donation plugin for you.

Direct Stripe allows you to receive Stripe payments, subscriptions, and more importantly donations, on your WordPress website without hassle. It enables you to add high-converting Stripe donation forms and buttons to your nonprofit website.

You can easily customize the buttons and forms, and add them to your website using a shortcode. Moreover, you can also automate emails and send them to your donors each time they make a contribution.

Pricing:

Free

11. Donation Content Locker

Plugin Specifications

Active installations: N/A

WordPress Version: 3.0 or higher

Rating: 5 stars

This savvy donation plugin for WordPress lets you restrict content and display it to only those who contribute to your cause with a donation.

With pre-generated shortcodes, it wraps protected content and asks your website visitors for a minimum donation (set by you) to access the content. Once the donation is made, the donor receives an activation link that allows them to unlock all the protected content.

Donation Content Locker is a user-friendly WordPress plugin that allows you to monetize your nonprofit website with ease and ultimately increase donations.

Price:

Regular License: $16

Extended License: $80

By and large,

There you have it! The list of 10 best WordPress donation plugins that are currently on a roll among nonprofit organizations. These donation plugins aim to make the lives easier of nonprofit organizations so that they can raise funds for charity, or any other noble cause in order to make this world a better place. If you’re using any other donation plugin that is not mentioned in this list, please let us know in the comments section below.

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