Are you looking for the best WordPress donation plugins?
Collecting online donations is a very effective way to raise funds for a non-profits, charities, relief funds, and special causes.
In this article, we will share the best WordPress donation and fundraising plugins that will help you easily collect one time donations as well as recurring donations using PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce, other credit card processors, and even cryptocurrency.
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. GiveWP
GiveWP is one of the best WordPress plugins for non-profits to accept donations and raise funds for your cause.
What makes GiveWP standout and earn the top-ranked spot in our best WordPress donation plugin list is their complete set of features along with their non-profit friendly pricing model.
GiveWP makes it easy to create a custom donation form inside WordPress to easily setup 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.
2. 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 and Stripe, 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 2 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 150 form template demos here.
Note: WPForms is a sister company of WPBeginner. The plugin was co-created by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Seamless Donations
Seamless Donations is a free donations plugin for WordPress. It gives you complete control to collect and manage donations within the WordPress dashboard.
Seamless Donation works with PayPal, so users can make donations using their PayPal account or credit cards.
You can accept one-time donations or recurring donation payments. You can also allow users to select which campaign they want their funds allocated.
Unlike other plugins, Seamless donation sells few addons on an a-la carte basis such as Thank You Enhanced which lets you setup custom thank you pages and Giving Level Manager which lets you attribute custom donation levels.
7. Donorbox
Donorbox is a powerful donation form plugin that works on both WordPress as well as standalone websites.
It allows you to setup one time donations as well as monthly, annual, and weekly recurring donations. You have the option to do company gift matching and accept company donations.
Donorbox allows you to accept payments from credit cards as well as popular payment platforms like Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal Express with One-Touch, and ACH bank payments for US and Europe based donors.
It also comes with many other powerful features like Goal Meter, Donation popup forms, multi-currency support, donor wall, donor profile, complete donor management, end of year tax receipts, and so much more.
The reason why we have Donorbox listed towards the bottom in our list is because their pricing is not friendly to non-profits.
While they let you collect free donations for up to $1,000 per month, you will have to pay a 1.5% platform fee for all other amounts. This platform processing fee is in addition to the payment processing fees that are added by Stripe, PayPal, and other banks.
They do have the option to have your donors cover the fees, but we believe its better to use a platform like GiveWP where more of the donation money goes towards the actual cause.
Donorbox also charges separate monthly fees for various email marketing and CRM integrations.
To be fair, out of other SaaS donation platforms like Crowdrise, Donately, etc, Donorbox is by far the most affordable.
The reason why you may want to use the Donorbox platform is because they take away the technical management headache away from you.
You don’t have to worry about the security of your payment infrastructure because it’s all handled by their team.
8. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is the most advanced WordPress forms plugin. It allows you to easily create complex forms with drag and drop builder.
It has tons of form templates including a pre-built template to collect online donations. You can view the donation stats in graphical charts within the WordPress dashboard.
The plugin allows you to export the form data outside WordPress. It also gives you the option to import your donation entries from third-party services. Formidable Forms is fully compatible with the WPML translation plugin to translate the form in any language.
9. Donation Thermometer
Donation Thermometer is a classic WordPress donation plugin. It uses a thermometer style parameter to display the collected funds and your target amount.
It is ideal for sharing your fundraising campaign with your website visitors and motivate them to help out. It is also perfect for organizers to see how close or far away they are from their fundraising target
The thermometer is fully customizable for colors, text, currency, meter size, and more. You can use a shortcode to display the donation thermometer in your posts and pages. All settings are easy and manageable within WordPress.
It’s important to note that this plugin DOES NOT help you accept any donations. You can use it alongside any of the other WordPress donation plugins in this article.
10. PayPal Donations
PayPal Donations is another free WordPress PayPal donation plugin to raise funds for charities and non-profits. You can use their sidebar widget or the shortcode to add the PayPal donation button on your website.
Like other PayPal plugins, it lets you connect WordPress to your PayPal account and accept donations from visitors. Other settings include multiple currencies, localization, multiple button sizes, and more.
11. YITH Donations for WooCommerce
YITH Donations for WooCommerce allows you to add an option to collect donation in your online stores.
You can run seasonable campaigns to support your causes. Each time a user adds a product to cart, they will be prompted with an option to make a small donation.
This concept is utilized by many in the retail world, and YITH Donations for WooCommerce allows you to add this to your eCommerce website.
YITH has a free version of the plugin that’s quite limited. To get all the features like donation form on cart page, customize amounts, donation receipts, etc, you will need the premium version of the plugin which costs $59.99 for a single site.
Note: GiveWP also offers this feature along with a lot more which we believe is a better value.
12. Cryptocurrency Donation Box
If you’re looking to accept donations in cryptocurrency, then look no further. This free WordPress donation plugin allows you to accept donations in top 20 major cryptocurrencies.
You can accept payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Cardano and more.
Which is the Best WordPress Donation Plugin?
The plugins we mentioned in this article can all help you collect donations on your WordPress. However deciding the best WordPress donation plugin for your online fundraising will vary based on your needs.
If you’re looking to create a simple donation form with one-time and recurring donation option along with the ability for users to make payments via PayPal or credit card, then WPForms non-profit plan is the best value because they’re offering 75% off discount.
If you want a WordPress donation plugin that comes with advanced features like complete donor management, tax deductible donation receipts, campaign level goals / incentives, multi-level donations, customizable donation tributes like “in honor or”, full-featured reporting, a wide-variety of payment platform integrations, then nothing in the market beats GiveWP, and that’s why GiveWP is our pick for the #1 best WordPress donation plugin.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress donation and fundraising plugins for charities and non-profits. You may also want to check out our expert pick of the best WordPress page builders and must have WordPress plugins for all sites..
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