Charitable Documentation

Learn how to make the most of Charitable with clear, step-by-step instructions.

PayPal IPN Troubleshooting

PayPal should automatically be able to send a message to your site that updates the donation status, using what is called an IPN listener. If you are seeing all of your PayPal donations remain stuck in “Pending” status, this may mean that the IPN listener is not working for you.

Step 1: Check donation logs

The first step is to see whether there are any details in the donation logs explaining why donations are still pending.

  1. Go to Charitable > Donations and click on the “View” link for a particular pending donation.
  2. Scroll down to the Donation Log section. When your site has issues with the IPN, the Donation Log will generally only have a single log entry saying “Donation created” as pictured below:

If your donation shows additional entries in the Donation Log besides just the line above, check through the additional log lines to see if anything indicates what the error might be.

If your donation log looks just like the log pictured above, and you are seeing this for all your PayPal donations (not just a few), there is likely to be a problem with your IPN.

Step 2. Troubleshoot the IPN

Use the PayPal Tester tool

If you are using a version of Charitable prior to 1.5.4, you may see a Sandbox tool included in your PayPal settings area. To check:

  1. Go to Charitable > Settings > Payment Gateways and click on the PayPal settings button.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the settings area and look for the section under the “Run a Test Donation” header.

If you don’t see this section or you are on a more recent version of Charitable, click here to download the PayPal Tester plugin. Once you have downloaded it, install and activate it in your site and then reload the PayPal settings page — you should see the “Run a Test Donation” section now:

To use the tool, you need to have created at least two sandbox accounts. If you have not created sandbox accounts yet, read this guide to setup your sandbox accounts.

Once you have sandbox accounts ready, you can use the tool:

  1. In the “Sandbox Seller Email Address”, enter the email address of the merchant sandbox account you created.
  2. You will be redirected to PayPal’s Sandbox to pay for a fake donation. You will need to use your buyer sandbox account to make the payment.
  3. Next, you will be returned to your WordPress dashboard and you should receive feedback on whether the IPN notification was successful. You will also receive an email with more details.

If the IPN notification was not successful, it may mean that your web hosting server needs some upgrades; the email you received should have included more details about that.

If your IPN notification was successful but your new PayPal donations continue to remain stuck as Pending, please get in touch with us.

Set your PayPal IPN manually

If you have followed the steps above and you are not receiving the IPN notifications, you can try to set the notification URL.

  1. Log in to your PayPal account.
  2. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner, then click on “Account Settings”.
  3. Click on “Website payments”.
  4. For “Instant Payment Notifications”, click Update.
  5. Click on “Choose IPN Settings”.
  6. In the “Notification URL” field, enter your PayPal IPN URL:
    • either {https://yoursite.com}/charitable-listener/paypal – use this if your site uses pretty permalinks
    • or {https://yoursite.com}/?charitable-listener=paypal – use this if your site doesn’t use pretty permalinks.
  7. Make sure that “Receive IPN messages (Enabled)” is checked, and click the Save button.

Next steps

If problems persist, check the following:

  • Verify that the PayPal account you are using has a verified email address.
  • Check that PayPal is receiving payments in the same currency as Charitable is set up with.
  • If you have a firewall plugin or the Bad Behavior plugin installed, try disabling them temporarily to see if the issue persists.
  • Check your permalink settings under Settings > Permalinks. If you are using a Custom Structure that starts with index.php, this is likely to be the issue.

Finally, if none of the above has fixed the issue, please get in touch with us so we can help you identify what is causing the problem.

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

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ambassadors New

🖨️ Introducing Fliers and Posters: Raise Money Away From the Screen!

A lot of peer-to-peer fundraising happens away from a screen: at the finish line of a 5K, on a school noticeboard, in an office kitchen. Charitable Ambassadors 3.4.7 adds 2 printables, a fundraiser flier carrying each fundraiser’s own story and QR code, and a recruitment poster that signs new fundraisers up. Both open as a normal web page and print straight from the browser. Why this is important:

  • 🏁 A flier for every fundraiser: Each one carries that fundraiser’s own photo, story and goal, with a QR code that opens their page rather than your main campaign.
  • 📌 A poster that recruits: It shows “Now Recruiting” above your campaign name with a large QR code that opens your sign-up form, so someone can start fundraising without waiting on a link from you.
  • 🪄 No design tool needed: Both printables render as a normal web page and print from the browser, with no PDF plugin and no designer.
  • 📄 2 flier layouts: Hand out carries the full story for giving to friends and family, and Post up carries a short hook with 5 tear-off tabs for a noticeboard.
  • 🛡️ Off until you switch it on: Fliers stay off after the update until you enable them under Charitable » Ambassadors » Other » Fliers, and only the owner or an administrator can open one.

Check out our announcement here.

Improvement Payments

💸 Introducing Tiered Rates for Fee Relief: Match the Ask to the Gift!

Fee Relief asks your donors one short question at checkout: would you like to cover the processing fee on this gift? Until now that question used a single rate for every donation on a gateway, so a $10 gift and a $500 gift were asked for the same percentage. Fee Relief 1.3.0 lets you set as many donation bands as you like, each carrying its own rate. Why this is important:

  • 🪙 Gentler on small gifts: A fixed transaction cost is a far bigger share of a $10 donation than a $500 one, so bands let you ask for less at the bottom.
  • 🎚️ As many bands as you need: Each band carries its own percentage and its own fixed amount, and the top band runs on with no upper limit.
  • 🛑 An optional ceiling: A Maximum fee field stops any donor being asked for more than a number you choose, however large the gift.
  • 🔌 Set per payment gateway: Stripe can run on four bands while Windcave and Payfast stay on a single rate, because bands belong to a gateway and not to your whole site.
  • 🛡️ Nothing changes until you say so: Your current rates stay exactly as they are until you switch Use Tiered Rates on under Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief.

Check out our announcement here.

Donations Improvement

📊 Your Pro Dashboard Can Now Compare, Export, and Score!

Most fundraising dashboards only tell you how much you have raised. Charitable Pro 1.8.19 rebuilds the dashboard and the Reports Overview around the harder questions: whether anything is broken, whether this period beat the last one, and which single change would make the most difference today. Why this is important:

  • 📈 Every figure has a trend: Pick a period and the tiles and the chart move together, with each total shown against the previous period.
  • 🗓️ Charts that stay readable: Short ranges group donations day by day, while longer ranges group by week or month, so a full year reads as a curve instead of a flat line.
  • 🔀 Compare any 2 periods: Not just consecutive ones, so you can ask how this December did against last December. That matters because fundraising is seasonal.
  • 📤 Export the whole summary: Send the full overview out as CSV or PDF, ready for a board pack or a funder report.
  • 🎯 Score your setup for free: Have your fundraising setup scored, so the one change worth making next is the one you can see.

Check out our announcement here.

Feature New

🎟️ Introducing Charitable Events: Sell Tickets Inside Your Campaigns!

Most nonprofits sell event tickets in one tool and collect donations in another, which leaves two sets of reports and a manual match at the end of the year. Charitable Events brings both together, selling tickets through the same donation forms and payment gateways you already run in Charitable. Why this is important:

  • 🎟️ Every ticket is a donation: Ticket sales run through the gateway you already use and count toward the campaign goal, with everything managed under Charitable » Events.
  • 📱 QR check-in from any phone: Each attendee gets their own QR code on the receipt, and volunteers scan at the door through a check-in link that needs no WordPress account.
  • 🧾 Receipts ready for tax time: Give each ticket type a fair market value, and Charitable puts the correct tax-deductible amount on every donor receipt.
  • 📋 Attendee details at checkout: Ask every guest for a meal choice, shirt size, or access needs, with a separate attendee record created for each ticket.
  • 🗓️ Blocks and calendars included: Three editor blocks plus Sugar Calendar and The Events Calendar support put your events where supporters already look.

Check out our announcement here.

ai New

🚀 Unleash AI Power in Charitable!

Your AI assistant can now build, edit, and manage your Charitable fundraising campaigns directly — just by asking. With Charitable Pro adding write support for the WordPress Abilities API, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor can handle full administrative actions safely through MCP. Why this is important:

  • 🤖 Campaign creation in plain language: Prompt your assistant with a goal like “Set up a fundraiser for the shelter with a $5,000 goal”, and it builds a real draft campaign complete with suggested donation tiers.
  • 🎨 Instant donation form tweaks: Add custom fields, change button colors, or reorder elements without diving into form settings.
  • 📝 Offline gift logging: Tell your assistant about cash or check gifts, and it will match donor emails and record transactions into your history.
  • 🛡️ Safety and control by default: Write access stays strictly off until turned on in Charitable » Tools » AI MCP, keeping read-only reporting safe by default.
  • 📜 Full audit logging: Every change made by an AI assistant is tracked under Charitable » Tools » Logs, so you always know who (or what) updated your site.

Check out our announcement here.