Charitable Documentation

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

How to Enable Direct Reply to Thank Your Donors in WordPress 

Do you want to personally thank donors without the hassle of copying and pasting email addresses?

If you run a nonprofit or charity website, you know how frustrating it can be when someone donates and you want to send a quick thank you, but you can’t simply hit “reply” on the notification email.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you exactly how to enable this feature and start building stronger relationships with your donors in just a few clicks.

Don’t have Charitable yet? You’ll need to install it first. The Reply to Donor feature is available in both the free and premium versions.

Step 1: Accessing Charitable Email Settings

First, log into your WordPress admin dashboard.

Once you’re logged in, go to Charitable » Settings page and open the Emails tab.

Set up automated email for pdf receipt

On this page, you’ll see a list of all the different emails Charitable can send. These are divided into two main categories:

Donor Emails (sent to people who donate), for example:

  • Donation Receipt
  • Offline Donation Receipt
  • Password Reset
  • Email Verification

Admin Emails (sent to you and your team), for example:

  • Campaign Ended Notification
  • New Donation Notification
  • New Offline Donation Notification

The “Reply To” feature is available on these 2 admin emails: new donation notification and offline donation notification.

Step 2: Enable Reply to Donor for Online Donations

You can enable the ‘Admin” New Donation Notification” email by clicking on the ‘Enable Email’ button. Once done, a new ‘Email Settings’ button will appear.

Admin new donor notification

Click on “Email Settings” to expand its settings and move on to the next step.

Step 3: Customizing Your Email

Inside the Email Settings page, you’ll see several options:

  1. Email recipient – This should be your email address
  2. Email subject – You can customize this if you want
  3. Reply to Donor – This is the magic toggle we’re looking for!

Find the “Reply to Donor” toggle switch and click it to turn it ON.

Email reply to

When this feature is active, the recipient (admin or you) will be able to reply to a donor’s email and thank them for their contritbution.

Below this, you can customize the email headline and body. A default email is already created for you but you can edit this to your liking.

Note: The headline and email body here is for the donation notification that you will receive in your admin inbox.

Email headline and body

When you’re done, make sure you preview and save your changes. Make sure to send test emails and reply to them in your email client of choice to check if everything is functioning fine.

Save changes to email notification

Note: Charitable does not handle sending emails. It works alongside your email client that is connected to your WordPress site.

Need more help? See our Documentation Library »

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

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GiveWP Migrations New

White Glove Migration Service for GiveWP

Thinking about switching your fundraising platform from GiveWP to Charitable, but don’t want to risk losing your data or handle a complex technical setup yourself? Charitable’s White Glove Migration Service features:

👥 Flawless Donor Mapping: Safely transfer your entire supporter database with zero data loss.

📊 Complete Financial History: Meticulously preserve every historical transaction for continuous, accurate reporting.

🔄 Seamless Recurring Giving: Safely transfer active sustaining subscriptions without disrupting your incoming revenue or requiring your donors to update their information.

💳 Zero Gateway Disruptions: Keep using Stripe, PayPal, or any other GiveWP-compatible processor you already love.

🚀 Expert Technical Setup: Relax while our team handles the heavy lifting to install and configure your forms—plus, qualifying users get a full year of Charitable Pro completely free.

Visit this page to learn more.

automation Improvement

📢 New Feature Alert: Automation Connect 2.0 Is Here! 🚀

Thinking about connecting your fundraising data to tools like Mailchimp, Slack, or Google Sheets, but don’t want to hire a developer or write custom code? Charitalbe’s new automation addon has:

⚡ 17 Event Triggers: Instantly fire webhooks for a donor’s first gift, renewal payments, or reached campaign milestones.

🎯 Smart Conditional Logic: Use powerful AND/OR logic across 11 fields to only send data when it meets your exact criteria, like newsletter opt-ins.

📊 Custom Payload Control: Select from 80+ clean data fields across donor, donation, and campaign metadata so your apps get exactly what they need.

🚀 Pre-Built Platform Templates: Skip the setup from scratch with ready-to-go templates for Zapier, Make.com, n8n, HubSpot, and Slack.

🛡️ Reliable Developer Tools: Power your workflows with signed HMAC-SHA256 payloads, complete WordPress filters, and automatic retry logs.

automation Improvement

🔌 Charitable Meets Zapier: Connect to 7,000+ Apps and Automate Your Fundraising

Tired of manually copying donation data into accounting sheets or tracking down new donor signups? Put your administrative tasks on autopilot. Charitable is now officially on Zapier, giving you a powerful, no-code way to plug your fundraising directly into the rest of your favorite tools.

Every donation, donor signup, and campaign milestone can now trigger an automated workflow seamlessly.

What’s New:

♾️ Connect to 7,000+ Apps: Bridge your Charitable campaigns with everyday software like Google Sheets, QuickBooks, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, and thousands more.

⚡ 12 Powerful Triggers: Build deep workflows using smart automation triggers covering the entire donation lifecycle—including New Donation, New Donor, Subscription Cancelled, and Campaign Goal Reached.

📋 Pre-Built Action Templates: Get started in three minutes or less with our pre-made template combinations, like automatically logging new donations straight into a Google Sheet or firing custom donor welcome emails through Gmail.

🚫 Zero Code Needed: No complex webhooks or custom PHP scripts required. Just pick your trigger, choose your app, map your fields, and let Zapier handle the heavy lifting.

Ready to save hours of admin time? Grab Charitable Pro with the Automation Connect addon today and launch your first Zap!

Improvement Payments

🚀 Introducing PayPal Commerce: One Connection, Six Ways to Donate

Donors expect modern, flexible payment options when they support a cause. If they don’t see their preferred method on your donation form, they often disappear without a word. With PayPal Commerce, we are bringing a completely modernized checkout experience right to your campaigns.

Enjoy a single integration that upgrades your forms, makes giving seamless, and helps you capture every single donation.

What’s New:

🔌 One-Click Connection: Skip messy API keys and developer docs. Simply click “Connect with PayPal,” sign in to your business account, and your modern form is live in under five minutes.

💳 Six Ways to Give: Give your supporters instant access to PayPal balance, Venmo (US), Pay Later financing, major credit/debit cards, Apple Pay (Safari), and Google Pay (Chrome) all from the exact same form.

🔄 Flexible Recurring Giving: Fully supports monthly giving. Choose between the PayPal Subscriptions API (handled automatically on PayPal’s end) or Vault + Cron (handled securely right on your site).

💬 Friendly Error Recovery: No more confusing browser alerts. If a payment is declined, donors see plain-language, inline messages that guide them on how to fix the issue and complete their gift.

Ready for PayPal, modernized? Update to Charitable Pro 1.8.15+ (or Charitable Lite 1.8.11+) and connect your account today!

Campaigns New

⏳ Campaign Countdown: Drive Urgency and Lift Donations

Urgency is one of the most powerful tools in fundraising! Meet Campaign Countdown—a live, real-time timer built to turn procrastination into immediate generosity.

campaign_countdown_animation

What’s New:

⏱️ Live, Real-Time Urgency: Beautifully track days, hours, minutes, and seconds down to your campaign’s deadline w/ live-updating visual countdowns.

🎨 Tailored to Your Look: Choose between Boxed bordered tiles or a clean, single-line Inline display. Match your theme instantly with font and deep color controls.

🛠️ Place it Anywhere: Drop the countdown anywhere you like using the Campaign Builder field, a dedicated Gutenberg block, or a simple shortcode.

🚨 Smart Expiry Actions: Total control over the end state—choose to automatically replace the timer with a custom message, freeze it at zero, and more.