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Meet the Donations Feed: The Easiest Way to Build Trust and Boost Donations

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Real donations. Real names. Real momentum. Now on any page of your website, no developer needed.

Here’s something every seasoned fundraiser knows but not enough nonprofit websites actually act on.

Donors are watching each other.

Before someone decides to give, they look for signals. Is this cause worth it? Are others supporting it? Is this organization legitimate? They’re not always conscious of it, but they’re looking. And if your donation page is silent, static, and showing no signs of life, a lot of them will quietly leave without giving.

It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that you haven’t given them a reason to trust.

Introducing the Donations Feed

The Donations Feed is a brand new block and shortcode in Charitable Pro 1.8.13 that lets you display a live, beautiful feed of real donations, right on any page of your website.

Real names. Real amounts. Real comments from real donors. A living, breathing record of people showing up for your cause!

Drop it on your homepage. Your campaign pages. Your donation confirmation page. Anywhere you want to build trust, create momentum, and show the world that your mission is worth supporting.

No developer needed. No code required. Just drop the block, configure it from the sidebar, and you’re live.

Donations feed block feature

Take An Exclusive Look

Why Social Proof Is Your Most Powerful Fundraising Tool

Think about the last time you made a decision because you saw others making the same one. A busy restaurant over an empty one. A product with hundreds of reviews over one with none. A crowdfunding campaign close to its goal over one that hasn’t moved.

That’s social proof. And it’s one of the most powerful forces in human decision-making.

For nonprofits, social proof is everything. When a first-time visitor lands on your donation page and sees that 47 people gave last week – that Sarah from Chicago donated $100 and left a comment saying “this organization changed my life” – something shifts. The uncertainty disappears. The decision becomes easier.

The Donations Feed puts that power on every page of your website, automatically.

What the Donations Feed Can Do

This isn’t just a simple list of names and numbers. The Donations Feed gives you serious control over what you show, how you show it, and who you show it to. Here’s a look at what’s included:

Two beautiful display options: Choose between a clean list view or a card view. Both look great out of the box and are fully customizable to match your brand.

Ccard list views in donation feed

Full display control: Select exactly what appears on each donation entry – donor avatar, first name, last name, donation amount, date, comments, campaign name, and even donor location. You decide what tells the best story.

Settings-in-donations-feed

Powerful filtering options: Show donations from a specific campaign or let the feed auto-detect based on the page it’s on. Filter by date range, minimum donation amount, specific donors, or even specific donation IDs. Include or exclude anonymous donations, recurring donations, and group multiple donations from the same donor into a single entry showing their total giving.

Sort it your way: Order your feed by date, amount, first name, last name, or campaign name, ascending or descending. Curate the story your donors see.

Donations-feed-options

Donor comments: When donors leave a comment at checkout, those comments can appear right in the feed. Nothing builds trust like a real person saying in their own words why they gave. These are pure gold for your fundraising pages.

Donor location: Show donor city, state, or country below their name. A feed that shows giving coming in from across the country – or around the world – tells a powerful story about the reach of your mission.

Live Updates: Turn on live polling and the feed refreshes automatically as new donations come in. No page reload needed. During an active campaign or giving day, this is extraordinary – visitors can watch your momentum build in real time.

Pagination: Have a lot of donations to show? Enable pagination to keep your feed clean and navigable without overwhelming the page.

Full styling control: Colors, font sizes, card alignment, alternate row colors, all configurable directly in the block. Every instance on your page can be styled independently to match your brand perfectly. And for advanced users, custom CSS is available too.

How to Get Started

The Donations Feed is available now in Charitable Pro 1.8.13. If you’re already on Pro, head to your WordPress dashboard and update under Plugins, it’s ready and waiting.

Already on Charitable Pro? Here’s how to add it:

  • Add the block: Navigate to your WordPress editor and drop the Donations Feed block onto any page
  • Configure your content: Choose your view, add a title and description, set your display fields and filters
  • Style it up: Match it to your brand using the styling controls in the sidebar
  • Turn on Live Updates: If you’re running an active campaign, switch on live polling and let the momentum speak for itself
Donations-feed-block-in-wordpress

See the full documentation here: Donations Feed »

Learn how to optimize your donation pages here »


Not yet on Charitable Pro?

Right now you can get up to 50% off Charitable Pro. Recurring donations, donation management, a donor dashboard, peer-to-peer fundraising, fee relief, the Donations Feed, Campaign Showcase, and everything else we ship – all in one place, all on one affordable plan.

Not sure if it’s right for you? Every plan comes with a 14-day money back guarantee. No questions asked.

Your donors are ready to give. Give them a reason to trust.

Want to Take Social Proof Even Further? Meet DonorTrust.

The Donations Feed is a permanent, beautiful record of giving that lives on your page. But if you want to create real-time urgency, the kind that makes a visitor stop scrolling and pay attention – you need to meet DonorTrust.

DonorTrust is our dedicated social proof platform for nonprofits. It automatically displays real-time popup notifications of verified donations to your website visitors, the kind that say “John from Boston just donated $50” right as someone is deciding whether to give.

It’s honest. It’s automated. And it works.

Together, the Donations Feed and DonorTrust create a complete social proof system for your fundraising – one that builds trust the moment someone lands on your page and keeps building it every step of the way.

Get Started with DonorTrust »

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.

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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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.