Charitable Documentation

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

How To Use Charitable’s Fee Relief

With Charitable Fee Relief, you can allow your donors to cover the processing fees when they donate.

It’s easy and requires zero coding – just a few clicks.

You can also fine-tune the processing fees by setting a fixed fee per donation, calculating the fee as a percentage, or through a mixture of both. This allows you to tweak your settings so that the extra fee your donor pays exactly matches the fee that you will be charged by your payment processor.

For example, if your payment processor charges you 2.9% + ¢30 per donation, you can configure Fee Relief to charge exactly that.

Of course, different gateways charge different fees, so Fee Relief allows you to configure how the fees are calculated on a per-campaign basis. You can also keep Fee Relief disabled for particular gateways:

Let’s get started.

Minimum requirements:

  • Recommended: Charitable 1.6.8+
  • PHP 5.3+
  • Charitable Plus plan

Not sure Charitable Pro is right for you? Take Charitable Pro for a spin! Try the Charitable Pro Demo →

What’s In This Guide?

How To Install Fee Relief

Installing Charitable Fee Relief is the same as installing any other Charitable addon.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Charitable » Addons. Here look for “Fee Relief” and install and activate it.

Fee relief addon


That’s it. You’re ready to use it.

You can also download this addon from your Charitable account under the Downloads tab. Then upload the plugin to your WordPress site under Plugins » Add New » Upload Plugin.

Upload new wordpress plugin

Need more help? We recommend first reading our guide to installing Charitable extensions.

How to Customize Fee Relief Settings

Once you have activated Fee Relief, go to Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief.

Fee relief in settings

On this page, you’ll see a number of settings. We’ll walk through each one.

Setting Fee Relief for Each Gateway

By default, Fee Relief is enabled for all gateways but the amount or percentage is not set. You can enable and disable Fee Relief for gateways as you wish using the button available on the right.

Fee relief options

Next, you can set a fee as a combination of a percentage and a fixed amount per donation. These settings are designed to correspond to the way many payment gateways set their fees.

For example, PayPal commonly charges 2.9% and ¢30 per donation. To cover the PayPal fee, then, you would enter 2.9 in the “Fee %” field and 0.30 in the “Fixed amount per donation” field.

Choosing The Fee Relief Mode

Fee Relief has four different modes of integrating with your donation form, and the mode can be changed on a per-campaign basis.

By default, Fee Relief will add a checkbox to your donation forms to allow donors to cover the processing fees. This can be set to be checked or unchecked by default.

The 4 modes you can use include:

  • Disabled: Fee Relief is not enabled on campaigns by default. Enable it for specific campaigns via the campaign settings.
  • Opt-in checkbox, not checked by default: Show an un-checked checkbox in the donation form. The donor must deliberately check the box to pay the processing fees.
  • Opt-in checkbox, checked by default: Show a checked checkbox in the donation form. Unless the donor un-checks the box, they will pay the processing fees.
  • Automatic opt-in: Automatically add the processing fees onto the donation total, without displaying a checkbox in the donation form. The donor cannot opt-out of paying the processing fees.

This can be changed on a per-cmapaign basis. We’ll show you how to do that in the next section.

Deciding Fee Relief Calculation

Charitable makes it easy to decide what kind of formula you want to use.

You can choose:

Subtotal + Fixed/Percentage – This is the default setting

Fixed + (Subtotal * Percentage)

Fee relied formula

With a $1000 donation, 2.9% fee, and a $0.30 fee the default formula would result in a fee of $30.18, the alt option a fee of $29.30.

Changing Fee Relief in Individual Campaign Settings

Open any campaign in the campaign builder, and go to the Settings » Fee Relief tab. In case you haven’t enabled it, you’ll see an option to enable Fee Relief here.

Next, you can choose your Fee Relief mode. This mode will apply only to this campaign.

Fee relief in campaign builder

Finally, you can keep Fee Relief disabled site-wide and only enable it for particular campaigns.

The choice is yours.

Make sure you hit the Save button at the top-right corner of the screen.

That’s it. You now know how to use Fee Relief in Charitable. For more about this feature, visit the Fee Relief feature page »

Supported Gateways for Fee Relief

Fee Relief supports the following gateways:

Fee Relief is available in the Charitable Pro plugin (Plus plan or higher).

Not yet on Charitable Pro? You can get up to 50% off when you sign up for or upgrade to Charitable Pro. We want to ensure that you can try the advanced fundraising features like Recurring Donations, Donation Recovery, and more at a significantly reduced cost.

Join over a million satisfied Charitable Pro users today. Every purchase comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee, ensuring you’re supported every step of the way.

If you have any questions or need assistance, our support team is ready to help you make the most of these new features.

Not sure Charitable Pro is right for you? Take Charitable Pro for a spin! Try the Charitable Pro Demo →

More Documentation

Helpful Links

🤝 Get help when you need it

Connect with Customer Support →  

📑 Find the guide you need

Browse the Documentation Hub →  

⬇️ Download proven strategies, campaign ideas, and expert tools
Get the Fundraising Kit →  

💸 Get Free Fundraising Resources
Head to the Charitable Fundraising Hub

🤔 Got questions about Charitable?
Charitable FAQs

Need help understanding non-profit terms and jargon?
See our Non-Profit Glossary

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

Last Modified:

What's New In Charitable

View The Latest Updates
🔔 Subscribe to get our latest updates
📧 Subscribe to Emails

Email Subscription

Join our Newsletter

We won’t spam you. We only send an email when we think it will genuinely help you. Unsubscribe at any time!

New templates

🤩 New Beacon Campaign Templates w/ “Hero” Block!

With the new Beacon Campaign Templates for Charitable Pro, you can launch a stunning, full-width fundraising page that instantly captures visitor attention above the fold.

Fundraising page header for Save Maple Grove Park with a donation widget and a small square photo of a sunlit tree thumbnail on the left.

🔦 Above-the-Fold Impact: Lead with a full-width hero image, your logo, and your goal with a donation widget locked right on top of the banner so your ask and momentum register instantly without scrolling.

📐 Two Flexible Layouts: Choose between a structured two-column layout for side-by-side storytelling and supporting details, or a clean one-column view designed for uninterrupted long-form narratives.

⚡ All-in-One Hero Field: Powered by the new Campaign Hero field, bringing background media, live progress bars, custom donation amounts, and recurring giving tabs together into a single cohesive block that can be dropped into any layout.

🎨 Automatic Theme Matching: The hero banner and donation widget automatically inherit your campaign theme’s button and accent colors, ensuring your entire presentation stays beautifully on-brand without touching a line of CSS.

Learn more here.

donation form Feature New

📝 Donation Form Block: Embed a Working Donation Form Anywhere

With the new Donation Form Block for Charitable Pro, you can drop a fully working donation form directly onto any page or post in the WordPress block editor. No redirects, no page reloads, and zero friction between reading your story and making a contribution.

📝 Drop Forms Anywhere: Place a working form directly onto your homepage, inside a story-driven blog post, on a dedicated landing page, or within a campaign announcement.

🎯 Dynamic Campaign Binding: Easily choose a specific campaign from the block sidebar or set it to automatically bind to whichever campaign is currently being viewed.

📐 Full vs. Minimal Form Views: Switch between a full layout or a compact minimal view to perfectly fit sidebars, narrow columns, or wide landing pages.

🎨 Scoped No-Code Styling: Customize typography, container spacing, border radius, amount buttons, and accent colors independently for every form instance without touching a line of CSS.

Learn more here.

ambassadors New

👤 Creator Profiles: Put a Face to Every Peer-to-Peer Campaign

Ambassadors 3.3.0 now provies Creator Profiles — giving your supporters a permanent, shareable public home that turns one-time fundraisers into ongoing relationships.

👤 Public Creator Pages: Give every fundraiser an instant, clean landing page at /creator/their-name/ to showcase their custom avatar, bio, and a browsable grid of their campaigns.

📊 Proof of Impact: Boost donor trust by displaying site-wide milestones on the profile—like total funds raised and total donor counts.

💳 Interactive Hover Cards: When donors hover over a creator’s name on a campaign page, a compact card expands with their bio and social handles right at the moment of decision.

📍 Responsible Location Sharing: Allow creators to safely show local supporters where they are based using only city, state, and country details.

🛠️ Self-Serve Customization: Fundraisers can update their own profiles and link up to six social networks directly from the My Campaigns hub, saving you admin time.

Ready to empower your advocates? Update to Ambassadors 3.3.0 and turn on “Enable Public Creator Page” today!

Improvement Payments

📱 Turn Mobile Scrollers Into Donors: Meet Charitable’s Mollie Upgrade

Losing mobile supporters because they hate typing out long card numbers on their phones? Charitable’s updated Mollie integration features:

⚡ One-Tap Wallet Checkout: Enable donors to complete their gifts instantly using Apple Pay or Google Pay with a simple face scan, fingerprint, or tap.

💰 No Extra PCI Burden: Skip complex domain verification and security compliance since all wallet transactions run safely through Mollie’s hosted checkout.

🛠️ Custom Cancel Routing: Keep the experience predictable by automatically sending donors who back out to your cancellation page, or use developer filters to route them to a custom page.

Visit this page to learn more.

ambassadors improved New

Moderation and Directory Screens In Ambassadors 3.0

Ambassadors 3.0 has new features: moderation and directory screens… now easily see those who are earning donations on your peer to peer network – including campaign creators that might need to be verified – all in one place. Generate reports, email ambassadors and campaign creators directly and more.

🚀 See when campaign creators and ambassadors have updated their campaigns, what donors/donation they have brought in and more.

🎉 Manually add ambassadors and campaign creators, and approve them in one-click!

Visit this page to learn more.