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

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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.

Adding Tiered Fee Relief

You can set a separate rate for every size of donation, so your smallest donors are not asked for the largest share of what they gave.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief. Every payment gateway listed on that screen now has a Use Tiered Rates switch.

The Fee Relief settings screen in Charitable with the Use Tiered Rates switch turned on for Stripe and the first donation band filled in

For detailed steps, head to our full documentation on using Tiered Fee Relief »

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.

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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.