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Accept Direct Debit Donations with GoCardless: Plugin News (February)

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We’re only a couple months into the year, but we have been busy with updates to Charitable, its extensions, and the launch of a brand new integration: GoCardless.

Highlights from the GoCardless plugin

GoCardless is a unique payment gateway with a focus on facilitating Direct Debit payments. It works seamlessly with a variety of Direct Debit schemes, including Bacs (UK), ACH (USA), SEPA (most of Europe), Autogiro (Sweden), Betalingsservice (Denmark), PAD (Canada), and BACS and BACS NZ (Australia and New Zealand).

Besides being a more familiar way for certain donors to contribute, one key benefit of Direct Debit is that it has dramatically lower transaction costs, which means less overhead for your non-profit.

Our GoCardless plugin has full support for Recurring Donations, Fee Relief and our other extensions.

Plugin updates in January & February

Besides the release of Charitable GoCardless, we also put out eight plugin updates.

Charitable 1.6.55 & 1.6.56

Charitable has received a pair of updates which implemented a few new features for developers, as well as bug fixes:

  • The charitable_template_donation_form() function was added, allowing you to embed a donation form for a specific campaign in your template. It requires a campaign ID to be passed along as the first argument.
  • There is a new charitable_currency filter, as well as a charitable_get_default_currency() function, which retrieves the unfiltered site currency. charitable_get_currency() now returns the filtered currency.
  • Each donation now stores its currency. You can get the currency for a donation through the Donation Fields API:
charitable_get_donation( $donation_id )->get( 'currency' );
  • Charitable has improved compatibility with block themes like Twenty Twenty Two by handling the way templates are loaded in those themes. In particular, there were problems on dynamically generated pages such as the Donation Receipt or Password Reset / Forgot pages.
  • We fixed a bug where editing a donation in the admin could change its change date to January 1, 1970. This happened in situations where the person editing the donation had their profile language set to something other than English.
  • In the donation receipt, the total donation amount now correctly includes any fees added through Fee Relief.

Braintree 1.0.3 & 1.0.4

  • Our Braintree plugin faced a few unexpected hurdles with the release of WordPress 5.9, as scripts are loaded in a different way. These were resolved and Braintree works lovely now — including with block themes.
  • We’ve avoided unnecessary overhead by skipping the registration of Braintree-specific donation fields unless Braintree is active as a gateway.
  • We also fixed an issue preventing translations from working as expected for the Braintree plugin.

Recurring Donations 1.2.17 & 1.2.18

  • We fixed a bug that resulted in the recurring donation total being formatted incorrectly in the donation receipt on sites where commas are used as the decimal separator.
  • Like our Braintree plugin and Charitable itself, Recurring Donations needed a little fine-tuning to ensure full compatibility with block themes such as Twenty Twenty Two.
  • We fixed a fatal error when a donation form is loaded in a modal while viewing a grid of campaigns.

Ambassadors 2.1.13

  • Ambassadors also received an updated to handle compatibility with block themes and WordPress 5.9.

Fee Relief 1.1.9

  • We fixed a bug preventing fees from being added correctly when using Stripe Checkout and a currency where commas are used as the decimal separator.

Mollie 1.0.3

  • We fixed a bug preventing renewal donations from being recorded correctly, which could result in duplicates being created in Charitable.

Payrexx 1.0.1

  • Got rid of an annoying nag to update to the latest version despite being on the latest version.

What’s coming next?

GoCardless is the first new plugin for 2022, but it won’t be the last. Our PDF Receipts extension is almost ready to be released (if you’d like to be part of the beta testing, get in touch), and we have a few other goodies planned which we’re keeping a little closer to home for now — including some significant updates to Charitable itself. Stay tuned. 😉

author avatar
Eric Daams

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Improvement Payments

💰 Accept Recurring Donations with Windcave and Charitable

A donor sets their gift up once on Windcave’s secure payment page, and Charitable bills every renewal after that on schedule. Why this is important:

🏦 Organizations banked in New Zealand or Australia: monthly giving on the gateway your bank already set you up with, with no second processor to onboard.
⛪ Churches taking regular tithes and offerings: congregants set their own schedule once, which is the simplest way to launch recurring church giving without a separate platform.
🌏 Groups with donors in several currencies: Windcave handles more than 20, so a supporter can give in the currency they actually hold.
📅 Operating funds rather than one-time campaigns: switch on Recurring Only mode and the one-off option disappears, so every gift to that campaign is a subscription.
🧾 Teams with no developer on staff: 3 sets of credentials pasted into a settings page, and no code anywhere.

Check out our announcement here.

author avatar
Eric Daams
automation update

⚡ Visual Automation Builder: Drag and Drop With No Code!

Charitable Automation Connect 2.3.0 introduces the Visual Automation Builder, a full-screen canvas that lays each automation out as a flow of connected cards: a trigger, optional conditions, and a list of actions that run in order.

🧩 Many actions, one trigger: Tag a donor, send an email, add a note, and fire a webhook from a single event, dragged into any order.

✉️ Act inside Charitable: New Send Email, Tag Donor, and Add Donor Note actions run with no external service required.

🔤 Merge tags: Personalize emails and notes with live fields like {first_name}, {total}, and {campaign_name}.

🔁 Apply to existing donors: Run Tag Donor and Add Donor Note against the donors you already have.

🖥️ Canvas or Simple: Switch views anytime, and automations built before 2.3.0 keep working unchanged.

Read more here.

author avatar
Eric Daams
Integration updated

📬 Introducing Brevo for Charitable: Turn Donors into Subscribers Automatically

The moment a supporter makes a gift is when they are most engaged. With the new Brevo integration for Charitable, you can automatically turn those one-time donors into long-term subscribers without touching a single spreadsheet.

Simply collect donor consent right on your donation form and start your welcome series immediately.

What’s New:

🔄 Automated Subscriber Sync: New donors who opt in are added straight to your Brevo contact list as soon as their payment clears—no manual exports or CSV imports required.

🎯 Granular Consent & Opt-In Control: Customize your checkbox label, choose whether it defaults to checked or unchecked, or turn on Brevo double opt-in to keep your list clean and compliant.

📋 Per-Campaign List Mapping: Route supporters to your global email list or map specific campaigns to targeted Brevo lists to tailor your follow-up messaging.

⚡ 5-Minute Setup: Connect instantly by pasting your Brevo API key into the Newsletter settings, map your contact fields, and start building your email list on autopilot.

Ready to grow your mailing list? Brevo is available now starting on the Charitable Plus plan—connect your account today!

author avatar
Eric Daams
recurring donations updated

💳 Introducing Card Updates: Fix Expired Cards Without Losing Subscriptions!

newExpired or updated credit cards are one of the biggest silent leaks in recurring fundraising. With Card Updates in the Recurring Donations extension, donors can now refresh their payment details directly—keeping their subscription, schedule, and giving history completely intact.

No canceled plans, no lost history, and zero administrative headache for your team.

What’s New:

⚡ 30-Second Self-Service: Donors get a dedicated “Update Card” button in their dashboard that opens Stripe’s secure, PCI-compliant Customer Portal to update card details instantly.

🔒 Scoped & Safe Access: Scoped exclusively to card updates by default, donors can’t accidentally cancel or alter their plans from inside the portal, keeping your webhooks and data in sync.

🤝 Admin-Assisted Support: Helping a donor on the phone? Open their secure Stripe portal in one click from your admin screen or generate a single-use update link to email them.

📋 Automatic Audit Trail: Every payment method update is recorded automatically with a timestamp in both system-wide logs and the individual donor’s profile.

Ready to protect your recurring revenue? Get the Plus or Pro plan and update Recurring Donations to 2.3.0+ and enable “Update Payment Method” under your Settings today!

author avatar
Eric Daams
Integration page builder

Divi Fans Rejoice! Native Divi 5 Campaign Progress Bar Module!

With our new native Divi 5 module, you can anchor your microsites with real-time fundraising stats directly on the visual canvas. Here’s how it works, and why it’s worth turning on today.

Create campaign updates that are VISUAL AND LIVE. You can also:

📊 Campaign Progress Bar: Drop a live progress bar into any Divi 5 layout and show goal progress in real time.

🎨 Deep styling controls: Easily customize the bar and track color, height, and radius to match your brand perfectly.

👁️ Visual Builder ready: Configure and preview everything directly on the Divi canvas as a first-class module.

🔁 Identical rendering: The same exact engine powers this module, meaning consistent design without legacy shims.

✅ Faster launches: Never leave the Divi 5 interface to configure shortcodes or guess how your goal labels will look.

Learn more here.

author avatar
Eric Daams