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Charitable 1.5: Ready for Testing

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After months of development, Charitable 1.5 is nearly ready for release. This is the first major release of 2017, and includes tons of new features and a myriad of improvements and bug fixes.

But we need your help! We need as many people as possible to test it now, before release.

Click here to download the beta.

Note: Since this is a beta version, there are likely to be bugs and some rough edges, so we recommend using it on a staging or development site for now. Any bugs or issues can be reported on GitHub.

Highlights

Donation Form shortcode

Need a simple way to add your campaign’s donation form to a different page? Now you can:

[charitable_donation_form campaign_id=123]

Just replace “123” with the ID of your campaign. Wondering how to find that? Go to Charitable > Campaigns and you’ll see the campaign ID listed in the left-most column.

Create and edit donations in the WordPress dashboard

It’s super simple to add donations manually via the WordPress dashboard now.

You can also edit donations, and emails like donation receipts and admin notifications can be resent.

New emails for offline donations

One gotcha with offline donations in Charitable has always been that the donation receipt and notification for administrators are only sent for Paid donations. Since offline donations enter the system as Pending donations, this has always been a problem, one that many people have worked around with some small code snippets we have provided.

In Charitable 1.5, you won’t need any extra code to send receipts and notifications for offline donations when they are received. Two new emails have been created for offline donations, allowing you to send a donation receipt and notification immediately, while the donation is still Pending. You can also include the offline payment instructions in the offline donation receipt:

[charitable_email show=offline_instructions]

That’s just a minimal overview of what’s new in this release. For a full overview, click here to view the changelog.

author avatar
Eric Daams

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donation form New

👉🏻 New Campaign Selector For Donation Forms

Take your campaign management to the next level. Find the perfect fundraiser for any page and stay in your creative flow with our new Campaign Selector integration.

The Ultimate Selection Tool

No more hunting for IDs or creating one page for every donation form. Use the new Campaign Selector to allow users to switch to a campaign with no code.

⚡ Instant Search: Quickly find any campaign leaving your page or post.

⚙️ Editor Agnostic: Whether you’re using the Block Editor, Elementor, or WPBakery, selecting your campaigns is now a unified experience.

🚀 Real-Time Previews: See exactly which campaign you’ve selected instantly, ensuring your donors always see the right cause.

author avatar
Eric Daams
Integration New

WordPress Command Palette Integration

Take your fundraising workflow to the next level. Speed up your site management and stay in your creative flow with our new WordPress Command Palette integration.

Supercharge Your Workflow
Navigate your fundraising dashboard faster than ever.

The Ultimate Keyboard Shortcut Hit Cmd + K (or Ctrl + K) to launch the Command Palette and manage your campaigns instantly.

⚡ Instant Navigation: Jump directly to your Campaigns, Donations, or Settings from anywhere in the editor.

➕ Quick Create: Start a new fundraising campaign or add a manual donation with a single command.

Efficiency Redefined
The tools you need, exactly when you need them.

⚙️ Contextual Actions: See relevant Charitable commands based on whether you’re editing a page or viewing your reports.

🚀 Seamless Integration: Built directly into the WordPress core experience for a lightweight, native feel.

author avatar
Eric Daams
Improvement New Security

📣 New Security Features

We’ve introduced a suite of new security tools to give you total control over who accesses your forms, plus a new way to tidy up your database.

Advanced Security Suite

Layered protection: Cloudflare, ReCAPTCHA, IP Controls, and Rate Limiting.

We have overhauled our security settings to stop bots without blocking real donors.

  • 🤖 Flexible Protection: Choose between Google reCAPTCHA v3 or the privacy-first Cloudflare Turnstile to block bots invisible.

  • 🚦 Rate limiting: Stop spam floods by limiting how many submissions an IP address can make in a set timeframe.

  • 🛑 Total control: Use the new IP Blacklist to block bad actors instantly, or the IP Whitelist to let your team bypass checks during testing.

The Clean Donation Tool

Go from “Testing” to “Live” in seconds.

Finished setting up your site and need to get rid of all those test transactions?

  • 🧹 Sweep it clean: Bulk delete test donations and donor records with a single click.

  • 📉 Accurate reporting: Ensure your revenue stats are 100% accurate for launch day.

  • ⚙️ Reset sequences: Automatically resets sequential invoice numbering.

author avatar
Eric Daams
donation form New

🏗️ Visual Donation Form Builder

Building the perfect donation form just got easier. We have completely reimagined how you create forms with a new drag-and-drop interface.

Design Visually, in Real-Time

No coding, no guessing. Just point, click, and build.

Say goodbye to confusing settings pages. You can now edit your form and see exactly what your donors will see, instantly.

  • 🖱️ Drag & Drop: Easily add fields like names, addresses, or file uploads by dragging them exactly where you want them.

  • 🎨 Customize everything: Click any field to tweak labels, placeholders, and requirement settings on the fly.

  • 👁️ Live preview: See your changes immediately as you make them—ensure your form flows perfectly before you hit publish.

Flexible & Powerful

Works with all your existing campaigns.

  • 🧩 Deep customization: Add custom HTML, shortcodes, or CSS classes for advanced branding.

  • ⚙️ Smart fields: Collect exactly what you need with support for dropdowns, checkboxes, dates, and hidden fields.

author avatar
Eric Daams
Leaderboards New

🏆 Donor Leaderboards!

Turn your fundraising into a community event. Recognize your most generous supporters and inspire friendly competition with our new leaderboard tools.

Gamify Your Fundraising

Celebrate your top donors and encourage others to climb the ranks.

Create a public “Hall of Fame” to give your donors the recognition they deserve.

  • 🎨 Two stunning layouts: Choose the List View for a clean, data-rich table or the Card View for a modern, visual grid with avatars.

  • 🥇 Automatic highlights: The top 3 supporters get special Trophy and Crown icons to make them stand out.

  • 🧩 Place it anywhere: Add it to any page using the new Gutenberg Block, or drop it directly into your campaign using the Visual Builder.

Total Customization

You decide what to show and what to hide.

  • ⚙️ Flexible data: Choose to display or hide donation amounts, donor counts, or avatars.

  • 🔄 Lifetime stats: Works seamlessly with Recurring Donations to show a donor’s all-time total impact.

author avatar
Eric Daams