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Charitable 1.8.2 Update

Introducing Charitable 1.8.2 – Checklist, Enhanced Tour, Donation Button and More!

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We are proud to announce Charitable 1.8.2, the newest version of the go-to tool for non-profits and organizations to run campaigns and get donations!

We’ve been diligently enhancing the Charitable plugin to make it more user-friendly for new WordPress users while integrating powerful updates for experienced users and developers alike. Among our updates have been requests that our customers – many that are running very busy charities this time of year – have been asking for.

Let’s take a closer look at these new features.

Charitable Checklist

To assist new Charitable campaign creators, we’ve developed a comprehensive checklist to guide them through the plugin, enabling them to set up their first donation campaign swiftly. This checklist provides an overview of Charitable’s features, helping anyone configure general settings, activate email notifications for donors, and connect a payment gateway—such as Stripe—right from the checklist page.

For those managing a charity or involved in fundraising, understanding Charitable’s capabilities will help you launch your first campaign effortlessly. I urge you to give a try! Our aim for this feature – and other like it – is to improve your experience and reduce as much time as possible with tasks. Most those using Charitable – especially non-profits – already have their hands full with fundraising and tracking donations. So anything to get them up to speed faster is a plus.

Your feedback and questions on this feature are more than welcome!

(Improved) Guided Tour of Visual Campaign Builder

In a previous version of Charitable, we introduced a guided tour of the visual campaign builder. In our latest version we refined it a bit based on user feedback and testing, transforming it into a more interactive and informative experience. The tour, designed especially aid those running non-profit organizations and fundraising groups, highlights critical areas and now offers improved compatibility across various browsers and screen sizes.

Donation Button Shortcode

There are quite a few reasons why you might need a simple donation button: perhaps you are writing a blog post about your current campaign for your charity… or you want to include a way for people to donate anywhere on your WordPress site.

If you work with shortcodes then we are happy to bring you a direct and easy solution: the new[charitable_donate_button] shortcode allows you to display a button or link to a campaign. You can read up on the parameters you can pass into it.

We plan on turning this into a block (for the WordPress block editor) in the future, so stay tuned!

Other Updates

Outside of what was mentioned above, here’s a list of items that have been addressed and included in Charitable 1.8.2.

  • NEW: Warning messages for admin users – in the gateway settings page and viewing donation forms (as admins) – if Stripe is enabled, but no keys are detected.
  • NEW: Dashboard notifications for important messages and notices.
  • NEW: Added ‘charitable_email_fields_donation_field_value’ filter which can help with the output of custom field values in emails.
  • NEW: Campaigns shortcode now has a new “description_limit” parameter that limits words displayed from the campaign description.
  • NEW: Added both a filter and an option (in beta) in the general setting tab to disable showing a login form or registration reminder on donation forms. We have a new doc page that covers the details.
  • UPDATED: Improved tour guide for visual campaign builder with more interactivity and showing more elements.
  • UPDATED: Campaigns shortcode now displays a photo and campaign description from campaigns built with the visual builder.
  • UPDATED: Moved “Categories”, “Tags”, and “Customize” menus from the main menu. Now found in the Charitable -> “Tools” page.
  • FIX: Adjusted appearance of the donation button in Youth Sports campaign theme when modal button setting was on.
  • FIX: Resolved an issue with the donation summary field for the visual campaign builder involving showing/hiding items.
  • FIX: Resolved several instances where donation amounts were not being formatted currently in non-English languages in the reporting screens.
  • FIX: Improved loading for the WordPress dashboard widget.
  • FIX: Adjustments to CSS on the Dashboard page.
  • FIX: Minor translation, misc CSS, UI, and PHP coding updates.

And There You Have It!

Eager to leverage the newest Charitable features for your non-profit? Update Charitable to the latest version on your WordPress site today to maximize your fundraising and streamline donations.

If you haven’t started using Charitable yet, now is the perfect time to begin! Enhance your WordPress site with Charitable Pro and take your non-profit’s fundraising to the next level using the best plugin for donations and donor management in the market.

Of course, we can’t end this without thanking our awesome community – made up of so many varieties of charitable organizations -for making this update possible. We’re truly grateful for your continued support and feedback. Your dedication to fundraising inspires us.

Remember to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter/X for the latest news and updates.

(Hint: We’ve got more updates and surprises coming up for you, so stay tuned!)

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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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.
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
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.
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
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.