Ben is a 32-year old with a solid job and a lingering desire to create something entrepreneurial. His parents ran a small business when he grew up, and it was a tough road for them at times. He always admired their work ethic and commitment.

In the community where he lives, Ben sees in some of his neighbours that same determination that inspired him about his parents. He realizes that they have dreams that they would love to pursue, but many lack the financial means to chase those dreams.

Out of a desire to give back to his local community, Ben decides to create a website for his local community. A place where people can share their entrepreneurial idea and ask for that little bit of financial help they need to get it started. No banks, no loans. Just good old fashioned community support.

That’s Ben’s dream. But his problem is that he’s not technical and the thought of putting together a complex platform daunts him. He can’t write code, so Ben’s goal is to find an off-the-shelf solution that allows him to create a platform where people can list their idea, connect their bank account, and start receiving donations from their local community.

Can he build this with WordPress?

Ben is familiar with WordPress from using it at his job, so he starts out by creating a new WordPress site and installing a theme he likes. He hunts around for a fundraising plugin and eventually finds Charitable. That allows him to start accepting donations, but there are a few things missing:

1. He needs other people to be able to submit campaigns, but he doesn’t want them to have access to the WordPress dashboard.
2. He needs all donations to automatically go to the people who added the campaign — not himself.
3. When someone donates, he’d like to collect a small fee so that he can cover costs for his platform.

After chatting to our incredibly helpful and handsome support person (i.e. me!), Ben discovers that he can tick all three of these boxes with Charitable extensions available in the Charitable Pro package.

The first thing he does is install the Ambassadors extension. This lets him add a form to his site where people can submit campaigns.

Next, he installs Stripe, so that people can donate directly on his website using their credit card. Of course, Ben uses an SSL certificate to secure the transaction. Stripe does all the heavy lifting in terms of handling the payment.

This is fine, but it still means that all donations go into his Stripe account. The final piece to the puzzle is our latest extension: Stripe Connect. This extension builds on top of the Ambassadors and Stripe extensions and allows people to connect their own Stripe account when they add their campaign. This way, whenever a donation is made to their campaign, the donation goes directly to them. Ben charges a 5% fee for every donation, which allows him to cover the costs of the website. Stripe handles the transaction and automatically sends Ben’s fee to his Stripe account, with the rest going to the campaign creator after charging its own fee.

These three extensions – Ambassadors, Stripe and Stripe Connect – combine to help Ben create his fundraising platform. Best of all, he hasn’t written a single line of code!

Build your platform with Charitable

Our Stripe Connect extension was released last week after months of testing and development. It makes Charitable an even better foundation for creating your own fundraising platform. Even though Ben’s story is fictitious, many of you have reached out to us over the past few years with similar dreams. We’re thrilled and inspired to be able to provide you with the tools you need to create the platform you’re passionate about.

Stripe Connect is the same payment system that sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo use to handle transactions between project creators and backers. It’s a robust, secure way to build your platform. And now, you can take advantage of it on your WordPress site with Charitable.

Curious to see how it works? You can try out the experience for campaign creators on our Stripe demo.

The Stripe Connect extension is only available as part of the Charitable Pro package, which also includes every other Charitable extension.