Documentation Category: Troubleshooting

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  • How to Connect your Square Test Account in Charitable

    Testing your Square payment gateway before going live ensures donations work smoothly when you launch. This guide walks you through connecting your Square sandbox (test) account to Charitable. Prerequisites Before you begin, make sure you have: In this Guide Quick answers I clicked “Connect to Square (Sandbox)” and got a blank white screen. What happened?…

  • “Charitable has noticed some recent donation attempts via the donation form have failed due to invalid security checks”

    You may have seen a notice on your Charitable dashboard that reads something similar to “Charitable has noticed some recent donation attempts via the donation form have failed due to invalid security checks.” and similar to the screenshot below. In this post we will tell you why this message is appearing and likely what the…

  • How to refund a donation

    Unfortunately, you will probably need to refund a donation sooner or later. When that happens, Charitable has your back with an easy way to refund donations in your WordPress dashboard. You can also refund donations (including partial refunds) through your payment gateway account. Refund from the WordPress dashboard If you need to refund a donation,…

  • How to Fix “Page Not Found” Errors

    If you are getting a “Page Not Found” or 404 error, it may be a permalinks issue. Try this to fix it:  ​In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Permalinks Without changing any settings, click on Save Changes After doing this, the problem should be resolved. 

  • How to Change ‘Donate’ Button Text

    There are a couple ways you can change the text in Charitable. You could use a translation plugin like TranslatePress, or you can use a little bit of code. Here is a code snippet you can adapt: https://library.wpcode.com/snippet/32j0vx5l/ How to add a code snippet If you are new to PHP or WordPress development, we recommend adding these…

  • How to Add a Donate Link to Your Menu

    If you would like to add a Donate link or button in your menu, there are a couple ways of achieving this. Option 1: Link to a separate donation page You can add a link to your donation page while editing your menu at Appearance > Menus. In the left hand column, look for the “Custom Links” option.…

  • How to Set a Minimum Donation Amount

    Setting a minimum donation amount in Charitable helps you make sure every donation is big enough to support your fundraising goals. This way, you avoid very small payments that could cost too much in processing fees and keep your campaign running smoothly. This also helps avoid confusion during checkout and keeps your fundraising smooth by…

  • How to create and edit donations in the WordPress dashboard

    Received a cheque in the mail from a donor and want to add it to Charitable? No problems! With Charitable, you can easily create and edit donations through your WordPress dashboard. Create a new donation To create a new donation from the Dashboard, go to Charitable > Donations, and click the Add Donation button at…

  • How to resend donation emails

    Need to resend a donation receipt to your donor? With Charitable, you can do that easily through the WordPress dashboard. Which emails can you resend? Charitable allows you to resend any donation-related email. Out of the box, this includes the Donation Receipt for donors, and the New Donation Notification email, which is sent to site…

  • How to Remove Avatars from the Donors Widget

    You can remove the avatars from the donors widget by creating a custom template for the donors widget. To do that, create a new file in your theme or child theme at charitable/widgets/donors.php. Next, copy and paste the contents of the charitable/templates/widgets/donors.php template file (this is in the Charitable plugin directory) into this file. You can then make…

  • How to Remove a Field from a Form

    Here is a code snippet that provides a general guide to removing fields from forms. It lists the ‘hooks’ you should use for each form, as well as all of the fields that are included in those forms. See this page at WPCode.com for details on how to add a code snippet to your site…

  • PayPal IPN Troubleshooting

    PayPal should automatically be able to send a message to your site that updates the donation status, using what is called an IPN listener. If you are seeing all of your PayPal donations remain stuck in “Pending” status, this may mean that the IPN listener is not working for you. Step 1: Check donation logs…

  • Donation Emails not Sending

    There are a few different reasons why emails might not send. By default, the donation receipt and admin confirmation are only sent when the donation is Paid – not when it is still Pending. The first thing to check is the status of the donation, which you can see by logging into your WordPress dashboard and…

  • How to Add Custom Widgets to the Campaign Page

    There are a couple of ways you can customize the widgets on the campaign page. If you’re fairly comfortable with writing code & WordPress (or you have a developer on your team), you can create a custom template for your campaigns by creating a template file called single-campaign.php in your theme or child theme. You…

  • How to Create a Custom Campaign Template

    Changing the campaign page template requires adding a new template to your theme or child theme. By default, Charitable will use the same template as is used in your theme for blog posts. To customise the template, you can do the following (note: this requires FTP or similar to be able to make the changes):…

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GiveWP Migrations New

White Glove Migration Service for GiveWP

Thinking about switching your fundraising platform from GiveWP to Charitable, but don’t want to risk losing your data or handle a complex technical setup yourself? Charitable’s White Glove Migration Service features:

👥 Flawless Donor Mapping: Safely transfer your entire supporter database with zero data loss.

📊 Complete Financial History: Meticulously preserve every historical transaction for continuous, accurate reporting.

🔄 Seamless Recurring Giving: Safely transfer active sustaining subscriptions without disrupting your incoming revenue or requiring your donors to update their information.

💳 Zero Gateway Disruptions: Keep using Stripe, PayPal, or any other GiveWP-compatible processor you already love.

🚀 Expert Technical Setup: Relax while our team handles the heavy lifting to install and configure your forms—plus, qualifying users get a full year of Charitable Pro completely free.

Visit this page to learn more.

automation Improvement

📢 New Feature Alert: Automation Connect 2.0 Is Here! 🚀

Thinking about connecting your fundraising data to tools like Mailchimp, Slack, or Google Sheets, but don’t want to hire a developer or write custom code? Charitalbe’s new automation addon has:

⚡ 17 Event Triggers: Instantly fire webhooks for a donor’s first gift, renewal payments, or reached campaign milestones.

🎯 Smart Conditional Logic: Use powerful AND/OR logic across 11 fields to only send data when it meets your exact criteria, like newsletter opt-ins.

📊 Custom Payload Control: Select from 80+ clean data fields across donor, donation, and campaign metadata so your apps get exactly what they need.

🚀 Pre-Built Platform Templates: Skip the setup from scratch with ready-to-go templates for Zapier, Make.com, n8n, HubSpot, and Slack.

🛡️ Reliable Developer Tools: Power your workflows with signed HMAC-SHA256 payloads, complete WordPress filters, and automatic retry logs.

automation Improvement

🔌 Charitable Meets Zapier: Connect to 7,000+ Apps and Automate Your Fundraising

Tired of manually copying donation data into accounting sheets or tracking down new donor signups? Put your administrative tasks on autopilot. Charitable is now officially on Zapier, giving you a powerful, no-code way to plug your fundraising directly into the rest of your favorite tools.

Every donation, donor signup, and campaign milestone can now trigger an automated workflow seamlessly.

What’s New:

♾️ Connect to 7,000+ Apps: Bridge your Charitable campaigns with everyday software like Google Sheets, QuickBooks, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, and thousands more.

⚡ 12 Powerful Triggers: Build deep workflows using smart automation triggers covering the entire donation lifecycle—including New Donation, New Donor, Subscription Cancelled, and Campaign Goal Reached.

📋 Pre-Built Action Templates: Get started in three minutes or less with our pre-made template combinations, like automatically logging new donations straight into a Google Sheet or firing custom donor welcome emails through Gmail.

🚫 Zero Code Needed: No complex webhooks or custom PHP scripts required. Just pick your trigger, choose your app, map your fields, and let Zapier handle the heavy lifting.

Ready to save hours of admin time? Grab Charitable Pro with the Automation Connect addon today and launch your first Zap!

Improvement Payments

🚀 Introducing PayPal Commerce: One Connection, Six Ways to Donate

Donors expect modern, flexible payment options when they support a cause. If they don’t see their preferred method on your donation form, they often disappear without a word. With PayPal Commerce, we are bringing a completely modernized checkout experience right to your campaigns.

Enjoy a single integration that upgrades your forms, makes giving seamless, and helps you capture every single donation.

What’s New:

🔌 One-Click Connection: Skip messy API keys and developer docs. Simply click “Connect with PayPal,” sign in to your business account, and your modern form is live in under five minutes.

💳 Six Ways to Give: Give your supporters instant access to PayPal balance, Venmo (US), Pay Later financing, major credit/debit cards, Apple Pay (Safari), and Google Pay (Chrome) all from the exact same form.

🔄 Flexible Recurring Giving: Fully supports monthly giving. Choose between the PayPal Subscriptions API (handled automatically on PayPal’s end) or Vault + Cron (handled securely right on your site).

💬 Friendly Error Recovery: No more confusing browser alerts. If a payment is declined, donors see plain-language, inline messages that guide them on how to fix the issue and complete their gift.

Ready for PayPal, modernized? Update to Charitable Pro 1.8.15+ (or Charitable Lite 1.8.11+) and connect your account today!

Campaigns New

⏳ Campaign Countdown: Drive Urgency and Lift Donations

Urgency is one of the most powerful tools in fundraising! Meet Campaign Countdown—a live, real-time timer built to turn procrastination into immediate generosity.

What’s New:

⏱️ Live, Real-Time Urgency: Beautifully track days, hours, minutes, and seconds down to your campaign’s deadline w/ live-updating visual countdowns.

🎨 Tailored to Your Look: Choose between Boxed bordered tiles or a clean, single-line Inline display. Match your theme instantly with font and deep color controls.

🛠️ Place it Anywhere: Drop the countdown anywhere you like using the Campaign Builder field, a dedicated Gutenberg block, or a simple shortcode.

🚨 Smart Expiry Actions: Total control over the end state—choose to automatically replace the timer with a custom message, freeze it at zero, and more.

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