Documentation Category: Troubleshooting

Browse Documentation Categories

  • How to Connect your Square Test Account in Charitable

    Testing your Square payment gateway before going live is crucial for ensuring a smooth donation experience. This guide will walk you through connecting your Square test account (sandbox) to Charitable. Prerequisites Before you begin, make sure you have: In this Guide Step 1: Set Up Your Square Sandbox Environment First, sign up for Square if you…

  • “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):…

What's New In Charitable

🔔 Subscribe to get our latest updates
📧 Subscribe to Emails

Email Subscription

Join our Newsletter

We won’t spam you. We only send an email when we think it will genuinely help you. Unsubscribe at any time!

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.

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.

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.

Check out all the new security features »
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.

Check out the Visual Donation Form Builder »
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.

Check out the Donor Leaderboard »
View All Announcements