Documentation Category: Troubleshooting

  • Donation Form Errors Detected: Payment Scripts Blocked by Caching or Optimization

    If you see a dashboard notice titled “Donation form errors detected,” this guide explains what it means and how to resolve it. The important thing to know first is that this single notice can point to two very different situations. One of them can stop real donors from paying by card and needs your attention.…

  • 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

    If you see a dashboard notice that reads “Charitable has noticed some recent donation attempts via the donation form have failed due to invalid security checks,” this guide explains what it means and how to resolve it. The important thing to know first is that this single notice can point to two very different situations.…

  • 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

    If you are not receiving an email when a donation is made, or your donors are not getting their receipts, the cause is almost always one of a few common things. Charitable includes built-in tools that let you confirm what is happening in a couple of minutes, so please run through the checks below before…

  • 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…

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ambassadors New

🖨️ Introducing Fliers and Posters: Raise Money Away From the Screen!

A lot of peer-to-peer fundraising happens away from a screen: at the finish line of a 5K, on a school noticeboard, in an office kitchen. Charitable Ambassadors 3.4.7 adds 2 printables, a fundraiser flier carrying each fundraiser’s own story and QR code, and a recruitment poster that signs new fundraisers up. Both open as a normal web page and print straight from the browser. Why this is important:

  • 🏁 A flier for every fundraiser: Each one carries that fundraiser’s own photo, story and goal, with a QR code that opens their page rather than your main campaign.
  • 📌 A poster that recruits: It shows “Now Recruiting” above your campaign name with a large QR code that opens your sign-up form, so someone can start fundraising without waiting on a link from you.
  • 🪄 No design tool needed: Both printables render as a normal web page and print from the browser, with no PDF plugin and no designer.
  • 📄 2 flier layouts: Hand out carries the full story for giving to friends and family, and Post up carries a short hook with 5 tear-off tabs for a noticeboard.
  • 🛡️ Off until you switch it on: Fliers stay off after the update until you enable them under Charitable » Ambassadors » Other » Fliers, and only the owner or an administrator can open one.

Check out our announcement here.

Improvement Payments

💸 Introducing Tiered Rates for Fee Relief: Match the Ask to the Gift!

Fee Relief asks your donors one short question at checkout: would you like to cover the processing fee on this gift? Until now that question used a single rate for every donation on a gateway, so a $10 gift and a $500 gift were asked for the same percentage. Fee Relief 1.3.0 lets you set as many donation bands as you like, each carrying its own rate. Why this is important:

  • 🪙 Gentler on small gifts: A fixed transaction cost is a far bigger share of a $10 donation than a $500 one, so bands let you ask for less at the bottom.
  • 🎚️ As many bands as you need: Each band carries its own percentage and its own fixed amount, and the top band runs on with no upper limit.
  • 🛑 An optional ceiling: A Maximum fee field stops any donor being asked for more than a number you choose, however large the gift.
  • 🔌 Set per payment gateway: Stripe can run on four bands while Windcave and Payfast stay on a single rate, because bands belong to a gateway and not to your whole site.
  • 🛡️ Nothing changes until you say so: Your current rates stay exactly as they are until you switch Use Tiered Rates on under Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief.

Check out our announcement here.

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.

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.

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.