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

    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…

  • 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

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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.

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.

Integration updated

📬 Introducing Brevo for Charitable: Turn Donors into Subscribers Automatically

The moment a supporter makes a gift is when they are most engaged. With the new Brevo integration for Charitable, you can automatically turn those one-time donors into long-term subscribers without touching a single spreadsheet.

Simply collect donor consent right on your donation form and start your welcome series immediately.

What’s New:

🔄 Automated Subscriber Sync: New donors who opt in are added straight to your Brevo contact list as soon as their payment clears—no manual exports or CSV imports required.

🎯 Granular Consent & Opt-In Control: Customize your checkbox label, choose whether it defaults to checked or unchecked, or turn on Brevo double opt-in to keep your list clean and compliant.

📋 Per-Campaign List Mapping: Route supporters to your global email list or map specific campaigns to targeted Brevo lists to tailor your follow-up messaging.

⚡ 5-Minute Setup: Connect instantly by pasting your Brevo API key into the Newsletter settings, map your contact fields, and start building your email list on autopilot.

Ready to grow your mailing list? Brevo is available now starting on the Charitable Plus plan—connect your account today!

recurring donations updated

💳 Introducing Card Updates: Fix Expired Cards Without Losing Subscriptions!

newExpired or updated credit cards are one of the biggest silent leaks in recurring fundraising. With Card Updates in the Recurring Donations extension, donors can now refresh their payment details directly—keeping their subscription, schedule, and giving history completely intact.

No canceled plans, no lost history, and zero administrative headache for your team.

What’s New:

⚡ 30-Second Self-Service: Donors get a dedicated “Update Card” button in their dashboard that opens Stripe’s secure, PCI-compliant Customer Portal to update card details instantly.

🔒 Scoped & Safe Access: Scoped exclusively to card updates by default, donors can’t accidentally cancel or alter their plans from inside the portal, keeping your webhooks and data in sync.

🤝 Admin-Assisted Support: Helping a donor on the phone? Open their secure Stripe portal in one click from your admin screen or generate a single-use update link to email them.

📋 Automatic Audit Trail: Every payment method update is recorded automatically with a timestamp in both system-wide logs and the individual donor’s profile.

Ready to protect your recurring revenue? Get the Plus or Pro plan and update Recurring Donations to 2.3.0+ and enable “Update Payment Method” under your Settings today!

Integration page builder

Divi Fans Rejoice! Native Divi 5 Campaign Progress Bar Module!

With our new native Divi 5 module, you can anchor your microsites with real-time fundraising stats directly on the visual canvas. Here’s how it works, and why it’s worth turning on today.

Create campaign updates that are VISUAL AND LIVE. You can also:

📊 Campaign Progress Bar: Drop a live progress bar into any Divi 5 layout and show goal progress in real time.

🎨 Deep styling controls: Easily customize the bar and track color, height, and radius to match your brand perfectly.

👁️ Visual Builder ready: Configure and preview everything directly on the Divi canvas as a first-class module.

🔁 Identical rendering: The same exact engine powers this module, meaning consistent design without legacy shims.

✅ Faster launches: Never leave the Divi 5 interface to configure shortcodes or guess how your goal labels will look.

Learn more here.

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