Charitable Documentation

Learn how to make the most of Charitable with clear, step-by-step instructions.

Setting Up PayPal

PayPal is available out of the box as a payment gateway option. You can enable it via your WordPress dashboard:

  1. Go to Charitable > Settings > Payment Gateways.
  2. In the PayPal box, click on Enable Gateway.

Next, you will need to configure some settings by clicking on Gateway Settings.

Settings

General Settings

Gateway Label

The label that will be displayed in the WordPress dashboard for donations made through PayPal. This label will also be shown in the donation form to donors when you have multiple payment gateways enabled.

PayPal Email Address

This is the email address of the PayPal account that should receive all donations.

To avoid problems with having donations remain stuck as pending, ensure that this account is fully set up and approved by PayPal, and also that it is in the same currency as you have set in your Charitable settings.

Sandbox PayPal Email Address

If you would like to test out the donation process without making real transactions, you can use PayPal’s sandbox environment. This is automatically used when you have Charitable’s Test Mode setting enabled (on the Payment Gateways settings page).

If you are not sure how to create a sandbox account, read this guide about how to set up a PayPal sandbox account.

PayPal Transaction Type

PayPal offers discounted fees to registered non-profit organisations. If you have registered as a non-profit organisation, you can select “Donations” for the transaction type; otherwise select “Standard Transaction”.

Click here for more information about registering as a non-profit with PayPal.

Disable IPN Verification

If you are having problems with donations not getting marked as Paid, disabling IPN verification can sometimes fix the issue. However, it is important to be aware that this is a less secure method for verifying donations.

Find out more about how to diagnose problems with donations not getting marked as Paid: PayPal IPN Troubleshooting.

API Settings

As of Charitable 1.6, you are able to automatically refund donations in PayPal via your Charitable donation management page. This feature requires API keys.

If you use our Recurring Donations extension, API keys are also required for automatically cancelling subscriptions.

Live API Username, Password and Signature

You can find your live API details at https://www.paypal.com/businessprofile/mytools/apiaccess/firstparty/signature. You will need to log in to your PayPal account before being able to access this page.

For each setting, click on Show to reveal the setting value.

Sandbox API Username, Password and Signature

To find your sandbox API details, go to https://developer.paypal.com and click on Log into Dashboard. On the following screen, log in with your regular PayPal account details.

Next, click on Account under the Sandbox menu in the sidebar.

On the following page you will see your list of sandbox accounts. Find the Seller account (the one you are using for the Sandbox PayPal Address setting), click on Profile and then click on the API keys tab.

Looking to set up PayPal Commerce. Head to our guide on Getting Started with PayPal Commerce »

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

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ambassadors New

🔑 Introducing Passwordless Fundraisers: Sign Up With Just an Email!

Supporters arrive wanting to help, and then the form asks them to invent a password for a website they may only visit twice. A lot of them stop right there. Passwordless Fundraiser Accounts, new in Charitable Ambassadors 3.5.0, let a supporter start a peer to peer fundraiser with nothing but an email address. Why this is important:

  • 🔑 No password step to lose them at: Switch it on in Charitable » Ambassadors » Templates » Submit Form and the create-fundraiser form asks only for a name, an email address and a page title.
  • 👤 Still a real WordPress account: One click in one email confirms the address, signs them in and creates the account, so they can come back later to edit their story, change their photo and see who has donated.
  • 🎚️ Your call on every campaign: Each peer to peer campaign can follow the site default or override it, which matters when a campaign pays fundraisers through Stripe Connect and those people do need a password.
  • 📋 See who has not clicked yet: The Charitable » Ambassadors » Directory » Awaiting Sign-In tab lists everyone still waiting, with the campaign they joined and a Resend button, so a typo or a spam folder is something you can spot and fix.
  • 🛡️ Links a scanner cannot use up: Opening the link only shows a page, and your fundraiser is signed in when they press the button on it, so corporate email scanners never burn the link. Each one works once, expires on its own and is stored only as a hash.

Check out our announcement here.

ambassadors New

🏃 Introducing Activity: Show Progress on More Than Money!

Most peer-to-peer fundraisers are about more than the money. A read-a-thon is about minutes read, a walkathon is about miles walked, and a food drive is about meals packed. Activity for Charitable Ambassadors lets your fundraisers show that effort right beside the dollars they raise. Why this is important:

  • 🎯 Progress on what you actually count: A progress bar shows each thing you count against its own target, sitting right beside the money raised.
  • 🏅 Milestones for the yes or no things: A milestone badge marks the efforts that are simply done or not done, with no number to chase.
  • ✍️ Fundraisers log their own numbers: Your supporters enter their totals from their own pages, so the effort stops living in a spreadsheet, a comment, or nowhere at all.
  • 🤖 Some numbers count themselves: An AUTOMATIC tag appears wherever the site worked the figure out from completed donations, so you can see at a glance what nobody typed in.
  • 🧩 Set it up once, use it anywhere: You decide what gets counted one time, then choose which campaigns count it. Available now in Charitable Ambassadors 3.4.7, with no new plugin and no developer.

Check out our announcement here.

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.