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Introducing the Donor Leaderboard: Celebrate & Motivate Your Top Supporters

Introducing the Donor Leaderboard: Celebrate & Motivate Your Top Supporters

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We are thrilled to announce a powerful and highly requested new feature included in Charitable Pro: the Donor Leaderboard!

This new feature is designed to help you celebrate your most generous supporters, create a sense of community, and add a powerful element of “gamification” to your fundraising. By publicly recognizing your donors, you can inspire friendly competition and motivate others to contribute, helping you reach your goals faster.

The Donor Leaderboard is available today in Charitable Pro version 1.8.9.4 and later.

Celebrate Generosity and Boost Engagement

A donor leaderboard is more than just a list – it’s a dynamic tool for engagement. It provides a public platform to thank your supporters and show them how much their contributions matter.

This builds transparency and creates a “hall of fame” that can motivate new donors to join and inspire existing donors to give again.

With the new Donor Leaderboard, you can:

  • Publicly recognize your most generous supporters.
  • Create friendly competition to motivate more and larger donations.
  • Add gamification to your campaigns, encouraging donors to “climb the ranks.”
  • Showcase momentum for a specific campaign or your entire organization.

Watch how it works in our video:

Two Beautiful Layouts: List or Card View

We know that one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why the Donor Leaderboard comes with two distinct, professional layouts right out of the box.

  • List View: A clean, traditional table layout. It’s perfect for displaying detailed information like rank, name, amount, and donation counts. The top 3 donors are automatically highlighted with special trophy icons.
  • Card View: A modern, visual grid layout. This view prominently features your top 3 donors with special “crown” icons and then displays all other contributors in a stylish, easy-to-read card grid.

Here’s what the list view would look like:

Here’s a look at the card view leaderboard:

Add a Leaderboard Anywhere, No Code Required

We’ve made it incredibly easy to add your new leaderboard to any part of your site. You have three simple options, all without needing to touch a line of code:

  1. WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg): Simply search for the “Donor Leaderboard” block and add it to any page or post. All the settings are available in a user-friendly sidebar with a live preview.
  2. Campaign Builder: The leaderboard is now available as a “Pro Field” right inside the visual Campaign Builder. Just click to add it to your campaign page, and it will automatically show donors for that specific campaign.
  3. Shortcode: For maximum flexibility, you can also use a simple shortcode to place your leaderboard in widgets, theme templates, or with your favorite page builder.

Powerful Filtering and Customization

This isn’t just a static list. The Donor Leaderboard gives you full control over what data you display to your supporters.

  • Scope: Show donors for a single campaign or create a site-wide leaderboard for all campaigns.
  • Time Frame: Display donors from “all time,” “this year,” “this month,” or any custom date range you choose.
  • Filtering: Set a minimum donation amount to appear on the list.
  • Flexible Display: Easily show or hide information like donor avatars, total amounts, donation counts, or when they last gave.
  • Full Integration: The leaderboard works seamlessly with Recurring Donations (to show lifetime totals) and Charitable Ambassadors (to create team-based leaderboards).
  • Match Your Brand: You can even customize the colors, titles, and icons to perfectly match your website’s design.

Get the Donor Leaderboard Today

The new Donor Leaderboard is available today in Charitable Pro version 1.8.9.4 and later.

We’re excited to see how you use this powerful new tool to celebrate your community and raise more for your cause. To learn about every available setting, you can check out the new documentation.

Not yet a Charitable Pro user? Sign up today and get up to 50% off on your plan. We’re confident you’ll love raising funds with Charitable. If for any reason Charitable is not the right fit for you, we’ll refund your purchase with our 14-day money back guarantee

We’d love to hear how you’re using these new features! Stay connected with us:

Your feedback keeps Charitable moving forward. Let’s keep building better fundraising tools—together.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.

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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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
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.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.