Charitable Blog

Everything you need to know about Charitable and our team.

Create Better Fundraisers with New Templates, Builder Tools, and Improved Security

Create Better Fundraisers with New Templates, Builder Tools, and Improved Security

Last updated on

  • By

We’re rolling out exciting new updates in Charitable Pro that make creating and customizing campaigns easier than ever.

From fresh, ready-to-use templates for schools, churches, and holiday fundraisers to a brand-new List Block that helps you organize and present campaign details beautifully—this update is all about helping you launch impactful campaigns faster and with more creativity.

Introducing Charitable Pro 1.8.8.9 with new features and improved security that make it easier to craft campaigns that inspire support.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new in this release and how these updates can help you create more effective fundraising campaigns.

New Campaign Templates

We’ve added three new campaign templates to help you create beautiful, effective fundraisers in just a few clicks.

Each one is designed with a specific audience and purpose in mind, so you can launch faster and connect better with your supporters.

Holiday template
Holiday Fundraiser Template
School Fundraiser Template
Church Fundraiser Template

Holiday Fundraiser Template

Make the most of the giving season with a festive template built for holiday appeals. Ideal for year-end giving, toy drives, or food pantry fundraisers, it helps you capture the warmth and generosity of the season while keeping your goals front and center.

School Fundraiser Template

Quickly launch your next PTA drive, sports team fundraiser, or back-to-school campaign. This template rallies parents, faculty, and the local community around a clear, school-focused goal—perfect for funding playground upgrades, classroom technology, or student trips.

Church Fundraiser Template

Perfect for your congregation’s next big project, whether it’s a building fund, mission trip, or outreach program. The layout helps communicate your ministry’s goals and build trust with your community. It’s also great for managing ongoing tithes and offerings digitally.

New Campaign Block: Lists

We’re excited to introduce the new List Block, a simple yet powerful way to organize and highlight information on your campaign pages.

With flexible styles and customization options, this block makes it easy to break down your goals, donation perks, or sponsorship levels—no coding required.

List block in charitable

Here’s why we added this feature for you — The List Block lets you grab attention instantly with a colorful headline (emoji support included), add unlimited items to detail exactly what matters most, and choose from three distinct layout styles. You can also include a footer for extra context or a call-to-action, making your lists even more effective.

List customization

If you’re looking to make your campaigns more visually engaging and informative, the List Block helps you do it—all while streamlining the setup process.

Security Enhancements for Smarter Campaign Protection

We’ve added two new security features to help protect your fundraising campaigns and keep spam out.

You’ll see better filters and smarter checks to block suspicious donations, so you don’t have to worry about bad actors slipping through. We’ll keep improving these protections and stay alert for new threats, making sure you can spend less time on headaches—and more time helping your cause.

Global Minimum Donation Setting

We’ve heard from many of you about a recent spike in spam $1 donations and unwanted attacks on your campaigns. To eliminate that, Charitable Pro now comes with stronger security tools to keep your fundraisers safe and your donation records clean.

Why would fraudsters send $1 donations and how does it affect you?

They do this as part of a practice called “card testing.” They use donation forms to test whether stolen or fake credit card numbers are still active and can be used for transactions. By sending small amounts, they check if the card goes through without raising alarms. If the small donation succeeds, they know the card is valid and may attempt larger fraudulent purchases later.

Nonprofits and donation platforms are often targeted because donation forms typically require less detailed information compared to online stores, making them easier to test cards on. These fake donations can cause problems like chargebacks, fees, and damage to your payment processor reputation. Setting a minimum donation amount (like $2 or more) helps reduce this spam by making it less profitable and more difficult for bots to test cards with small amounts.

Now Charitable makes it easy to set a minimum donation amount for all your campaigns at once. Just head to Settings » Security to pick your default minimum. Charitable automatically turns it on and sets it to $2—no more manual setup for every campaign, and no more $1 spam.

campaign settings global minimum amount

Already running campaigns? You can update them individually or flip a switch to apply the new minimum to all at once.

Want something different for a specific campaign? You can override the minimum inside the campaign builder. Here, you set any minimum amount—like $20 for a special project—while all other campaigns use your default.

Learn how to set minimum donation amounts for individual campaigns here »

Advanced Email Validation

Stop fake donors before they reach your campaign. Turn on email validation and decide exactly which domains, patterns, or keywords you want to block.

email validation settings

You can even block emails that match part of a domain name, so if you’re seeing spam from a specific group of domains, you can block them all at once.

For example, blocking “spamdomain” will block emails like [email protected][email protected], or [email protected].

There’s also a toggle for case sensitivity, so you can choose whether to block “SpamDomain.com” differently from “spamdomain.com” depending on your preference.

Plus, you can add your own custom error message that donors will see if their email is blocked. For instance: “Your donation could not be processed. You are using an email address that has been blocked.”

This way, donors understand why their donation didn’t go through and can take steps to use a different email address if needed.

New Dashboard and Onboarding

A few weeks ago, we rolled out a fresh dashboard and onboarding experience for Charitable Lite users—giving you a clear view of your campaign stats, smarter navigation, and step-by-step help right inside WordPress.

Now, these features are available in Charitable Pro too! We’ve made it so much easier to access everything right off the bat—from instant donation reports and trend graphs to quick access support and a handy Getting Started Checklist—all in one place.

New lite dashboard overview

Want the full scoop? Read all about it here.

We hope these new features help you run smoother, safer, and more successful fundraisers. They’re designed to save you time, reduce hassle, and protect your campaigns from spam and abuse—so you can focus on making an impact.

Ready to Try Everything Out?

These features are available right now in the latest version of Charitable Pro. Simply update to the latest version of Charitable.

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.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get free tips and resources right in your inbox, along with 60,000+ others

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!

Featured Video:

Watch more videos on our YouTube channel.

What's New In Charitable

View The Latest Updates
🔔 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!

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.

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.
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!

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.
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!

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.
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.

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.
Integration page builder

👉🏻 New in Charitable: Native Elementor Widgets for Seamless Campaign Building

With native Elementor widgets, you design donation campaigns right alongside the rest of your page without touching code. Here’s how it works, and why it’s worth turning on today.

Create fundraising pages that are VISUAL, NATIVE, AND SHORTCODE-FREE. You can also:

⚡ Mini Donation: Add a compact, high-converting donation widget with preset amounts and full color control.

⏳ Campaign Countdown: Build urgency for a deadline-driven appeal, complete with optional confetti when the goal is hit.

📣 Donation Feed: Prove momentum by showing visitors the social proof of real people giving right now.

🏆 Donor Leaderboard: Celebrate top supporters with gold, silver, and bronze styling to spark friendly giving.

🖼️ Campaign Showcase: Feature multiple campaigns in a landing page grid or carousel, with search, filters, and badges.

Learn more 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.