Charitable Blog

Everything you need to know about Charitable and our team.

Introducing visual donation form builder

Create Custom Donation Forms Faster With The New Donation Form Visual Builder

Last updated on

  • By

Sometimes, creating the perfect donation form feels harder than it should be. You know what information you need from donors but getting the form to look right, flow naturally, and match your campaign’s style can take too much time and trial and error.

We’ve built something that truly puts you in the driver’s seat.

We’re beyond excited to introduce the brand-new ✨ Donation Form Visual Builder ✨ in Charitable!

It lets you design donation forms visually, right inside Charitable. You can drag and drop fields, adjust layouts, and instantly see what your donors will see – no coding, no guessing.

Every field is flexible, from basic details like donor names and payment info to advanced options like custom messages, file uploads, and picture submissions. And now, with added settings for alignment, styling, and even custom CSS, you get full creative control without leaving your dashboard.

Our goal was simple: make it easier for you to build donation forms that not only work great but look great too – so you can focus on what really matters, your mission.

Want to see it in action? Watch the video below:

The Campaign Builder Vs The New Donation Form Builder

Charitable already comes with a visual campaign builder. This lets you create stunning fundraiser campaigns like the one below:

Sample fundraiser campaign for drinking water

You can create a campaign like this by just dragging and dropping the fields you want. It’s so easy to use, anyone can do it. No coding needed!

You can choose a template or layout and use the builder to customize it. Here’s what the campaign builder looks like:

Black Friday campaign builder

Everything can be edited by just pointing and clicking.

Now, once your campaign is live, when a donor views it and clicks to donate, they’ll be taken to the donation form. They can fill out their details and make the payment. It would look something like this:

donation form

The customization options on this donation form have been limited, and we wanted to change that. We want to make it as simple as possible for you to customize this form the way you want.

We know our users love the visual campaign builder, so we’ve taken the same concept and introduced it to our donation forms as well. So now you can customize your donation form as well with a visual preview that you can edit.

✨ Introducing The Visual Donation Form Builder

Creating your donation forms just got a whole lot easier and way more flexible. Instead of tweaking the form through settings, you can actually see and customize every part of your form as you go.

When you edit a campaign with Charitable, you’ll see a new tab called “Form”. Here, you can customize your donation form visually.

form tab

Just drag the fields you want into the form, arrange them in any order, and click to update settings.

What you see here is what your donors will see, no more switching between the settings page, or guessing how things will look live.

new donation form builder

We hope you’ll love this new feature! Here are the highlights:

  • Customize!: Customize visual style of the form and donation button and further customize by adding custom CSS for a truly branded experience
  • Drag & Drop Everything: Build your perfect form by simply dragging fields into place. Required donor info, address, custom questions, file uploads, dates, and more – add whatever you need, wherever you want it.
  • Customize Every Detail: Click any field to fine-tune labels, add instructions, set placeholders, make fields required, or tweak the alignment without touching any code. If you know CSS, you can add custom classes for even more control.
  • Live Preview: ​See your form as it would appear to your donors so you have your forms set up to flow smoothly.
  • Works With All Your Campaigns: The visual builder works with new and existing campaigns.
  • Easy Integrations: Connect your donation forms to popular payment gateways (like Stripe or PayPal), sync donors to your email marketing tools, or automate updates with Zapier. Everything happens right within Charitable – no plugins, no headaches.

How the Visual Donation Form Builder Helps You Raise More, Faster

🚀 The real power of the new Donation Form Visual Builder is its flexibility to fit your needs, whether you’re running a simple fundraiser or a complex campaign. Here’s how different users will find it helpful:

Quick Setup for Beginners: If you’re new to donation forms or short on time, the drag-and-drop builder makes creating your form fast and simple. Just add the basics, tweak labels, and launch a clean, professional form in minutes – no coding or guesswork needed.

Custom Campaigns for Complex Needs: Need more than just name and payment fields? You can add dropdowns, checkboxes, file uploads, and more. For example, use the Calendar Date field to gather event sign-ups. Custom HTML and Shortcode fields let you create unique experiences tailored to your campaign.

Engage Your Donors: Pro features like Donor Comments and Referral Codes let donors share their stories or invite others to support your cause. This builds connection and trust, turning one-time gifts into ongoing support.

Better Data Collection & Management: You control every form field – making them required, setting default values, adjusting alignments—to collect exactly what you need while guiding donors smoothly. Hidden fields can help with advanced tracking, invisible to donors but valuable to you.

Keep Your Brand Front and Center: Style your forms to match your campaign’s look and message. When your forms feel consistent, donors trust you more and are more likely to give.

With full control over every part of your donation form, the Visual Builder helps reduce donor friction, collect vital info, and boost your fundraising results, all while saving you time and effort.

Ready to Start Building Better Donation Forms?

The new Visual Form Builder is available now in Charitable Pro.

⬆️ Update your Charitable Pro plugin to the latest version and open any campaign to start designing your form with the new drag-and-drop interface.

No complicated setup, no extra purchases needed. Whether you want to quickly launch a simple donation page or craft a detailed, interactive form, the builder gives you all the tools right at your fingertips.

Need more help? See our Donation Form Builder 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

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

🔔 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!

Integration New

WordPress Command Palette Integration

Take your fundraising workflow to the next level. Speed up your site management and stay in your creative flow with our new WordPress Command Palette integration.

Supercharge Your Workflow
Navigate your fundraising dashboard faster than ever.

The Ultimate Keyboard Shortcut Hit Cmd + K (or Ctrl + K) to launch the Command Palette and manage your campaigns instantly.

⚡ Instant Navigation: Jump directly to your Campaigns, Donations, or Settings from anywhere in the editor.

➕ Quick Create: Start a new fundraising campaign or add a manual donation with a single command.

Efficiency Redefined
The tools you need, exactly when you need them.

⚙️ Contextual Actions: See relevant Charitable commands based on whether you’re editing a page or viewing your reports.

🚀 Seamless Integration: Built directly into the WordPress core experience for a lightweight, native feel.

author avatar
David Bisset
Improvement New Security

📣 New Security Features

We’ve introduced a suite of new security tools to give you total control over who accesses your forms, plus a new way to tidy up your database.

Advanced Security Suite

Layered protection: Cloudflare, ReCAPTCHA, IP Controls, and Rate Limiting.

We have overhauled our security settings to stop bots without blocking real donors.

  • 🤖 Flexible Protection: Choose between Google reCAPTCHA v3 or the privacy-first Cloudflare Turnstile to block bots invisible.

  • 🚦 Rate limiting: Stop spam floods by limiting how many submissions an IP address can make in a set timeframe.

  • 🛑 Total control: Use the new IP Blacklist to block bad actors instantly, or the IP Whitelist to let your team bypass checks during testing.

The Clean Donation Tool

Go from “Testing” to “Live” in seconds.

Finished setting up your site and need to get rid of all those test transactions?

  • 🧹 Sweep it clean: Bulk delete test donations and donor records with a single click.

  • 📉 Accurate reporting: Ensure your revenue stats are 100% accurate for launch day.

  • ⚙️ Reset sequences: Automatically resets sequential invoice numbering.

author avatar
David Bisset
donation form New

🏗️ Visual Donation Form Builder

Building the perfect donation form just got easier. We have completely reimagined how you create forms with a new drag-and-drop interface.

Design Visually, in Real-Time

No coding, no guessing. Just point, click, and build.

Say goodbye to confusing settings pages. You can now edit your form and see exactly what your donors will see, instantly.

  • 🖱️ Drag & Drop: Easily add fields like names, addresses, or file uploads by dragging them exactly where you want them.

  • 🎨 Customize everything: Click any field to tweak labels, placeholders, and requirement settings on the fly.

  • 👁️ Live preview: See your changes immediately as you make them—ensure your form flows perfectly before you hit publish.

Flexible & Powerful

Works with all your existing campaigns.

  • 🧩 Deep customization: Add custom HTML, shortcodes, or CSS classes for advanced branding.

  • ⚙️ Smart fields: Collect exactly what you need with support for dropdowns, checkboxes, dates, and hidden fields.

author avatar
David Bisset
Leaderboards New

🏆 Donor Leaderboards!

Turn your fundraising into a community event. Recognize your most generous supporters and inspire friendly competition with our new leaderboard tools.

Gamify Your Fundraising

Celebrate your top donors and encourage others to climb the ranks.

Create a public “Hall of Fame” to give your donors the recognition they deserve.

  • 🎨 Two stunning layouts: Choose the List View for a clean, data-rich table or the Card View for a modern, visual grid with avatars.

  • 🥇 Automatic highlights: The top 3 supporters get special Trophy and Crown icons to make them stand out.

  • 🧩 Place it anywhere: Add it to any page using the new Gutenberg Block, or drop it directly into your campaign using the Visual Builder.

Total Customization

You decide what to show and what to hide.

  • ⚙️ Flexible data: Choose to display or hide donation amounts, donor counts, or avatars.

  • 🔄 Lifetime stats: Works seamlessly with Recurring Donations to show a donor’s all-time total impact.

author avatar
David Bisset
Improvement New templates

🎨 New Templates & List Builder

Launch faster and design better. We’ve added three professional campaign templates and a versatile new content block to help you tell your story.

3 New Campaign Templates

Ready-to-use designs for specific fundraising needs.

Don’t start from scratch. Pick a template tailored to your cause and launch in minutes.

  • 🎄 Holiday Fundraiser: A warm, festive design perfect for year-end giving, toy drives, or food pantries.

  • 🎓 School Fundraiser: Built for PTAs and sports teams. clearly highlights goals like playground upgrades or classroom tech.

  • Church Fundraiser: A trustworthy layout designed for building funds, mission trips, and tithes.

The New “List” Block

Organize your campaign details without writing code.

Make your campaign pages easier to scan and more visually engaging with our new builder block.

  • 📝 Flexible layouts: Choose from 3 distinct styles to display sponsorship levels, donation perks, or project goals.

  • 🎨 Rich customization: Add colorful headlines, support for emojis, and unlimited list items.

  • 👣 Smart footers: Include a built-in footer for extra context or a final Call to Action.

author avatar
David Bisset