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Secure Your Donation Forms with New Built-in Security in Charitable Lite

Secure Your Donation Forms with New Built-in Security in Charitable Lite

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We are thrilled to announce new security features now included in Charitable (Lite) version 1.8.9. You can now protect your donation forms, registration pages, and campaign creation flows from spam and abuse.

Security is essential for any non-profit collecting funds online and we believe that every organization deserves to fundraise securely. That’s why, starting with version 1.8.9, we have provided a fundamental CAPTCHA feature (and a new tool) designed to help stop bots while keeping the donation experience smooth for your real supporters.

New CAPTCHA Feature

We know that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to security. Some sites prefer Google’s tools, while others prioritize privacy-focused alternatives. The new update supports four different CAPTCHA providers, giving you the freedom to choose what works best for your donors:

  • Google reCAPTCHA v3 (Invisible): Our recommended option. It analyzes user behavior in the background to assign a “risk score,” blocking bots without ever interrupting the user.
  • Google reCAPTCHA v2 (Invisible): A reliable, well-established solution that only challenges suspicious traffic.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile: A free, privacy-focused alternative from a trusted source that is very easy to enable (Cloudflare also provided additional protections much of which is included in their free plan).
  • hCaptcha: A popular privacy-first alternative to Google.

User-Friendly Settings

We’ve also included granular controls to ensure you aren’t annoying your team or loyal donors. You can easily toggle the “Require captcha for logged-in users” setting to “No,” ensuring that your administrators and registered members can interact with your site without jumping through hoops.

New Donation Tool

Charitable has a new tool to allow you to remove any unwanted pending or failed donations. You will find this in the “tools” menu under the “misc” tab. With this tool you can select the type of donation you want to remove along with a date range. This tool can help if you were experienced past issues with fake donations or just want to get rid of test donations.

Spam Blocker Users

If you are currently using the Spam Blocker addon with your paid license please note that the Spam Blocker addon settings will take priority over the built-in Lite security features to prevent conflicts.

Not using Charitable yet? Check out Charitable Lite for free. It has all the essentials that you need. Sign up for free and explore Charitable Lite now.

What Even More Protection? Upgrade to Charitable Pro!

For even more robust protection, consider updating to Charitable Pro, which offers advanced rate limiting, expanded CAPTCHA options, IP address blacklisting/whitelisting, dedicated rate limiting for Stripe, and more comprehensive security features that go far beyond what the legacy Spam Blocker addon provides – all built directly into the plugin.

You get a 14-day money back guarantee so you can try Pro risk-free today.

We’d Love to Hear From You!

The security updates and tools in the Charitable (Lite) 1.8.9 are part of our commitment to democratizing fundraising tools for non-profits. We want you to focus on your mission, not on dealing with spam donations.

We’d love to hear how these new features are working for you! We are committed to continuously improving Charitable based on your needs. If you have feedback on the new security settings or ideas for what we should tackle next, please reach out and let us know. Your input directly guides our development roadmap for 2026.

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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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.
Feature New

🎟️ Introducing Charitable Events: Sell Tickets Inside Your Campaigns!

Most nonprofits sell event tickets in one tool and collect donations in another, which leaves two sets of reports and a manual match at the end of the year. Charitable Events brings both together, selling tickets through the same donation forms and payment gateways you already run in Charitable. Why this is important:

  • 🎟️ Every ticket is a donation: Ticket sales run through the gateway you already use and count toward the campaign goal, with everything managed under Charitable » Events.
  • 📱 QR check-in from any phone: Each attendee gets their own QR code on the receipt, and volunteers scan at the door through a check-in link that needs no WordPress account.
  • 🧾 Receipts ready for tax time: Give each ticket type a fair market value, and Charitable puts the correct tax-deductible amount on every donor receipt.
  • 📋 Attendee details at checkout: Ask every guest for a meal choice, shirt size, or access needs, with a separate attendee record created for each ticket.
  • 🗓️ Blocks and calendars included: Three editor blocks plus Sugar Calendar and The Events Calendar support put your events where supporters already look.

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.
ai New

🚀 Unleash AI Power in Charitable!

Your AI assistant can now build, edit, and manage your Charitable fundraising campaigns directly — just by asking. With Charitable Pro adding write support for the WordPress Abilities API, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor can handle full administrative actions safely through MCP. Why this is important:

  • 🤖 Campaign creation in plain language: Prompt your assistant with a goal like “Set up a fundraiser for the shelter with a $5,000 goal”, and it builds a real draft campaign complete with suggested donation tiers.
  • 🎨 Instant donation form tweaks: Add custom fields, change button colors, or reorder elements without diving into form settings.
  • 📝 Offline gift logging: Tell your assistant about cash or check gifts, and it will match donor emails and record transactions into your history.
  • 🛡️ Safety and control by default: Write access stays strictly off until turned on in Charitable » Tools » AI MCP, keeping read-only reporting safe by default.
  • 📜 Full audit logging: Every change made by an AI assistant is tracked under Charitable » Tools » Logs, so you always know who (or what) updated your site.

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

💰 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.

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.
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.