It’s no secret that many online projects use mechanisms to raise funds for charity. Someone creates a website for a charity fund, someone collects volunteer funds as part of a promotional campaign for the brand. It does not matter why exactly you collect contributions — would not it be convenient to organize fund-raising on your site without complex add-ons and tweaks? You can use the WordPress potential to collect money for charity.
As a rule, you think that for this you will have to install a complex plug-in or even a special theme, but you are not sure whether this superstructure will pay off and generate cash income.
That’s why you should try free WordPress donation plugins to collect money. What does this plug-in include?
It should be accessible to any potential money-giver.
There should be a way to say thanks to you to every contributor who made a donation. Doing this manually is not an option.
The plug-in must have a payment gateway for accepting various payment methods. At least, it should be integrated with PayPal Gateway.
Now we are going to review free WordPress Donation plugins to get contributions right on your WordPress website.
Donorbox
Donorbox
Active Installs: 2,000+
Ratings: 5/5
Price: Free
Donorbox is another great freemium WordPress donation plugin. When you receive more than $1,000, you do not pay for the applications. It is becoming free since that moment. To use the plugin, you will need to sign up for Donorbox.org. What for? It provided an extended functionality and integrates some additional forms.
Also, you are able to edit and modify any template, form, and other elements. The system will send letters of thanks to every participant.
Install one of these WordPress donation plugins and extend your WordPress site’s capabilities.
PayPal Donations
PayPal Donations
Active Installs: 50,000+
Ratings: 5/5
Price: Free
PayPal Donations is one of the most popular plugins for accepting donations and contributions on a WordPress website. It is quite simple to use and configure, as well as effective in the work.
We are absolutely sure that you know about the PayPal payment system and its features.
The plugin actively used most of them. During the first configuration, you must enter your e-mail address which is an account in the payment system to accept donations and set a default currency in which you will accept the contributions. You should choose the currency depending on the country of residence. You can also set the default donation amount and the type of icon to display on your widget for accepting contributions.
We must admit that this plugin is quite effective, but it does not have the option of sending a letter of thanks to every potential participant in the fundraising campaign. If you have a lot of people paying fees through the site, manually thanking all of them will not be an easy task. The absence of an automatic answer is perhaps the only disadvantage of this plugin.
Seamless Donations
Seamless Donations
Active Installs: 10,000+
Ratings: 4/5
Price: Free
Seamless Donations is another plugin for collecting donations on the site, which attracted the attention of many people. It has all the necessary parameters for working with money donations; and also there is a system of sending letters of thanks to all participants and detailed reports on received, missed, and sent letters.
This plugin can be placed on a separate page: you need to take the shortcode from the plugin which looks like [dgx-donate] and assign a specific page to collect contributions.
In the new version, the developers provided some new features as well as a complete redesign. Let’s review some basic improvements.
An updated user interface of the admin panel. Now it has a modern interface with attractive tabs.
Custom post types. The contributor can now post their own message. You will be able to manage all the posts via the WordPress admin panel.
Custom forms. The new engine allows modifying every part of the form before it will be displayed to a contributor.
Shortcodes. You will be able to share the postcode between pages to simplify the process of getting the contributions.
Flexible configuration. You can change any settings to provide the best experience ever.
Ready for translation. It is already translated into 5 languages but a lot of tools alone to translate any component and menu.
Custom Post Donations
Custom Post Donations
Active Installs: 1,000+
Ratings: 4/5
Price: Free
With this plugin, you can create your own widget to collect monetary donations for your site. You have three options:
Fixed amount + Additional fee (user can choose any amount).
Fixed amount for 1 piece of goods/gadget sold on the site for charity + Additional contribution (the donor can indicate himself).
Fixed contribution (the donor can choose a specific amount of money).
You also need to fill in the CP Donations settings in the WordPress console. Here you can add donations to create a widget with your own settings and amounts, as well as choose the type of donations and the amount of the contribution.
Having filled in all the parameters, you will receive a short code, which must be inserted on a new page (you create the page and give it the address and name you wish).
If you need even more parameters (for example, using a currency other than US dollars), then you will have to purchase a paid version of this plugin. With it, you can edit the widget as you like, also you can accept payments in different currencies, and add more than 1 PayPal wallet. The cost of the plug-in with premium parameters is $5.95.
Charitable
Charitable
Active Installs: 10,000+
Ratings: 5/5
Price: Free
This is a WordPress donations plugin that gives you every opportunity to start accepting donations today and completely for free. Created for easy and seamless integration with WordPress, Charitable allows non-professionals and developers to create powerful contribution platforms on their own sites.
Free Features
Unlimited campaigns
Create as many fundraising campaigns as necessary.
Set goals for your campaigns.
Create time-limited campaigns that automatically expire after a specified period.
Inherits the styles of your theme for seamless integration.
Customizable donation forms
Offer fixed amounts of donations, allow people to donate as much as they want, or use both options at the same time.
Display donation forms in the window, on a separate page or directly on the campaign page.
Reduce your donation forms by displaying only the required fields.
Donate from any page.
Support for PayPal and offline payments
Easy PayPal setup. Set your address as the PayPal address and everything will be ready.
Create your own instructions for offline donations.
More payment gateways are available in paid add-ons.
Manage donations
Create and edit donations in the control panel. No additions are needed.
Email recent donations.
Sorting and searching for donations in the control panel.
Export donations to CSV.
Customizable e-mail
Automatic invoicing for donations.
Offline account for donation with payment instructions.
Notifications to the administrator when users make a donation or the campaign ends.
Messages about changing the password and confirming the e-mail.
Paid features
Looking for more features? Our paid add-ons will provide you with the flexible settings and features that you need to improve your fundraising campaigns.
Repeating donations
Create a permanent income for your non-profit organization.
Simple integration with payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, and PayFast.
Crowdfunding platforms
Premium payment gateways
E-mail marketing and newsletter integration
More extensions
Give
Give
Active Installs: 40,000+
Ratings: 5/5
Price: Free
Give us a very popular WordPress donations plugin. You can use the basic features for free but if you need some additional functionality you will be able to purchase additional components. The blog animals create a powerful form to accept donations on any page of the website, as well as a sidebar or even a standalone page. Additionally, you can customize the form’s style without much effort. As a result, they will suit your website design perfectly. All the information you get from your contributors is made right on the website. It means that you will not lose your contributors.
Premium add-ons allow to highly improve the capabilities. You can add a gift feature, and add support for many additional payment systems.
Direct Stripe
Direct Stripe
Active Installs: 1,000+
Ratings: 4.5/5
Price: Free
This is a free plugin to get the Stripe payments, donations, and subscriptions right on your WordPress website. Stripe is a great payment system and gateway, so it’s a great idea to get your contribution to the charity using Stripe. It is very reliable, convenient, and very easy to use.
The plug-in allows you to add payment buttons and forms on any page of your website. Each button and form can be easily customized into modified to make your website interface unique. The plugin also generates shortcodes to extend the functionality.
I am a Co-Founder at WPOven INC currently living in Vancouver, Canada. My interests range from Web Development to Product development and Client projects. I am also interested in web development, WordPress, and entrepreneurship.
