CentrioHost Blog

It’s not begging if you’re providing something in return! Many professions create art, happiness, prosperity, or world change, all without being able to sell products and make money like a regular business.

Sometimes it’s a rainforest activist keeping large corporations from knocking down trees. Sometimes it’s a blogger who publishes inspiring articles on a daily basis. From designers to writers, and politicians to charities, sometimes selling products or services isn’t in the equation.

That’s when they turn to donations. I know plenty of bloggers and developers who work on donations. The same goes for most political campaigns, churches, and non-profit organizations.

It might seem like you’re required to go out and beg rich people for money, but all you need is a WordPress donation plugin and a few other elements.

• Why is WordPress Such an Attractive Platform For Charities?
• What You’ll Need to Accept Donations Through Your Site
• The Best WordPress Donation Plugins

Why is WordPress Such an Attractive Platform For Charities?

The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance is a great example of a non-profit organization that has a national presence and also provides support to local partner organizations. They are using a customized responsive theme that has been integrated with an eCommerce solution (in this case WooCommerce). Let’s look at the key features that make WordPress such an ideal platform from which to manage the digital presence of your charity:

It’s Open Source and Free

Don’t be put off by the fact that WordPress is open source and free! A massive user base is what has allowed the platform to become the powerhouse it is today. If your charity requires some specific website functionality, it can, with 99% certainty, be done on the WordPress platform. Open Source also means that the code that keeps WordPress running smoothly is not owned or controlled by one particular company who is focused on profiting from your use.

It’s Scalable

No matter how large or small your charity is today, you want to choose a platform that will support your growth for years to come. With over 120 revisions of WordPress listed in the codex and 10+ years of development history, WordPress is tough to beat.

It Has a Massive User Base and Support System

Part of what makes WordPress such an amazing platform is the ecosystem that has rallied around it. Whether you need someone to develop a theme from scratch, customize a pre-built theme or design a plugin that meets your specific requirements, you can easily find what you’re looking for.

It’s Great for Communities

If your charity relies on community involvement, WordPress has you covered there as well. BuddyPress installs quickly and easily through the administrator panel. A free plugin, BuddyPress, enables you to develop and grow a community or social network right from within your website. You could potentially use BuddyPress to create and communicate with internal teams who are focused on different fundraising efforts, projects or community events.

It’s Highly Customizable

From simple color tweaks to the complex layout and structural changes, WordPress has all the bases covered. Virtually every aspect of the platform can be adjusted to suit the needs of your charity. Many basic changes can be tackled within just a few minutes, while more complex changes may require an experienced developer capable of delving into code.

It Offers a Huge Choice of Themes

For most charitable organizations, keeping costs low is important. What you’ll find with WordPress is an entire catalog of both free and paid themes, many of which are specifically designed for use by charities. Keep in mind that an inexpensive, paid theme will often meet many of your initial requirements.

What You’ll Need to Accept Donations Through Your Site

• WordPress – Download the popular CMS for free and run any type of website you want.
• Quality Hosting – Host SEO offers hosting discounts for all non-profits. Hosting gets you online by storing and managing site files.
• Domain name – This is the name of your non-profit website. It’s often similar to the name of the charity or non-profit.
• A charity or NGO theme – You could get a regular WordPress theme, but charity-specific ones have donation buttons, scheduling systems, and information sections for fundraising.
• A WordPress Donation Plugin – We’ll talk about these below.
• A payment gateway – The system that processes and accepts payments through your donation plugin.

It may look intimidating at first, but you typically don’t have to think about hosting after it’s configured. The same goes for WordPress and your domain name. The only element that requires maintenance is the WordPress donation plugin, and that’s because you’re collecting donations and thinking of new ways to accumulate more money for your organization.

The Best WordPress Donation Plugins in 2019

Here’s a short outline of what we’re about to cover. If you’d like to learn about the main benefits from each WordPress donation plugin, read on.

1. Give
2. Charitable – Donation
3. PayPal Donations
4. Seamless Donations
5. WooCommerce Donation Plugin
6. Smart Donations
7. Donorbox
8. Total Donations for WordPress
9. Donation Content Locker
10. Donation Manager for WordPress

1. Give – Donation Plugin and Fundraising Platform

Sometimes it’s hard to pick favorites, but in the WordPress donation plugin world, that’s not the case at all. The Give donation plugin is miles ahead of the rest in terms of pricing, beauty, functionality, and add-ons. The plugin makes money with the freemium model, but none of the add-ons are pushed onto you. In fact, most non-profits and charities will be fine using the default donation form without any add-ons.

As you might notice from the screenshot below (and the demos on the Give website,) the developers have put significant work into designing beautiful forms. The forms are better than most of the other plugins on the list, and there’s not much need to customize them.

The free WordPress donation plugin includes slick donation forms, full-featured reporting, complete donor management, and the possibility to integrate with any of your favorite theme or page builders. Like I said before, most organizations won’t need more than this.

However, you could consider one of the add-on bundles (starting at $15 per month) or pay for add-ons individually.

Regardless of your payment setup, here are some of the add-ons you can choose from:

• Recurring donations
• Form field manager
• Fee recovery
• Tributes
• PDF receipts
• Multiple payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net (if you don’t know which one is better Stripe or PayPal read this comparison)
• Google Analytics donation tracking
• Zapier
• Manual donations
• Many more