How To Accept Donations On WordPress (5 Easy Steps)

Updated on January 02, 2021 by WPNeon Guides & Tutorials

Do you want to accept donations on WordPress? If so, this post is perfect for you. I’ll show you how you can quickly start accepting donations on your WordPress site with just a little effort.

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Why would you want to accept donations on your WordPress site?

You might be wondering whether accepting donations on your WordPress site is a good idea. Well, there are many reasons why you would want to have an online donations form on your site.

If you’re a non-profit organization, it will make it quick and easy for people to support you
Nowadays many people prefer online payments as opposed to carrying cash and checks
It’s easy to integrate
Online donations provide for secure payments
You get access to donors worldwide
It also streamlines contribution tracking and reporting

How To Accept Donations On WordPress

WordPress comes with a variety of plugins that make it easy to create stylish donation forms for your site.

For this tutorial, we are going to use WPForms because it’s one of the most powerful and user-friendly solutions available.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Install and Activate the WPForms Plugin

The first thing you’ll need to do is to download, install and activate the WPForms plugin. It makes the process of creating a donations form pretty simple.

accept donations on wordpress with wpforms

Step 2: Start Building Your Donations Form

Once you activate the plugin, a welcome page will appear. Click on Create Your First Form.

wpforms-welcome-screen-accept-donations-on-wordpress

One cool thing about WPForms is it comes with pre-made templates that speed up the process of creating WordPress forms. On the setup screen, enter a name for your form and select the Donation Form template.

wpforms-setup-screen create a donations form

You’ll then be directed to the drag-and-drop interface where you can customize the form fields.

wpforms-customize-form-fields-to collect donations on wordpress

By default, your donation form will have the following form fields:

Name
Email
Donation Amount
Comment or Message

To add additional fields to your donation form, simply drag them from the panel on the left and drop them on the one to the right hand side.

You can then click on a particular form field to make changes or to drag it around and rearrange the order on your donation form.

Step 3: Configure Your Donation Form’s Settings

There are several forms to configure when creating a donations form using the WPForms plugin.

To start, go to Settings. You’ll notice 3 settings tabs – General, Notifications and Confirmation settings.

wpforms-general-settings accept donations on wordpress

Under General settings, you can configure the following options:

Form Name – You can change your form’s name if you want to.
Form Description – Add a description for your form
Form CSS Class – If you’re familiar with CSS, you can enter CSS class names for the form wrapper.
Submit Button Text – You can modify your button’s submit copy.
Submit Button Processing Text – Enter the text you’d like the button to display while the form submit is processing.

You can also enable the anti-spam feature to prevent spambots, enable form submission without page reload (AJAX form submission), and disable the storing of user details such as IP addresses and user agents so as to comply with GDPR requirements.

Once you’re done configuring your donation form’s general settings, don’t forget to click Save.

Under Notifications Settings, you can configure your form’s notifications so that you receive an email whenever a donation is made on your website.

Besides, you can also use the smart tags feature to send a notification to a site visitor whenever they make a donation. This will assure them that their donation went through properly and that you received it.

Under Confirmation Settings, you can configure the messages that display to site visitors once they submit a donation form on your site. This will let them know that their donation has gone through successfully and give you a chance to tell them the next steps to take.

WPForms has three Confirmation Types:

Message – A simple message confirmation that lets your visitors know their donation has been received. This is the default confirmation type.
Show Page – Use this confirmation type if you’d like to take your site visitors to a specific page on your site thanking them for their donation.
Go to URL (Redirect) – Use this confirmation type if you’d like to send your site visitors to a different website.

Step 4: Configure Your Payment Options

For you to accept donations on WordPress, you have to set up your payment options.

WPForms supports payments for both PayPal and Stripe.

Before you configure payment options for your donation form, you first need to install and activate the appropriate addon for your payment service.

To start installing your payment integration, head over to the Payments tab in the Form Editor and click the Addons page link as shown in the image below.

You’ll be taken to the Addons page where you can either install the PayPal Addon or the Stripe Addon, whichever you want to work with.

For this tutorial, we will install and use the PayPal Addon. If you prefer to use Stripe, follow these instructions for installing and using the Stripe addon.

wpforms-install-payment-addons accept donations on wordpress

Now that we have installed and activated the PayPal Addon, we can now go back to the Payments tab in the Form Editor to finish configuring our payment settings.

On the Payments tab, you can see the payment services listed on the left. In our case, we will simply click on PayPal Standard to select it.

We can then go ahead and fill out our PayPal options.

The first thing you need to do here is to check the box labeled Enable PayPal Standard payments.

Below are the other PayPal settings to fill out:

PayPal Email Address – Enter your PayPal address, where the payments will be sent.
Mode – Select Production to receive real payments or select Test to use the PayPal developer sandbox. We choose Production mode in our case. But if you want to test your form first, check out how to test PayPal payments and how to test Stripe payments.
Payment Type – Select the type of payment you are receiving. In this case we will choose Donation.
Cancel URL – Enter the URL where users will be send to if they do not complete the PayPal checkout.
Shipping – Choose your preferred shipping options.
Choose whether or not you want your site visitors to include notes with payments

Once you’re done configuring your payment settings, don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your changes.

Step 5: Add the Donation Form to Your Site’s Frontend

Now that your donation form is ready to use, you can now add it to your WordPress website.

You can add the form to your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar.

On your WordPress dashboard, create a new post or page and then click on the Add Form button if you’re using the Classic editor, or add the WPForms block if you’re using the Gutenberg editor.

Next, select your donation form, click save, and then publish your post or page. Your donation form will appear on your website as shown in the image below.

Wrap Up

The WPForms plugin offers a great solution to accept donations on WordPress. Besides, it makes it easy to combine your donation forms with some popular email marketing services such as Aweber, Mailchimp, GetResponse, Constant Contact, Drip, and Campaign Monitor. You can easily add donors to your email list so you can keep in touch with them.

That’s it! You now know how to accept donations on WordPress. If you have any questions on how to accept donations on WordPress feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll try my best to help out. Also, if you like this article, don’t forget to share with your friends and followers.