Charitable Documentation

Learn how to make the most of Charitable with clear, step-by-step instructions.

How to Enable Donor Referrals

Donor referrals help expand your fundraising reach by allowing supporters to share their giving with friends and family. This document will guide you on how to set up and manage donor referrals in Charitable.

Table of Contents

Enabling Donor Referrals

Charitable offers a quick and easy way to enable donor referrals. The feature is built into the Chartiable plugin so you don’t need to install any addons.

In your WordPress admin panel, go to the Charitable » Settings page. Open the Donors tab and then choose Donor Referrals from the submenu.

On this page, there is a toggle switch to enable Donor Referrals. Simply click this switch to turn on the Donor Referral feature.

Enable donor referrals

Once enabled, new settings will appear.

Configuring Donor Referral Settings

Charitable lets you customize the Donor Referral Message that contains instructions for your donors.

There is a default message added in for you. You can edit it as you need.

Donor referrals settings

This field will appear in the donation receipt along with their unique referral code.

Make sure you save your changes.

Troubleshooting Donor Referrals

In the same Settings page, you’ll see an option called Maintenance Actions. This dropdown enables you to remove codes for all donors and add codes for all donors.

Add remove donor referral codes

If you need to troubleshoot errors or reset the referral codes, this feature allows you to do that. You must enable Charitable Debug mode to see this menu.

Where Donors Will Find Their Referral Code

When a donor makes a contribution, a receipt will be automatically generated and displayed onscreen right after their payment is successful. The receipt contains details of their donation, such as donation number, date, total amount, and payment method. It will also contain the referral code.

Referral code in receipt

This receipt will also be sent to the email address they entered in the donation form.

They can share this referral code with friends and family to get more donations for your cause.

How New Donors Add The Referral Code

A referred donor can choose the campaign they want to donate to.

When they proceed to make a donation, in the donation form that appears, they will see a field where they can enter the referral code of their friends or family who referred them to this campaign.

Donor referral code in donation form

All they have to do is enter the referral code and complete their donation.

Viewing Donor Referrals Made

Go to the Charitable » Donors page in your WordPress dashboard. Open any donor profile here and scroll down to the section where you can see tabs such as Donations, Campaigns, Comments, Social, Logs, Notes, and Referrals.

Open the Referrals tab, you’ll see the donor’s referral code at the top of this page. You’ll also see any referred donations listed here.

Donor referrals in admins

You can edit the donation records or download the PDF receipt.

Now you know how to use the Donor Referrals feature. Explore Charitable’s Donor Management System here »

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

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ambassadors New

🖨️ Introducing Fliers and Posters: Raise Money Away From the Screen!

A lot of peer-to-peer fundraising happens away from a screen: at the finish line of a 5K, on a school noticeboard, in an office kitchen. Charitable Ambassadors 3.4.7 adds 2 printables, a fundraiser flier carrying each fundraiser’s own story and QR code, and a recruitment poster that signs new fundraisers up. Both open as a normal web page and print straight from the browser. Why this is important:

  • 🏁 A flier for every fundraiser: Each one carries that fundraiser’s own photo, story and goal, with a QR code that opens their page rather than your main campaign.
  • 📌 A poster that recruits: It shows “Now Recruiting” above your campaign name with a large QR code that opens your sign-up form, so someone can start fundraising without waiting on a link from you.
  • 🪄 No design tool needed: Both printables render as a normal web page and print from the browser, with no PDF plugin and no designer.
  • 📄 2 flier layouts: Hand out carries the full story for giving to friends and family, and Post up carries a short hook with 5 tear-off tabs for a noticeboard.
  • 🛡️ Off until you switch it on: Fliers stay off after the update until you enable them under Charitable » Ambassadors » Other » Fliers, and only the owner or an administrator can open one.

Check out our announcement here.

Improvement Payments

💸 Introducing Tiered Rates for Fee Relief: Match the Ask to the Gift!

Fee Relief asks your donors one short question at checkout: would you like to cover the processing fee on this gift? Until now that question used a single rate for every donation on a gateway, so a $10 gift and a $500 gift were asked for the same percentage. Fee Relief 1.3.0 lets you set as many donation bands as you like, each carrying its own rate. Why this is important:

  • 🪙 Gentler on small gifts: A fixed transaction cost is a far bigger share of a $10 donation than a $500 one, so bands let you ask for less at the bottom.
  • 🎚️ As many bands as you need: Each band carries its own percentage and its own fixed amount, and the top band runs on with no upper limit.
  • 🛑 An optional ceiling: A Maximum fee field stops any donor being asked for more than a number you choose, however large the gift.
  • 🔌 Set per payment gateway: Stripe can run on four bands while Windcave and Payfast stay on a single rate, because bands belong to a gateway and not to your whole site.
  • 🛡️ Nothing changes until you say so: Your current rates stay exactly as they are until you switch Use Tiered Rates on under Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief.

Check out our announcement here.

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.

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.

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.