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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Improvement receipts

🗓️ Annual Receipts 2.0: Send Year-End Receipts to Every Donor in Minutes

You can now send annual receipts in minutes with a few clicks to all your donors.

📧 One-Click Bulk Send Wizard that guides you to sending to hundreds of donors simultaneously directly from your WordPress dashboard.

🔍 Smart “Dry Run” Mode: See exactly who will receive a receipt and who will be skipped (and why) before a single email leaves your server.

🛡️ SMTP-Aware & Limit Protection: Charitable now detects your email setup and automatically adjusts batch sizes and pauses for daily limits to ensure your emails land in inboxes.

✅ Complete Audit Trail: Dedicated system log and on the individual donor’s profile, giving you a clear history for every fiscal year.

Stop dreading tax season and start spending that time on your mission. Update to Annual Receipts 2.0 and automate your year-end reporting today.

Addon Donations Improvement

🎈Recurring Donations 2.0: Smarter Automation, Better Recovery, and More Control

We’ve completely rebuilt our Recurring Donations system to help you grow your reliable income stream while giving you (and your donors) more powerful tools than ever before.

What’s New:

🔒 Recurring-Only Campaigns: You can toggle “Recurring Only” mode in the campaign builder to hide the one-time option entirely, ensuring your supporters stay focused on long-term commitment.

📧 Automatic Payment Recovery: Our new Payment Failed Email fires automatically the moment a subscription fails.

🛠️ Self-Service Donor Control:The new Cancel Subscription Button appears directly in the donor dashboard, allowing supporters to pause or end their recurring gifts on their own terms—reducing your admin burden and payment disputes.

📊 Real-Time Revenue Insights: Track your growth, monitor active subscriptions, and see exactly how much predictable support is coming in each month at a glance.

Our new Recurring Donations addon gives you the professional-grade tools you need to grow your mission.

Campaigns New

🧡 Modal Donate Button: Turn Any Click into a Contribution

Instead of redirecting users to a new URL, the lightweight Modal Donation Button allows donors to complete their gift in a sleek, focused popup, keeping them engaged with your content while they support your cause.

What’s New:

  • Zero-Friction Giving: Open your donation form in a responsive modal overlay. Donors stay on the same page, reducing drop-off.

  • 🖱️ Place it Anywhere: Use the dedicated WordPress block or a simple shortcode to drop a donate button into sidebars, footers, or even mid-sentence in your storytelling.

  • 🎨 Full Design Control: Match your brand perfectly with customizable background colors, hover effects, border radius, and font sizes—all without touching a single line of CSS.

Whether you need a simple “Donate Now” link or a high-converting popup button, the Modal Donate Button gives you the flexibility to raise more with less effort.

donation form Donations New

💵 Mini Donation Widget: Show The Impact Of Every Dollar!

Not every donor who wants to give will navigate to your campaign page. Meet them exactly where they are by placing a fully functional giving experience directly on any page or post.

💬 Show the impact of every dollar: Attach custom messages to each preset amount so donors understand exactly what their gift provides.
🔄 Monthly and one-time giving: Supports a tabbed interface with independent amounts and impact statements for recurring giving programs.
🎨 Match your brand: Easily set accent colors and control size or alignment to fit the widget naturally into your layout without CSS.
⚡ Reduce donor friction: Open the donation form in a modal overlay to keep donors on the page and reduce drop-off.

Donations Live New

👉🏻 Showcase Real Momentum with the Donations Feed

Give your donors a reason to trust. Our new feed lets you display a living, breathing record of people showing up for your cause.

🤝 Build instant trust: Overcome donor hesitation by showing a proven track record of community support.
💬 Highlight donor stories: Display real donor comments and locations to show the human side of your fundraising.
🛠️ Drop it anywhere: Easily add the block to your homepage, campaign pages, or confirmation screens in seconds.
📈 Curate your feed: Group multiple donations from the same person or sort by highest amounts to encourage larger gifts.