Charitable Documentation

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

Charitable & User Privacy

Charitable stores personal data about donors and registered users in your website’s database, as well as providing personal data to third party providers such as payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, etc.) or newsletter providers (MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, MailerLite, etc.).

All or some of the following data may be collected and stored about a donor when they make a donation:

  • First & last name
  • Email address
  • Street address (street number & name, city, post code/zip code, state/province, country)
  • Phone number
  • Credit/debit card tokens

All or some of the above data may be shared with the payment gateway used to process the donation. If using Newsletter Connect, the donor’s personal data may also be shared with your chosen newsletter provider.

For credit card donations processed by Stripe or Authorize.Net, the following data is provided to the chosen payment gateway. NOTE: These details are not stored in your database:

  • Credit/debit card number
  • Expiry date
  • CVS

In addition, the following data may be collected for registered users when they create a fundraising campaign (requires Ambassadors or when they fill out their personal profile:

  • First & last name
  • Email address
  • Street address (street number & name, city, post code/zip code, state/province, country)
  • Phone number
  • Organisation
  • Bio / personal description
  • Website URL
  • Facebook profile URL
  • Twitter profile URL

Exporting Personal Data

As of WordPress 4.9.6, WordPress includes a personal data export tool which can be used to provide users with a downloadable file that shows all personal data your website contains about them. This data export will include the personal data mentioned above.

The personal data export tool can be reached via Tools > Export Personal Data.

Erasing Personal Data

As of WordPress 4.9.6, WordPress includes a personal data removal tool which can be used to erase the personal data stored by your website about a particular user. Your users may request to have their data removed; as of May 2018, this is a right of European residents and you are obliged to comply.

The personal data removal tool can be reached via Tools > Erase Personal Data.

You may be required to keep personal data relating to donations for a certain amount of time for legal or tax purposes. To support this requirement, you can configure Charitable to prevent personal donation data from being erased for donations within a certain time limit (i.e. the last three years). You can also mark which pieces of data must be retained for donations made within this time.

These settings can be configured via Charitable > Settings > Advanced.

Privacy Policy

As of WordPress 4.9.6, WordPress includes a tool that can help build your website Privacy Policy page. This will include suggested privacy policy text added by the plugins on your website, including Charitable.

You can access this tool via Tools > Privacy. You are strongly advised to carefully review the suggested privacy policy text added by your plugins and tailor it to your website needs.

Still have questions? We’re here to help!

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automation Improvement

🔌 Charitable Meets Zapier: Connect to 7,000+ Apps and Automate Your Fundraising

Tired of manually copying donation data into accounting sheets or tracking down new donor signups? Put your administrative tasks on autopilot. Charitable is now officially on Zapier, giving you a powerful, no-code way to plug your fundraising directly into the rest of your favorite tools.

Every donation, donor signup, and campaign milestone can now trigger an automated workflow seamlessly.

What’s New:

♾️ Connect to 7,000+ Apps: Bridge your Charitable campaigns with everyday software like Google Sheets, QuickBooks, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, and thousands more.

⚡ 12 Powerful Triggers: Build deep workflows using smart automation triggers covering the entire donation lifecycle—including New Donation, New Donor, Subscription Cancelled, and Campaign Goal Reached.

📋 Pre-Built Action Templates: Get started in three minutes or less with our pre-made template combinations, like automatically logging new donations straight into a Google Sheet or firing custom donor welcome emails through Gmail.

🚫 Zero Code Needed: No complex webhooks or custom PHP scripts required. Just pick your trigger, choose your app, map your fields, and let Zapier handle the heavy lifting.

Ready to save hours of admin time? Grab Charitable Pro with the Automation Connect addon today and launch your first Zap!

Improvement Payments

🚀 Introducing PayPal Commerce: One Connection, Six Ways to Donate

Donors expect modern, flexible payment options when they support a cause. If they don’t see their preferred method on your donation form, they often disappear without a word. With PayPal Commerce, we are bringing a completely modernized checkout experience right to your campaigns.

Enjoy a single integration that upgrades your forms, makes giving seamless, and helps you capture every single donation.

What’s New:

🔌 One-Click Connection: Skip messy API keys and developer docs. Simply click “Connect with PayPal,” sign in to your business account, and your modern form is live in under five minutes.

💳 Six Ways to Give: Give your supporters instant access to PayPal balance, Venmo (US), Pay Later financing, major credit/debit cards, Apple Pay (Safari), and Google Pay (Chrome) all from the exact same form.

🔄 Flexible Recurring Giving: Fully supports monthly giving. Choose between the PayPal Subscriptions API (handled automatically on PayPal’s end) or Vault + Cron (handled securely right on your site).

💬 Friendly Error Recovery: No more confusing browser alerts. If a payment is declined, donors see plain-language, inline messages that guide them on how to fix the issue and complete their gift.

Ready for PayPal, modernized? Update to Charitable Pro 1.8.15+ (or Charitable Lite 1.8.11+) and connect your account today!

Campaigns New

⏳ Campaign Countdown: Drive Urgency and Lift Donations

Urgency is one of the most powerful tools in fundraising! Meet Campaign Countdown—a live, real-time timer built to turn procrastination into immediate generosity.

campaign_countdown_animation

What’s New:

⏱️ Live, Real-Time Urgency: Beautifully track days, hours, minutes, and seconds down to your campaign’s deadline w/ live-updating visual countdowns.

🎨 Tailored to Your Look: Choose between Boxed bordered tiles or a clean, single-line Inline display. Match your theme instantly with font and deep color controls.

🛠️ Place it Anywhere: Drop the countdown anywhere you like using the Campaign Builder field, a dedicated Gutenberg block, or a simple shortcode.

🚨 Smart Expiry Actions: Total control over the end state—choose to automatically replace the timer with a custom message, freeze it at zero, and more.

Improvement Migrations

↔️ Importing From GiveWP, Donorbox, GiveButter… even CSV!

Whether you’re migrating from another platform or consolidating your records, moving your data to Charitable is now faster and more flexible than ever. We’ve streamlined the process so you can bring over your entire fundraising history in just a few clicks.

🔄 Native GiveWP, Donorbox, & GiveButter Support: Switching from a major platform? Our dedicated migration tools handle the heavy lifting, automatically mapping your donors and donations directly into Charitable—no technical skills required.

📂 Universal CSV Import: Moving from a custom system or a specialized CRM? If you can export it to a CSV, you can import it here. Our smart mapping tool lets you align your columns to Charitable fields like names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses in seconds.

Instant Donor Profiles & Custom Tags: Automatically create rich donor profiles and bring in custom tags to keep your data organized. Segment and engage your supporters from day one with a clean, professional database structure.


Ready to make the switch?

Check out our GiveWP Migration Guide

Learn more about our Import Tools

Improvement Payments

💳 New Braintree Features For Your European Donors

With the release of Braintree addon version 1.3.0, you can now empower your European donors with the payment methods they trust and prefer, making giving seamless for international supporters.

🌍 Six New European Payment Methods: Support popular local options like iDEAL (Netherlands), Bancontact (Belgium), BLIK (Poland), and more to meet donors where they are.

⚡ Frictionless Donor Experience: These bank-based methods allow donors to authenticate directly with their own bank in a secure popup… no credit card numbers required.

⚙️ Automatic Currency Sync: No complex setup needed. The builder automatically displays the correct payment buttons based on your site’s currency (EUR or PLN), ensuring a relevant experience for every visitor.