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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What's New In Charitable

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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.

Improvement Payments

💰 Accept Recurring Donations with Windcave and Charitable

A donor sets their gift up once on Windcave’s secure payment page, and Charitable bills every renewal after that on schedule. Why this is important:

🏦 Organizations banked in New Zealand or Australia: monthly giving on the gateway your bank already set you up with, with no second processor to onboard.
⛪ Churches taking regular tithes and offerings: congregants set their own schedule once, which is the simplest way to launch recurring church giving without a separate platform.
🌏 Groups with donors in several currencies: Windcave handles more than 20, so a supporter can give in the currency they actually hold.
📅 Operating funds rather than one-time campaigns: switch on Recurring Only mode and the one-off option disappears, so every gift to that campaign is a subscription.
🧾 Teams with no developer on staff: 3 sets of credentials pasted into a settings page, and no code anywhere.

Check out our announcement here.

automation update

⚡ Visual Automation Builder: Drag and Drop With No Code!

Charitable Automation Connect 2.3.0 introduces the Visual Automation Builder, a full-screen canvas that lays each automation out as a flow of connected cards: a trigger, optional conditions, and a list of actions that run in order.

🧩 Many actions, one trigger: Tag a donor, send an email, add a note, and fire a webhook from a single event, dragged into any order.

✉️ Act inside Charitable: New Send Email, Tag Donor, and Add Donor Note actions run with no external service required.

🔤 Merge tags: Personalize emails and notes with live fields like {first_name}, {total}, and {campaign_name}.

🔁 Apply to existing donors: Run Tag Donor and Add Donor Note against the donors you already have.

🖥️ Canvas or Simple: Switch views anytime, and automations built before 2.3.0 keep working unchanged.

Read more here.