Whether you are a non-profit organization raising money for a good cause or a company organizing a fundraiser, you definitely don’t want a complex service or plugin to accept donations in WordPress. You also don’t want your process of accepting donations to be complicated, as it can affect the number of donors. No matter what your motivation is, we have an easy solution to accept donations in your WordPress form.
In this article, we will show you how you can accept one-time and recurring donations. We will also show you how to accept donations with a user-entered flexible amount or a fixed amount. Let’s get started!
Table of contents
- Create a non-profit payment donation form in WordPress
- Accept PayPal donations with the PayPal Checkout add-on
- Accept recurring donations with the Stripe add-on
1. Create a non-profit payment donation form in WordPress
If you want to accept donations on your form, all you need is our free Ninja Forms core plugin, an active account for the payment gateway of your choice, and one of our payment integrations to make that connection.
Having both, you can create a simple donation form in just two steps. Step one is to install and activate our free Ninja Forms plugin. Step two is heading to the Ninja Forms and creating a form from scratch.
Step 1: Install and Activate Ninja Forms
Install the Ninja Forms plugin by navigating to your WordPress Admin Menu and clicking Plugins > Add New. Locate the Search Plugins field, type “Ninja Forms,” then click the Install Now button and Activate.
Otherwise, you can upload the plugin by navigating to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin > Choose File. For a detailed overview, see our installation guide for step-by-step instructions.
Step 2: Build your WordPress non-profit form
From your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Ninja Forms > Add New to access the form templates. If you want to start with a clean slate, select Blank form and customize your form to your liking.
Once you create your nonprofit form on your WordPress website, all that is left to do is add a PayPal Checkout action to your form to start accepting donations.
If you want to accept donations on your form, you can either add a Collect Payment action to your form or you can add an action specific to your payment integration such as Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal Checkout, etc.
We will now show you how to accept donations using PayPal Checkout, Stripe, and Authorize.net add-on on your WordPress form. Continue reading below!
2. Accept PayPal donations with the PayPal Checkout add-on
You can accept donations with WordPress via PayPal simply by installing and activating the PayPal Checkout add-on. When you are in your form builder, you can add the accept donations functionality by adding the PayPal Checkout action to your form located under Emails & Actions.
After you click on it, you will see the PayPal Checkout action along with the list of our enabled form actions.
When you have installed the PayPal Checkout, it becomes available. You will see all the corresponding add-on options if you’ve integrated multiple payment solutions into your WordPress website.
The setting you want to pay attention to is GET TOTAL FROM. This is the place where you can choose the option for donation type (fixed amount, user-entered, etc.).
Let the user select a pre-determined gift amount.
You’ll need the Radio List field on your form where you give users options to choose the gift amount they want to donate. The Label will display the amount to your users. The value will be displayed in submissions and any email confirmation/receipt you send.
The Calc Value is the amount that will be sent to your payment gateway. Be sure your Calc Value is equal to the displayed amount (Label)!
Once you set up your radio list field gift options, head to your PayPal Checkout action. Since the PayPal Checkout action won’t recognize a List field as a total source, you’ll need to create a calculation first so you can configure your settings for the PayPal Checkout action.
Navigate to Advanced tab > Calculations > Add New. Using the merge tag icon, create a new calculation and point it towards your Gift Amount field (Radio List field).
If you can’t access the Calculations option, enable the Developer Mode. Now head back to your PayPal Checkout action and set the action’s GET TOTAL FROM setting to Calculation. Done!
Let the user enter their own gift amount.
Add a Number field to your donation form to let users enter their donation amount. The Single Line Text field will not work for this scenario. Once you add the number field to your nonprofit form, you can rename it to whatever you like.
You’ll want to select the Field from the Get Total From. Then, you select the Number field that we named Gift Amount.
Under the Number options, you can even set Min and Max to the lowest and highest amount you’ll accept. Min needs to be at least 0. Max can be left blank if you don’t want to cap the donation amount.
That’s all there is to it. Donors can now enter their own gift amount!
✨ Please note, that the PayPal Checkout add-on lets you collect one-time donations only. It does not have subscription functionality. If you are looking to collect recurring donations, this can be accomplished with our Stripe add-on, Recurly add-on, or Authorize.net add-on.
3. Accept recurring donations with the Stripe add-on
Your donors want to feel secure when making donations on your website. Donations made via Stripe are SSL-protected, and our Stripe add-on is SCA-compliant. The Stripe add-on uses the secure Stripe Checkout process and enables you to accept credit card payments directly from your WordPress website. It also gives you the power to sign up your customers for recurring donations, connect subscriptions, and apply upsells.
Before we get into recurring donations, keep in mind you can follow the same steps for the PayPal Express add-on if you want to accept one-time donations. Just make sure you select Stripe as your payment gateway.
Step 1: Set up recurring payment plans in your Stripe account
In order to accept recurring donations in Stripe, you’ll need to have a recurring payment plan configured in your Stripe account to use this feature. This can be done in your Stripe account > Products. If you want to offer 4 different pricing plans for recurring donations, you create 4 different prices.(10, 25, 50, 100)
Step 2: Create a Select Field with recurring options and copy the API ID to the Value field of the Select Field
Assuming you have set up your recurring donation plan and your Stripe add-on is installed on your form, head over to your WordPress donation form. Now add the Select field to your form with predetermined amounts for recurring donations. (10, 25, 50, 100)
Here is an important step you have to take. First, copy the API ID for each product from your Stripe account (it should start with price_). Second, paste each API ID to the specific Value field under Select Field.
Step 3: Create a Stripe action using a Collect Payment or Stripe action
You’ll want to navigate to your Email & Actions tab and add a Collect Payment action (we renamed it to Stripe). If you have your Stripe installed, you should see it in the list of Payment Gateways options. Select Stripe as your payment gateway.
The next step is to set the total that will be sent to Stripe from the GET TOTAL FROM settings. There are 3 settings available (fixed amount, calculation, and field). In order to use Recurring Payment, you need to leave this field unselected.
Step 4: Include Recurring Payment Plan ID
Your Stripe action has to include its own Recurring Payment Plan ID. You’ll find the Recurring Payment Plan ID field under the Advanced settings of Stripe action (collect payment action).
Here, you will apply the Select Field to the Recurring Payment Plan ID via the merge tag selector. The labels correspond with the price, and the values correspond with the Stripe subscription ID.
4. Create subscriptions with Authorize.net easily
Authorize.net add-on accepts all major card payments on your WordPress site and has the ability to accept user-chosen recurring donations, subscriptions, and one-time donations.
Setting up a one-time donation with a user-determined amount, fixed amount, or amount from calculations works the same as for other payment gateways. However, setting up subscription payments and recurring donations is different from the Stripe add-on. Much easier!
Let’s assume you already have your form created. Now head to Email & Actions and add a Collect payment action to your form. If you successfully installed your Authorize.net add-on, you will see this payment option under the Payment Gateways. You’ll also notice that the field for the email address is required, so make sure you map this field using our merge tag icon.
In the example above, we set a fixed donation amount of $50.00. We want to make this donation amount as a subscription, so this payment will be recurring. How do we do it? It’s pretty simple. Just toggle the “This is a subscription” button and adjust the settings.
We set the total number of payments to 5 and the length of the payment period to 5 months. You can also change months to days. This setting will determine the frequency of the payments.
Unlike the Stripe add-on, with the Authorize.net add-on, your donors won’t be redirected away from the site when they complete their donation. Upon submitting a payment donation form, a pop-up on your site will appear, requiring the user to enter their payment details and select Pay or Cancel. 
Accept donations in your WordPress form seamlessly!
It’s time you stop searching for a difficult WordPress donation plugin or fundraising plugin! You can easily accept donations in your nonprofit form using Ninja Forms and one of your favorite payment integrations. We offer plenty of flexible options, and it is up to you to decide whether you want to allow one-time vs recurring donations, fixed amounts or user-entered amounts, credit cards, or PayPal donations. With Conditional Logic, you can also offer multiple payment methods to select from so you don’t lose potential donors for your organization.
Want to learn more about accepting donations? Visit our tutorial about accepting donations with WordPress, or check out our guide on how to accept payments or donations easily in WordPress!
Nonprofit organizations often face financial challenges when it comes to getting funds. We don’t want you to worry about losing your money, and the great news is all our add-ons and membership plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee, no question asked!
Are you ready to raise money seamlessly with our payment integrations? Give it a go and either grab an individual add-on or bundle and save with our membership plans!
Christian Teuma says:
Good afternoon, I would like to enquire if the Donation Tool allows the user to enter his own value. Not to choose a value from a dropdown, but write his own value such as, $156.48, and pay this value.
Shaylee Hansen says:
Hello Christian,
To enter your own value use the Single Line Text field. It comes with an Input Mask for currency.