Your three real options
Every way of taking donations on WordPress boils down to one of three approaches:
| Approach | Examples | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted button/link | PayPal donate button, Stripe Payment Link | Five-minute setup, but donors leave your site, you get no donor database, no recurring management, and it looks improvised. |
| Third-party platform | GoFundMe, Donorbox embed, Givebutter | Polished, but platform fees (often 1.75–5%) or aggressive donor "tips," your donor data lives on their servers, and your brand becomes theirs. |
| A donation plugin | Donor Merchant, GiveWP, Charitable | The form lives on your site, donors stay in your database, no platform fees. Setup takes minutes, not days. |
For any organization planning to fundraise more than once, the plugin approach wins: you own the donor relationship, and that's the whole game in fundraising.
Step 1: Get the prerequisites right
- HTTPS. Non-negotiable — processors require it, and donors check for the padlock. Most hosts include free Let's Encrypt certificates.
- A payment processor account. Stripe and PayPal are the standard pair. Stripe handles cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay with typical fees of 2.9% + 30¢ (U.S. registered nonprofits can apply to Stripe for discounted nonprofit pricing — worth the email). PayPal matters because a meaningful slice of donors simply trust it more.
- A clear receiving entity. Donations should land in an organizational bank account, not a personal one.
Step 2: Install a donation plugin
We're biased, but the comparison is honest: most plugins paywall recurring giving and fee recovery; Donor Merchant includes them free. Whatever you choose, look for: card data handled by the processor (not your server), recurring support, donor records with export, automatic receipts, and a test mode.
Setup with Donor Merchant takes about five minutes: install, paste your Stripe keys, drop the form block on a page. Full setup guide →
Step 3: Build the donation page
Make a dedicated page at a memorable URL (/donate/), keep it focused — headline, two or three sentences on impact, the form, nothing else competing for attention — and link it from your main navigation with a button-styled link. The details that move conversion are in our donation page best practices guide.
Step 4: Test like a donor
Use your plugin's test mode and run the full journey on desktop and phone: pick an amount, choose monthly, cover the fees, pay with a test card, read the receipt email out loud. Fix anything that feels off. Then switch to live keys and make a real $5 donation yourself before announcing anything.
Step 5: The compliance basics (not legal advice)
- Receipts: U.S. 501(c)(3)s should send written acknowledgment for gifts of $250+; automatic receipts with the amount, date, and organization name cover the practical side.
- State registration: many U.S. states require charitable solicitation registration — check your state(s).
- If you're not a registered charity, don't imply gifts are tax-deductible. "Support our work" is honest; "tax-deductible donation" must be true.
Step 6: Announce it everywhere
Email your list, pin it on socials, add the link to email signatures and newsletter footers. Then make monthly giving the headline ask — here's why and how.