Accepting secure online donations is critical for nonprofits and charities. According to Fundraising Effectiveness Project, online giving grew 13.5% in 2022.
As a leader in online payments, Stripe processes over $120 billion per year in transaction volume across countries. Their secure donation platform empowers nonprofits and charities to easily collect donations online.
In this detailed guide as a WordPress professional with over 10 years of experience, I will show you two methods to add a Stripe donation button on your website:
Why Use Stripe for Donations Over PayPal?
Before we start, you may wonder why choose Stripe over PayPal for accepting donations.
While Paypal has a larger user base, Stripe edged them as the most trusted payments processor with higher satisfaction scores based on over 12,000 user reviews across websites:
| Payments Processor | TrustScore | User Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 9.8 | 11,033 |
| PayPal | 9.5 | 19,396 |
Here are 5 key reasons why 58% of nonprofits and charities prefer Stripe over Paypal for donations:
Seamless integration: Stripe provides native support for the WordPress ecosystem allowing you to start accepting donations in minutes. No complex redirects or offsite checkouts needed.
Industry-leading security: Stripe employs end-to-end encryption and is PCI Service Provider Level 1 certified, the topmost compliance level handling over 6 million secure transactions per year. Stripe payments are also protected by built-in AI fraud-prevention.
Competitive pricing: Transaction fees for Stripe start at 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge which is on par with PayPal‘s rates. But you aren‘t locked into a single provider.
Recurring donations option: Stripe lets you easily accept recurring donations from committed donors with customizable billing frequencies which boosts lifetime donor value.
Faster payouts: Unlike PayPal which pays out weekly or bi-monthly, Stripe offers daily bank transfers to your connected bank account so you access funds quicker.
Next, let‘s explore two methods to install a Stripe donate button on your WordPress site.
Method 1: WP Charitable Donations Plugin
WP Charitable is a fully-featured WordPress plugin for accepting nonprofit donations.
With over 20,000+ active installs, it‘s the gold standard used by leading nonprofits like Wikipedia Foundation, Mozilla, and Amnesty International to manage multi-million dollar fundraising campaigns.
WP Charitable seamlessly integrates Stripe payment processing into WordPress allowing you to collect one-time or recurring donations.
Let‘s install it:
Step 1: Install and Activate WP Charitable
Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins » Add New.
Search for ‘WP Charitable‘ and click the ‘Install Now‘ button. Once installed, click ‘Activate‘ to enable the plugin.
Step 2: Configure Stripe Integration
From the left-menu in WordPress, hover over Charitable and click ‘Settings‘. Navigate to the Payment Gateways tab.
Enable Stripe by clicking the toggle button. Then click on ‘Configure‘ to connect your Stripe account by adding the API keys:
To find your API keys, login to your Stripe dashboard and navigate to Developers > API Keys. Paste them into WP Charitable settings and click Save. Stripe is now activated!
Step 3: Create Your First Donation Campaign with Stripe
From the Charitable menu, click Campaigns > Add Campaign to build your first Stripe-powered donation form.
Give your campaign a title and goal amount. Upload campaign content blocks like images, videos or custom HTML.
Finally, review and publish your campaign. You‘ll get a shortcode to embed your new Stripe donation form across website pages and posts.
In just a few clicks, you can create beautiful, conversion-optimized donation forms, recurring donation options, and even set up peer-to-peer fundraisers thanks to Charitable. It handles all the complexity behind the scenes while providing complete analytics and donor history tracking.
Method 2: WP Simple Pay Stripe Plugin
If you just need a simple Stripe donations button without advanced functionality, WP Simple Pay is a great alternative.
This free WordPress plugin has over 200,000 active installs and stellar reviews. It only takes a minute to setup one-time or recurring Stripe donations.
Let‘s install it:
Step 1: Install and Activate WP Simple Pay
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New and search for ‘WP Simple Pay‘. Click install and then activate.
Step 2: Connect Your Stripe Account
Go to WP Simple Pay settings and click ‘Connect with Stripe‘. Follow prompts to connect your Stripe account using API keys for live or test mode.
Step 3: Create Donation Form
Navigate to Add Form page. Choose the Donation Form template and customize options like payment amounts and form fields.
Save changes and copy the generated form shortcode. Paste this anywhere to instantly embed your Stripe donations form.
While WP Simple Pay doesn‘t have the fuller feature set of WP Charitable, its simplicity makes it ideal if you just need to quickly add a Stripe donate button on your WordPress site.
Summing Up: Which Plugin Is Best for Stripe Donations?
So when should you use WP Charitable vs WP Simple Pay for Stripe donations on your WordPress site?
WP Charitable is the premier choice trusted by leading enterprises and nonprofits to manage and optimize online fundraising thanks to its richer feature set:
Whereas WP Simple Pay offers an easy way to create a basic Stripe payments form to quickly accept donations.
I hope this guide helped you to start accepting secure Stripe donations on your WordPress website. Let me know if have any other questions!
