Starting a fund-raising campaign on your blog to save your neighbourhood park, trying to raise donations for a diabetes awareness drive, want to get others to contribute towards victims of a natural disaster through your WP site and need funds for it?
Sometimes it’s all about finding the right resource to do it effectively, safely and securely on your behalf. After all, everyone who donates, wants to know that their money is in the right hands and has reached its intended destination. And you too, want a great plugin for accepting donations, one that takes care of all your worries.
Enter WordPress Donation plugins – no more ‘piggy bank in hand’ house-hopping to raise money for good causes. Because, with Donation Plugins you can let your social campaign collection box swell to massive proportions by just installing a plugin to your WP site.
Why Donation Plugins?
Because it make everything so simple, credible and gives you better outreach and is a secure and a smart way to accept donations, with minimal fuss. It also allows you to create campaigns where the donation process is transparent, you can monitor progress and perhaps even capture donor information.
Plus, those who donate would rather do it this way than just send money across directly to intended recipients
When Haiti was hit by an earthquake, tennis star Roger Federer and almost the whole of the tennis world was in Melbourne for the first Grand Slam of the year. Federer who is known for his charity works, called up top players and quickly organized a showdown exhibition tennis match that attracted a huge crowd and colleceted a large sum that was sent to Haiti for the victims.
One hour of that showdown reportedly raised close to $400,000.
But, what if most of the players were in different parts of the world and such a showdown exhibition match was not possible? A donation plugin would have still saved the day. Roger or any other player could swiftly set up a WordPress site with a Donation Plugin, add some jazz with help of a designer, send out viral mails to people around the world.
One big plus when it comes to donation plugins is that multiple campaigns are possible and smaller issues like confirmation emails, progress meters etc are automatically taken care of. Some even give you the option of updating the donation amount or choosing various payment options
We take a look at some popular donation plugins which seem to have got positive feedback for reasons ranging from ease of customization to ‘’Thank you’’ notes…
Multi Currency PayPal Donations
With Multi Currency PayPal Donations, people from anywhere in the world can pay in almost all top currencies and the integration is quite easy and is just a two-step process. You can customize the Donation prompt box and choose the colour scheme wisely (For example, a breast cancer campaign can have an all-pink box – that would be a master move) to attract more donors.
This plugin doesn’t work like a widget but adding a shortcode into a post will enable the prompt box to appear on the post and it gives you an opportunity to briefly describe the cause and convince the visitor.
Once your plugin is live, you can track the donations flowing in, and when they do, do not forget to thank them by sending a custom written ‘Thank you!’ mail. There are more options to collect money if you are thinking of just one-time donations.
Assume you are the head of an organization running an animal orphanage; you can have an option for interested donors to deposit a certain amount of money every week/month/year for the caretaking of a cub/calf that has been taken under the wing of your organization.
And, as a token of thanks, you can send over a merchandise product which will not only make them happy but will also help you gain more donors, and that, almost always, works the best.
Naturally, this is ideal if you have paypal accounts in multiple currencies.
Donate Plus Plugin
Donate Plus is a no-nonsense plugin that works as a widget and it is left to your skill to place this widget wisely and attract donations. Although as a widget, it wouldn’t be a smart move to rant about the campaign at length. So, they have a referential space where you can link your campaign’s website from where they can learn about the cause.
PayPal is the default payment route and it works wonderfully fine. But, the catch in this plugin is the add-on of the ‘Recognition Wall’. Although donations are from heart, a little publicity is not going to do much harm. Some organizations would love to have their name etched on an honours board for charitable works and this plugin helps people like them.
If the widget is not your cup of tea, you can always insert the shortcode [donateplus] to display the donation form on the post where you want it to appear. Shortcodes to display the donors board is also available. Just like most other donation plugins, Donate Plus too has a customizable ‘Thank You!’ mail option.
This simply allows donors to publicize their name and website on the recognition wall.
Custom Post Donations Plugin
Custom Post Donations is probably one of the best donations that has come out. Like everybody, we like to keep the best till the last. As the name suggests, this plugin is entirely customizable. This plugin is for sites that need more than one widget for different purposes. For example, there are sites that play host to writers from around the world – more or less like paid contributors. In that case, the site’s owner does not really need to pay the author. Instead the readers – if impressed – can ‘donate’ or rather reward the writer by sending them money through this plugin.
Otherwise, this plugin can also be used as a fixed amount donations drive, and you could add a field where the user can add more amount if they wish to donate. You can add unlimited number of donation campaigns and add it wherever you deem fit by inserting the custom shortcode or placing a widget on the sidebar. In the updated version of CP Donations, multiple currencies are also accepted.
Unlike the other two plugins, CP Donations Pro is not free, but comes at a modest price of $14.95. It’s appeal lies in it’s customization potential!
There are few other donation plugins in the market, but most of them are obsolete now and it has been a while since they have been updated. So, it would be wise to stick to these three because not only are they effective and do the job, they are also secure!
One Final Word…
Almost all of these plugins are PayPal integrated and since this is a widely accepted and well-used mode of money transfer online, donations can now be done transparently and without any trouble.
If donors want information to be confidential, that can be done and if they want information and collection status displayed, the plugin can display a donor list.
Most of these plugins have not been updated for a while now, however, they seem to work fine!
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