Charitable Blog

Everything you need to know about Charitable and our team.

Image

Meet the Donations Feed: The Easiest Way to Build Trust and Boost Donations

Last updated on

  • By

Real donations. Real names. Real momentum. Now on any page of your website, no developer needed.

Here’s something every seasoned fundraiser knows but not enough nonprofit websites actually act on.

Donors are watching each other.

Before someone decides to give, they look for signals. Is this cause worth it? Are others supporting it? Is this organization legitimate? They’re not always conscious of it, but they’re looking. And if your donation page is silent, static, and showing no signs of life, a lot of them will quietly leave without giving.

It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that you haven’t given them a reason to trust.

Introducing the Donations Feed

The Donations Feed is a brand new block and shortcode in Charitable Pro 1.8.13 that lets you display a live, beautiful feed of real donations, right on any page of your website.

Real names. Real amounts. Real comments from real donors. A living, breathing record of people showing up for your cause!

Drop it on your homepage. Your campaign pages. Your donation confirmation page. Anywhere you want to build trust, create momentum, and show the world that your mission is worth supporting.

No developer needed. No code required. Just drop the block, configure it from the sidebar, and you’re live.

Donations feed block feature

Take An Exclusive Look

Why Social Proof Is Your Most Powerful Fundraising Tool

Think about the last time you made a decision because you saw others making the same one. A busy restaurant over an empty one. A product with hundreds of reviews over one with none. A crowdfunding campaign close to its goal over one that hasn’t moved.

That’s social proof. And it’s one of the most powerful forces in human decision-making.

For nonprofits, social proof is everything. When a first-time visitor lands on your donation page and sees that 47 people gave last week – that Sarah from Chicago donated $100 and left a comment saying “this organization changed my life” – something shifts. The uncertainty disappears. The decision becomes easier.

The Donations Feed puts that power on every page of your website, automatically.

What the Donations Feed Can Do

This isn’t just a simple list of names and numbers. The Donations Feed gives you serious control over what you show, how you show it, and who you show it to. Here’s a look at what’s included:

Two beautiful display options: Choose between a clean list view or a card view. Both look great out of the box and are fully customizable to match your brand.

Ccard list views in donation feed

Full display control: Select exactly what appears on each donation entry – donor avatar, first name, last name, donation amount, date, comments, campaign name, and even donor location. You decide what tells the best story.

Settings-in-donations-feed

Powerful filtering options: Show donations from a specific campaign or let the feed auto-detect based on the page it’s on. Filter by date range, minimum donation amount, specific donors, or even specific donation IDs. Include or exclude anonymous donations, recurring donations, and group multiple donations from the same donor into a single entry showing their total giving.

Sort it your way: Order your feed by date, amount, first name, last name, or campaign name, ascending or descending. Curate the story your donors see.

Donations-feed-options

Donor comments: When donors leave a comment at checkout, those comments can appear right in the feed. Nothing builds trust like a real person saying in their own words why they gave. These are pure gold for your fundraising pages.

Donor location: Show donor city, state, or country below their name. A feed that shows giving coming in from across the country – or around the world – tells a powerful story about the reach of your mission.

Live Updates: Turn on live polling and the feed refreshes automatically as new donations come in. No page reload needed. During an active campaign or giving day, this is extraordinary – visitors can watch your momentum build in real time.

Pagination: Have a lot of donations to show? Enable pagination to keep your feed clean and navigable without overwhelming the page.

Full styling control: Colors, font sizes, card alignment, alternate row colors, all configurable directly in the block. Every instance on your page can be styled independently to match your brand perfectly. And for advanced users, custom CSS is available too.

How to Get Started

The Donations Feed is available now in Charitable Pro 1.8.13. If you’re already on Pro, head to your WordPress dashboard and update under Plugins, it’s ready and waiting.

Already on Charitable Pro? Here’s how to add it:

  • Add the block: Navigate to your WordPress editor and drop the Donations Feed block onto any page
  • Configure your content: Choose your view, add a title and description, set your display fields and filters
  • Style it up: Match it to your brand using the styling controls in the sidebar
  • Turn on Live Updates: If you’re running an active campaign, switch on live polling and let the momentum speak for itself
Donations-feed-block-in-wordpress

See the full documentation here: Donations Feed »

Learn how to optimize your donation pages here »


Not yet on Charitable Pro?

Right now you can get up to 50% off Charitable Pro. Recurring donations, donation management, a donor dashboard, peer-to-peer fundraising, fee relief, the Donations Feed, Campaign Showcase, and everything else we ship – all in one place, all on one affordable plan.

Not sure if it’s right for you? Every plan comes with a 14-day money back guarantee. No questions asked.

Your donors are ready to give. Give them a reason to trust.

Want to Take Social Proof Even Further? Meet DonorTrust.

The Donations Feed is a permanent, beautiful record of giving that lives on your page. But if you want to create real-time urgency, the kind that makes a visitor stop scrolling and pay attention – you need to meet DonorTrust.

Image

DonorTrust is our dedicated social proof platform for nonprofits. It automatically displays real-time popup notifications of verified donations to your website visitors, the kind that say “John from Boston just donated $50” right as someone is deciding whether to give.

It’s honest. It’s automated. And it works.

Together, the Donations Feed and DonorTrust create a complete social proof system for your fundraising – one that builds trust the moment someone lands on your page and keeps building it every step of the way.

Get Started with DonorTrust »

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Image

Get free tips and resources right in your inbox, along with 60,000+ others

Join our Newsletter

We won’t spam you. We only send an email when we think it will genuinely help you. Unsubscribe at any time!

Featured Video:

Watch more videos on our YouTube channel.

What's New In Charitable

View The Latest Updates
🔔 Subscribe to get our latest updates
📧 Subscribe to Emails

Email Subscription

Join our Newsletter

We won’t spam you. We only send an email when we think it will genuinely help you. Unsubscribe at any time!

ambassadors New

👤 Creator Profiles: Put a Face to Every Peer-to-Peer Campaign

Ambassadors 3.3.0 now provies Creator Profiles — giving your supporters a permanent, shareable public home that turns one-time fundraisers into ongoing relationships.

Image

👤 Public Creator Pages: Give every fundraiser an instant, clean landing page at /creator/their-name/ to showcase their custom avatar, bio, and a browsable grid of their campaigns.

📊 Proof of Impact: Boost donor trust by displaying site-wide milestones on the profile—like total funds raised and total donor counts.

💳 Interactive Hover Cards: When donors hover over a creator’s name on a campaign page, a compact card expands with their bio and social handles right at the moment of decision.

📍 Responsible Location Sharing: Allow creators to safely show local supporters where they are based using only city, state, and country details.

🛠️ Self-Serve Customization: Fundraisers can update their own profiles and link up to six social networks directly from the My Campaigns hub, saving you admin time.

Ready to empower your advocates? Update to Ambassadors 3.3.0 and turn on “Enable Public Creator Page” today!

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
Improvement Payments

📱 Turn Mobile Scrollers Into Donors: Meet Charitable’s Mollie Upgrade

Losing mobile supporters because they hate typing out long card numbers on their phones? Charitable’s updated Mollie integration features:

Image

⚡ One-Tap Wallet Checkout: Enable donors to complete their gifts instantly using Apple Pay or Google Pay with a simple face scan, fingerprint, or tap.

💰 No Extra PCI Burden: Skip complex domain verification and security compliance since all wallet transactions run safely through Mollie’s hosted checkout.

🛠️ Custom Cancel Routing: Keep the experience predictable by automatically sending donors who back out to your cancellation page, or use developer filters to route them to a custom page.

Visit this page to learn more.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
ambassadors improved New

Moderation and Directory Screens In Ambassadors 3.0

Ambassadors 3.0 has new features: moderation and directory screens… now easily see those who are earning donations on your peer to peer network – including campaign creators that might need to be verified – all in one place. Generate reports, email ambassadors and campaign creators directly and more.

Image

🚀 See when campaign creators and ambassadors have updated their campaigns, what donors/donation they have brought in and more.

🎉 Manually add ambassadors and campaign creators, and approve them in one-click!

Visit this page to learn more.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
New Payments

⚡ Unlock India-Based Donations: Meet Charitable’s Native Razorpay Integration

Trying to collect donations in India? Charitable’s native Razorpay integration features:

Image

⚡ Instant UPI Integration: Accept fast, local donations directly inside your form via apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, and BHIM without sending donors away from your site.

📲 Auto-Generated Campaign QRs: Instantly render scannable QR codes encoding a UPI deep link directly on your public campaign pages and sidebars for an effortless “scan-to-give” experience.

💰 Dual Local & Global Reach: Headline your campaigns in INR while seamlessly accepting major international currencies like USD, EUR, GBP, and CAD to maximize global support.

🔁 Seamless Recurring Giving: Fully integrates with the Charitable Recurring addon to manage automatic monthly subscriptions directly through Razorpay without extra code.

↩️ Automatic Two-Way Sync: Keep your books perfectly clean with two-way refund syncing—issue a refund inside WordPress or your Razorpay dashboard and both sides update automatically.

🔒 Webhook-Verified Security: Automatically protect your donation records using HMAC-signed webhook verification to ensure every status update represents real money cleared on the rails.

Visit this page to learn more.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.
Integration New

🎉 New Built-in PushEngage Integration

Struggling with falling email open rates and rising ad costs just to keep your supporters engaged? Charitable’s built-in PushEngage integration features:

Image

🔔 Zero-Fee Direct Messaging: Deliver crisp, instant pop-up notifications straight to your donors’ desktops and mobile devices.

⏱️ Four Smart Automated Triggers: Automatically send updates for immediate donation thank yous, full-list campaign launches, urgent “ending soon” alerts, and goal milestone celebrations.

📈 Group Momentum Broadcasts: Turn private milestones into public wins by automatically broadcasting alerts to your entire subscriber list the moment a campaign hits 50%, 75%, or 100% of its goal.

📊 Automatic Analytics Tracking: Monitor exactly where your incoming notification traffic is coming from with built-in attribution that requires zero complex configuration.

Visit this page to learn more.

author avatar
David Bisset Project Manager
David is the project manager of Charitable since 2022. David works with several non-profits (one operated by his wife) along with managing and developing features, support, and marketing for Charitable. Has been with WordPress since 2006 and has been lead organizer of multiple conferences, events, and meetups.