How to Create a Donate Form for Nonprofit Organization using WordPress

In the past we have shown you how to add a PayPal donate button in WordPress. When working with a non-profit, just the donate button is not sufficient. They want to have a page with a video, their mission statement, and a donate form that they can use to collect payments. In this article, we will show you how to create a robust donate form for Nonprofit organizations using WordPress. This donate form will allow the user to pick an amount, choose whether it is recurring or one-time, add payment (you choose between Auth.net or PayPal), and add donors to a special email list.

To create something as robust is this, you either need a lot of coding knowledge, or you need Gravity Forms. While we could have hard coded the form, we wanted to give our client the ability to change things around in the future as easily as possible. Therefore, we decided to stick with the Gravity Forms plugin. Note: You will need the Developer version if you wish to use Auth.net and PayPal payment gateways. (Gravity Forms Coupon if you haven’t bought it already).

First thing you need to do is install and activate Gravity Forms along with the following add-ons (MailChimp, and PayPal or Auth.net). Next, you need to configure each of these add-ons which is fairly easy. For auth.net you need the API and transaction key, for PayPal you need to turn on some settings, for MailChimp you need the API.

Next, you need to setup a SSL Certificate because it is required by Auth.net. Use the plugin WordPress HTTPs. The cheapest SSL certificate we found was $12.99 / year. Ask your host if they already have a SSL Certificate available for you. Some do provide SSL Certificate with the hosting account (for example. HostGator Business Plan use coupon “wpbeginner” to start for $0.01 for the first month).

Now we are ready to create the form. Gravity Forms make this process a piece of cake with their drag-drop interface. We added a Pricing Field (Product) radio button for donation amounts (we gave 5 options $25, $50, $100, $500, $1,000). We added another radio button to decide the frequency of payments whether it will be one-time or monthly recurring.

From the advanced field section, we added the name field, email field, phone field, and the address field.

From the Pricing Fields, we added the Credit Card field. You don’t need to add Credit Card field, if you are using PayPal.

Next, we added a checkbox to add the donor’s email to our special email list. This is a simple checkbox with one value that says “Yes, I would like to receive updates from XYZ organization”. We decided to use MailChimp for our client, but you can do this with Aweber and Campaign Monitor as well because Gravity Forms have add-ons available.

Now that you have the form created, we need to integrate the Payment Methods and MailChimp to our form.

Go to MailChimp option under Gravity Forms and click Add New. It asks you to specify which MailChimp list you want. Select the one that you want to add the emails to. Then it asks you to select which form you want this in, so select the form name. Next you need to Map the fields. So for Email Address, get your form field Email. For name, get your form field name. Make sure to Enable opt-in condition so it says Export If is Yes, I would like like to… If your MailChimp list has groups, then you can select groups as well. Don’t forget to double opt-in to comply with MailChimp’s policies.

Go to PayPal option under Gravity Forms and click Add New. Enter your PayPal email address, mode will be production, enter transaction type (donation), and gravity form. Map your fields such as customer name, email, address etc. Select the options that you want. Enable PayPal Condition and say If Frequency is One-time use this form. Then repeat this whole process again except change transaction type to subscriptions, enter the Recurring amount to be Donation Amount, billing cycle should be 1 month, and recurring time should be infinite (Basically until the user cancels). Fill in the rest of the fields and then enable PayPal condition to say If frequency is recurring. Save and you are good to go.

For Auth.net the process is the same as PayPal, so follow that.

Once you are done go to Pages. Create a new page called donate. Embed a Video, add text below it or above it, and then simply add the Gravity Forms using the icon next to Add Media icon.

And you are done. You just created a robust donate form for nonprofit organization using WordPress. Let us know if you have tips and tricks to improve on this method.