Blocks » Donations
The Donations block allows you to accept credit and debit card payments for donations, contributions, and tips. You may ask your website’s visitors to support your creative pursuits, an organization, the work you’re doing, or whatever makes sense for your website.
This Donations feature is available for all sites using the Block editor and a WordPress.com plan like Personal, Premium, Business, or eCommerce. Upgrade to one of those paid plans to start accepting donations. The feature is also available for self-hosted sites on a paid Jetpack plan.
About Donations
- The Donations block uses Stripe to process credit and debit card payments from your website’s visitors. You can set up a new Stripe account or connect to an existing one. Stripe ensures safe and secure payments through encryption.
- Automatically sends receipts to subscribers.
- For monthly and yearly recurring subscriptions:
- Automatically bills subscribers at the end of their Renewal Period and transfers the funds to your Stripe account.
- It allows the buyer to cancel the subscription at any time.
Video: Donations Block Overview
How Can I Use the Donations Block?
Ask your website visitors to support whatever you’d like with the Donations block. Here are some examples of things people support through donations:
- Creative pursuits for musicians, artists, designers, writers, and more.
- Concrete creations like podcasts, video games, music clips, and photography.
- Bloggers and content creators of all kinds of topics.
- Everyday passions like news summaries and mindfulness exercises.
- Professional endeavors including civic engagement and professional development.
- Nonprofits and community, religious, and political organizations.
How To Set Up Your Donations
First, insert the Donations block into any post or page with these steps:
- Go to My Site(s) → Pages/Posts
- Edit the Page or Post you want to add the Donations block to
- Add a new block by clicking the ( + ) icon, or type `/` to start searching for blocks
- Search for “donations”
The first time you add a Donations block you will be prompted to connect your WordPress.com account to Stripe. Stripe is a safe and reliable payment processor used to take donations.
Click the Connect button to be taken to Stripe to connect your WordPress.com account.
Connect Stripe
You can also connect to your Stripe account before adding your first Donations block by visiting My Site(s) → Tools → Earn.
If you already have a Stripe account, you can log in at the top of the screen. Otherwise, fill out the form to create your new Stripe account.
Any money you earn using the Donations block will go into your Stripe account. From there, you can move it to the personal bank account of your choice. WordPress.com never has any access to the money you earn.
Stripe-Supported countries
In order to start accepting donations using a Stripe account, you must be a citizen or own a company in one of the following countries. Your customers can pay using a credit card issued anywhere in the world.
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Canada
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- HongKong
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malaysia
- Mexico
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United States
After You Connect Stripe
Once you fill out the Stripe form and connect it to your WordPress.com account, you’ll be taken back to your WordPress.com account and you’ll see “Congrats! Your site is now connected to Stripe. You can now start making money!”
Adding the Donations Block
Create Your First Donation Request
After your Stripe account has been successfully connected, you can insert the Donations block which will pre-populate on your page or post.
Everything within the Donations block is customizable including the text, currency, which payment intervals you’re requesting, etc.
When you’re ready to create your first donation request, decide and configure the following:
- Renewal interval – how often your subscribers are billed.
Donations block will always ask for one-time donations but also allows for recurring monthly and annual donation options. You decide which recurring interval(s) you would like to accept in the Block Settings for the Donations block.
- Price – how much the payment will be can be edited directly in the block itself but you will see $5.00, $15.00, and $100.00 as default suggestions.
- Currency – what currency the payment will be collected in.
- Customize the text – add this additional information to help your website visitors understand what they’re donating to:
Once you’re done customizing your Donations block, don’t forget to click Publish so that your page or post with the Donations block is live. From there, you can start sharing your page or post’s URL so people can start donating.
Custom Amount Option
You may allow your supporters to enter their own donation amount. By default, this option is selected and visitors can enter their own amount for one-time, monthly, and yearly donations alike. If you only want to accept specific, fixed donation amounts, you can turn off this option the Block Settings.
Add More Donations Requests
You can have as many Donations blocks across your website as you’d like. Adding additional donation requests is as easy as adding another Donations block.
Donations Block Settings
- Payment intervals – choose which recurring payment interval(s) you would like to accept donations for (both monthly and yearly recurring intervals are turned on by default)
- View donations earnings – link to your earning dashboards with details about your supporters
- Advanced – add CSS classes for styling buttons using CSS.
If you do not see the Block settings on your screen, click the Settings icon next to the Publish or Update button.
Related Fees
The Donations feature is available on all paid plans, for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org Jetpack-connected sites. Fees are based on the WordPress.com or Jetpack Plan you have and are calculated as a percentage of your revenue.
If you have a WordPress.com hosted site, you do not need to worry about the Jetpack plan fees as those apply to self-hosted WordPress.org sites only.
| WordPress.com Plan | Jetpack plan | Related Fees |
| WordPress.com eCommerce | N/A | 0 |
| WordPress.com Business | Jetpack Security Real-time and Jetpack Complete | 2% |
| WordPress.com Premium | Jetpack Security Daily | 4% |
| WordPress.com Personal | N/A | 8% |
| WordPress.com free | Jetpack free | Feature Unavailable |
In addition to the fees you pay us, Stripe collects 2.9% + US$0.30 for each payment made to your Stripe account. Not in the USA? Check Stripe’s fees in your currency.
This system allows you to request donations with minimal upfront investment. As you get more supporters, it may make sense to move to a higher plan to retain more revenue.
Donations Management
The Donations block provides a suite of tools to help you monitor and grow your supporter base.
Revenue Breakdown
You can view a detailed breakdown of your revenue by visiting My Site(s) → Tools → Earn → Collect Payments. These stats are aggregated across all payments features including the Donations block, Payments block, and Premium Content block.
- Total earnings – shows all charges collected by Payments buttons on your site.
- Last 30 days – shows the revenue you’ve earned over the last 30 days.
- Next month – shows upcoming charges in the next 30 days. This assumes that nobody unsubscribes, and does not include any new subscribers.
Subscribers List
You’ll find the list of your subscribers at My Site(s) → Tools → Earn → Collect Payments as well.
Cancel a Recurring Donation
Your supporters can cancel any time from their WordPress.com accounts. You can also cancel their subscriptions from the subscriber list.
On the right side of the subscriber list, there is a “three dots” menu:
Once you click “Cancel Subscription”, your subscriber will not be billed again. However, canceling will not refund the customer.
Issue Refunds
You can manage refunds yourself through your Stripe Dashboard. Follow the instructions here to issue a full or partial refund.
Disconnect the Stripe Account
You can disconnect Stripe in by going to My Site(s) → Tools → Earn → Payments. When you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will see “Disconnect Stripe Account”.
Disconnecting Stripe account here will:
- remove Stripe from all your WordPress.com and Jetpack sites
- prevent visitors from making donations or other payments
- block renewals of any existing payments supporters
User Account Creation
If a visitor doesn’t have a WordPress.com account, or is not logged in to WordPress.com, the payment prompt will have a message “to create a WordPress.com account” to allow visitors to manage their own donations.
By clicking “Donate $20.00 once”, you agree to create a WordPress.com account or use your existing WordPress.com account to manage this donation. You agree to our Terms of Service and authorize us to charge you once.
Tips for Using Donations Block
Customize your donations request
You can fully edit the text within the Donations block, as well as use the space around it to add additional text, images, video, etc. Giving your website visitors more context and background about what they’re donating to and why it’s important for you will help encourage more people to donate.
Don’t forget about your supporters
Once someone donates to you, you might consider sending them a personal email thank you, video, or putting them on a special mailing list for supporters. Keeping in touch with your supporters is a great way to build community, brand, and keep those donations coming in to you.
You have to ask for donations!
Once your Donations block is live on your post or page, share the URL with your social media followers, email lists, friends, family, etc. This is a great way to get more visibility and traffic for people to find and support you.
Versatile plans and pricing
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Free
Best for students
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Personal
Best for hobbyists
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Premium
Best for freelancers
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Business
Best for small businesses
