Blocks » Donations Form Block
The Donations Form 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.
The Donations Form feature is available for all sites with a WordPress.com paid plan. 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.
A WordPress.com account is required to donate through the Donations Form Block. If a visitor doesn’t have an account yet, they will be prompted to create one.
About Donations
- The Donations Form 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 Form Block Overview
How Can I Use the Donations Form Block?
Ask your website visitors to support whatever you’d like with the Donations Form 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 Form
First, insert the Donations Form block into any post or page with these steps:
- From your dashboard, go to Pages/Posts.
- Edit the Page or Post you want to add the Donations Form block to.
- Add a new block by clicking the ( + ) icon, or type `/` to start searching for blocks.
- Search for “donations” and click it to add it.
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Using your keyboard, you can also type /donations on a new line and press enter to quickly add a new Donations Form block.
The first time you add a Donations Form 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 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 Form 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 Form Block
Create Your First Donation Request
After your Stripe account has been successfully connected, you can insert the Donations Form block which will pre-populate on your page or post.
Everything within the Donations Form 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 Form 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 Form block, don’t forget to click Publish so that your page or post with the Donations Form 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 Form blocks across your website as you’d like. Adding additional donation requests is as easy as adding another Donations Form block.
Donations Form 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
| WordPress.com Plan | Related Fees |
|---|---|
| WordPress.com eCommerce | 0 |
| WordPress.com Business | 2% |
| WordPress.com Premium | 4% |
| WordPress.com Personal | 8% |
| WordPress.com Pro (Legacy) | 2% |
| WordPress.com Starter (Legacy) | 3% |
| WordPress.com free | Feature Unavailable |
| Jetpack Plan | Related Fees |
|---|---|
| Security and Complete | 2% |
| Security Daily | 4% |
| Jetpack free | Feature Unavailable |
In addition to the fees listed above, 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 offer Payments with minimal upfront investment. As you collect more subscribers, it may make sense to move to a higher plan to retain more revenue.
Note that if your WordPress.com or Jetpack plan expires, the fee associated with your plan will increase to 10%. The Stripe fee will be unaffected.
Donations Management
The Donations Form block provides a suite of tools to help you monitor and grow your supporter base.
Revenue Breakdown
You can view your earnings revenue by visiting My Site(s) → Tools → Earn → Collect Payments. These earnings are aggregated across all payments features, including the Donations Form block, Payments Button 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
A WordPress.com account is required to donate through the Donations Form Block.
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 Form Block
Customize your donations request
You can fully edit the text within the Donations Form 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 Form 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
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Personal
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Premium
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Business
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