How to Create WPForms Donation Form in Minutes

If you’re looking for an easier way to collect donations on your blog, I’m going to show you how to use WPForms Donation form templates to collect payments on your website.

For many website owners and nonprofit organizations, the simplest way to accept donations is to add a PayPal donate button to their website.

This is because PayPal is one of the most widely used and accepted online means of payment.

However, PayPal payment is not the best option for everyone shopping online. And for website owners, organizations, and nonprofit websites, the PayPal donate button comes with many limitations.

There is other useful information you may want to collect from donors while making payment on your website:

• You may want to know more about your donor.
• Customize the donate form fields
• Integrate with other payment processors
• Increase duel time by keeping donors on your website
• Give donors the choice of subscribing to your mailing list
• Run Survey
• Get Feedback. And more

And for those living in a country where PayPal is not available, accepting donations from other payment processors is the alternative choice.

So, in this article, I want to show you how to create custom WordPress forms that accept donations from users. 

You’ll be able to receive payment from PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.NET.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a nonprofit organization, churches, mosques, blogs, business websites, etc…

Anyone can use it on their website to receive donations from users. 

How to Create a Custom WordPress Donations Form in Minutes

WordPress is beautiful, the developer’s community even makes it better. There are thousands of WordPress plugins to make your WordPress blog your own. 

WordPress plugins make it easy to add more functionalities and features to your WordPress blog. Whatever your blog features or demands, you only need to search for the right plugin.

WPForms is a WordPress plugin that lets you add customize WPForms donation forms to your blog. With WPforms, you can integrate other payment processors into your forms including PayPal.

Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner created WPForms as a premium multipurpose contact form plugin.

You can use WPForms for almost any type of contact form use.

Either it’s a simple contact form, request form, accident report form, conversational form, billing, order form, newsletter signup form, suggestion form, etc…

Whatever your contact form needs, WPForms makes it easy to achieve.

So, in this article, we’re going to learn how to create a WPForms Donation form in minutes that integrate with payment options like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize .NET

Let’s get started…

Step 1: Installing WPForms Plugin

The first step you need to take is to install the WPForms Pro or Elite plugin on your blog.

Though WPForms has a free version you can always install and use on your WordPress blog, the functions and features to add the WPForms Donation form are only included in the premium pro or elite plugin.

So, you need to buy WPForms Pro or Elite plugin from the official website, download, install and activate it on your website.

After the installation, you need to enter your license key in the required field.

Go to the WPForm website and log in with your account credentials.

On the account overview tab page, you’ll find your account license key by clicking on the link.

To enter your license key in the required field, go to WPForms in your WordPress admin area and click on settings from the list.

On the next page, enter your license key in the empty field area.

Don’t forget to scroll down the page to click on “Save Settings”

That’s it”

Your WPForms Pro plugin is now fully loaded with premium functionalities, add-ons, and updates.

If you don’t already have WPForms Premium Plugin, you can purchase it from this link for 50% off the regular price.

Note: The 50% off the regular price is a limited-time offer. It’s not going to last long. So, the earlier you take advantage, the better.

Step 2: Installing Payments Addons

Now that the WPForms premium plugin has been installed on your WordPress blog, you need to install the payment addons.

In the WPForms Pro plugin, you can install the PayPal and Stripe add-ons, while the WPForms Elite Plugin comes with Authorize.net, PayPal, and Stripe payment addons.

You can download and install the addons from your WordPress admin or via the WPForms website through your user account dashboard.

To download via your account dashboard, log in to your WPForms account and click on the download tab. Then scroll down the page to locate the addons.

The quicker and easiest way to download the WPforms add-ons is via your WordPress admin area.

Click on WPForms from the admin menu area, then click on “add-ons”. Locate the addon you want to install and click on the “Install Add-on” button next to it.

Depending on your WPForms Premium plugin plan, some addons might not be available on the page.

If you want access to all the premium WPForms addons, then the WPForms Elite Plugin plan is the right choice.

You don’t need to take any further action to make the Payment addons active along with the WPforms plugin.

Once you clicked on the “Installed Addon” button, WPForms automatically installed and activate the Payments addons.

Step 3: Create Your WPForms Donation Forms

Now, we have everything ready to create our WPForms Donation form.

So, let’s get to work to create our WPForms Donation form that collects payment from Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.NET

On your WordPress admin menu list, hover your mouse on WPForms, then click on “Add New”.

On the next page that opens, select the “Donation Form” to get started on a prebuilt form template.

You’ll be greeted with this pop-up dialog box that says:

Don’t Forget

Click the payment tab to configure your payment provider

Simply click the “CLOSE” button to continue with your WPForms Donation form customization. You’ll get to the payment provider configuration set up later.

For now, let’s focus on customizing your donation form to fulfill your website needs.

Step 4: WPForms Donation Form Customization

The default WPforms Donation form field includes fields for:

• Name – First name and Last Name
• Email
• Donation amount
• Comments or Message

These fields are required by default. So, users have to complete the information to make their donation go through.

You can add to the fields if your business requires more information from users before making a donation.

With the WPForms Pro Plugin, you can request a donor phone number, address, website URL, upload a file, date and time, etc.

Though not all the options on the settings field panel will be relevant to your WPForms Donation form, only select what will help your site users.

The WPForms Donation amount field is a user-defined field that lets donors type in the desired amount to donate.

You can set it to a single item where the user can only donate a predefined amount. Or you can set up multiple amount fields.

This will allow donors to choose from a set of amounts to donate.

To set up multiple donations amounts to choose from, on the WPForms settings panel, click on fields. Under the Payment Fileds option, drag the “Multiple Items” to the form field.

You’ll need to input the donation amount you want. To do this click on the Multiple Item field in the form preview panel.

You can change the label name from Multiple Items to whatever name you so desire. Something that will help your users quickly understand what the options are meant for.

Next, you need to enter the amount you want users to donate. When you’re done entering the amount, enter an optional field that lets users decide on what they want to donate.

This field is optional, if you choose to give users the option to enter an amount of their own, then you need to edit the default WPForms Donation amount field.

Click on the Donation Amount field to edit the settings. Unchecked the “Required” check box. If you don’t do this, it will prevent users from entering their choice of the donation amount.

The next step is to enable the condition that makes the “Enter Amount” field appear for users.

On the same settings page, scroll down a bit to locate the conditional logic feature. Check the box next to it, and define your settings.

Select the option that says “Show this field if Multiple Item is Enter Amount”.

Now, you’re done with customizing your WPForms Donation form. The next step is to set up the payment options to collect donations on your website.

Step 5: Payment Integrations

Your WPForms Donation form is not complete until you integrate it with your payment processor.

WPForms Pro plugin allows you to integrate with either PayPal or Stripe. If your business requires Authorize.NET integration, the WPForms Elite Plugin is what you need.

For this WPForms Donation tutorial, I’m using the WPForms Pro plugin. So, you will only see the PayPal or Stripe features here.

Click on the Payment tab from the WPForms setting panel. Then select your payment processor from the list.

I will be using PayPal for this tutorial.

At this stage, you should have the PayPal or Stripe addons installed. If not, this won’t work.

Assuming you already have the payment addons installed, the settings page will be similar to what you have above.

Click on the PayPal Standard option to reveal the drag and drop form preview panel.

Next, check the “Enable PayPal Standard Payments” box on the page. After that, enter your PayPal email address that will receive the donations.

In the Payment type label, select “Donation” from the drop-down.

In the cancel URL field, you can enter any URL of your choice to send users to for engagements or other purposes.

This is an opportunity to engage users who didn’t complete the donation and get them to take certain actions like joining your mailing list, visiting a blog post, following you on social media, taking a survey, getting feedback, etc.

The conditional logic setting is not required here, since this is a simple donation form. Things are clearly laid out so we need to define what condition an element needs to show up.

As always, remember to click the save button when you’re done with the settings.

Step 6: Adding Your WPForms Donation Form to a Page

Your WPForms donation form is ready, now the world is waiting to send you money. You need to make the donation form visible on your blog pages or post.

How do you do that?

It’s simple and easy to complete especially with the WordPress Block editor.

Whether you’re creating a new WordPress page/post or modifying an existing post/page to display your donation form, the process is the same and simple.

On your WordPress block editor, click on the + sign and type in WPForms into the “search for block” field.

Click WPForms from the result, then select the donation form you’ve just created from the dropdown menu.

Your newly created WPForms Donation form is now live on your post or page. You can preview it before publishing the post.

You can add the donation form to any part of the blog. Either it is the sidebar, post, pages, or footer section.

Step 7: Email Notification Messages

It is important that donors receive email notifications of their payments. This will help show appreciation and payment confirmation.

To customize the email message users, receive, on the WPforms setting page, click on settings, and notifications.

You’ll see the default email notification message that’s been sent to the WordPress admin. Now, you need to create a separate email notification that will be sent to donors when a payment is made.

Click on “Add New Notification” on the page.

A dialog box will open where you need to enter a name for your email notification message.

On the email preview panel, and next to the “Send to email address” field, click on “show smart tag”. It will reveal a list of menus, click the email option. It will reveal a smart tag id {field_id=”1″}.

This smart tag id will be used to get the donor’s email address and send them an email message each time a donation is made.

Conclusion…

Creating a WPForms donation form that accepts payment from your blog isn’t rocket science.

Actually, there are many ways to create a donation form in WordPress, WPForms makes it easier to start and complete the process even if you’re a beginner WordPress user.

I hope you’ve learned how to create a custom WPForms Donation Form that integrates with PayPal and Stripe.

If you enjoy reading through this WPForms tutorial share it with your followers.