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February 7, 2017

Adding a donate button to your WordPress website

In general, one of the advantages to having a website is that it gives you a 24/7 online presence without having to actually be available 24/7. In the for-profit world, that means people can make impulse decisions on their own schedule.

In the nonprofit world, that translates to the ability to accept donations online. One of the easiest ways to set that up is with a PayPal button.

There are two ways to set that up. You can either copy and paste the code PayPal gives you or use a PayPal donation plugin.

Copy and paste

Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting the HTML code from PayPal and inserting it into your WordPress website.

  1. Log into PayPal.
  2. At the top, go to the Tools dropdown menu, then select “All Tools.”
  3. Locate and click on the “PayPal buttons” option.
  4. Click on “Create new button.”
  5. Fill out the form.
    1. Under “Choose a button type,” be sure to select donation.
    2. At minimum, you need to enter your organization’s name.
    3. Fill in any other options you’d like to customize.
    4. Click the “Create Button” button.

PayPal will then give you two options. They label the options “Website” and “Email,” but really it’s giving you the choice between all the code or just a link.

If you want to copy and paste the entire block of “Website” code, you certainly can. For most, it’s a better idea to just copy the link, as that will give you more control over how the donate button looks.

Once you have that link, just insert it on your WordPress website like you normally would any link. You can even make it into an actual button by using a plugin like MaxButtons or by having your graphic designer or web developer create the button.

PayPal donation plugin

If you have any experience with WordPress, you know plugins can solve a lot of issues. Not surprisingly, there are several PayPal donation plugins available.

Here are three of the more popular:

As of the writing of this article, all three have been updated fairly recently, have 2,000 or more active installs, and are rated with 4.9 or more stars.

Other more robust plugins are available that do the job, but those three are specialized to create WordPress donation buttons.

Regardless of which of the two methods you choose, a donate button is a must-have for most nonprofit websites. And using PayPal with one of these two methods is one of the easier routes to go.

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