Generate a WordPress donation plugin with recurring Stripe subscriptions
GiveWP is the default for WordPress donations and it is good, but the moment you need recurring donations it goes behind a €149/year add-on, and Stripe fees through their gateway carry an extra percentage unless you upgrade further.
A generated plugin handles the same flow with direct Stripe Payment Intents and Subscriptions. No gateway markup on top of Stripe, donors manage their own subscription via a portal link, and the generated receipts are structured for non-profit accounting.
Why generate it instead of installing an existing plugin?
Give Core is free but recurring requires the Recurring Donations add-on. Charitable is similar. For a non-profit that wants all-in-one fundraising pages, these are worth it. For a charity that already has a brand site and wants a simple donate-here flow, a generated plugin ships exactly that, no more.
The plugin creates a Stripe Customer + Subscription for recurring donors and uses the Customer Portal for self-serve cancellation and card update (zero custom UI to maintain). Tax receipts go out via email with a sequential number, and a yearly summary email is scheduled via WP Cron.
Because the plugin is small, it is easy to add non-profit-specific things like dedication messages ("In memory of..."), honoree notifications, and campaign tracking.
Example prompt
This is the kind of description that generates this plugin. You can start from it and tweak whatever you need before hitting generate.
Plugin name: Acme Donate
Donation page shortcode [acme_donate campaign="general"]:
- Preset amounts: 10, 25, 50, 100, custom.
- Frequency: one-time, monthly.
- Optional fields: in honor of, notify (email), message.
- Stripe Payment Element.
On one-time success: create PaymentIntent, save donation row, email receipt with sequential number.
On monthly: create Customer + Subscription, save subscription id, email first receipt, then receipts on every invoice.paid webhook.
Donor portal: a /donate/manage page with magic-link email login. Link to Stripe Customer Portal for card update / cancel.
Yearly summary: on Jan 15 each year, email every donor their prior-year total for tax filing.
Admin: donations list, campaigns, totals per campaign, MRR from monthly donors.What the generated plugin typically includes
- One-time and recurring handled by PaymentIntent + Subscription
- Stripe Customer Portal integration for self-serve
- Sequential receipt numbering with per-year reset
- Yearly summary cron for tax filing
- Campaign tracking via query string or shortcode attribute
- Webhook handler for invoice.paid / invoice.payment_failed / customer.subscription.deleted
- Dedication and honoree notification optional fields
Presets, frequency options, receipt format and campaign setup are defined in the prompt. If you need Gift Aid (UK) or 501(c)(3) language, describe it and the receipt template adapts.
Frequently asked questions
Do we store card data?
Never. All cards stay in Stripe via the Payment Element. We store only the Stripe customer id and subscription id.
What if a recurring payment fails?
Stripe Smart Retries handles the retries; we listen to invoice.payment_failed and email the donor after the third failure, then mark the subscription paused in our DB when Stripe cancels.