DonateOcean is a free PayPal donation plugin for nonprofits, charities, churches, schools, and fundraising organizations. Accept one-time and recurring PayPal donations on your website, send automated tax receipts, track campaign progress, and let supporters manage their own subscriptions through a secure self-service portal.

Every PayPal donation is confirmed by webhook-verified payment: PayPal’s servers notify your site directly, so donations are recorded even if the donor closes their browser before the redirect completes. If a webhook delivery is delayed or temporarily unavailable, the plugin retries verification and updates the donation record once confirmation is received from PayPal.

All features ship in the free GPL release. There is no premium tier, no paid add-ons, and no platform fees — you only pay PayPal’s standard processing fees.

Why nonprofits choose DonateOcean for PayPal donations

No paid tier, no upsells — every feature is free; you only pay PayPal’s standard processing fees
Built for fundraising — campaigns, goals, tributes, anonymous giving, and offline donations in one place
Webhook-backed reliability — donations are recorded even when the browser callback drops
Donor self-service — donors manage their own recurring donations through a secure magic-link portal, no account required
GDPR-aware — built-in tools for personal data export, erasure, and retention

Core features

PayPal Orders API v2 — credit card, debit card, and PayPal balance
Webhook-verified donations — every payment confirmed by PayPal signature
Recurring donations — monthly and annual PayPal Subscriptions with admin controls
Donor self-service portal — donors manage subscriptions via secure magic link
Four display modes — inline, modal, widget, and full-page donation forms
Fundraising goals — progress bar with manual or automatic amount tracking
Campaign date gating — schedule campaign open and close dates
Tribute donations — “In honor of” and “In memory of” giving
Anonymous donations and optional fee coverage
Automated HTML receipts and PDF receipt downloads
Year-end tax summaries for each donor
Full admin suite — donations list, detail page, donor profiles, dashboard widgets
CSV export — up to 10,000 records with all metadata
Manual donations — record cash, check, and bank transfer donations
Full and partial refunds via the PayPal Captures API
Dispute management with automatic tracking and alerts
Custom roles — Donation Viewer (read-only) and Donation Manager
Capability-checked admin actions — refunds, settings changes, exports, and manual donation entry are all gated by WordPress capability checks
GDPR compliant — personal data export, erasure, and retention
Accessible donation form — keyboard-navigable controls and screen-reader-friendly labels and validation messages
Gutenberg block with all settings as Inspector Controls
Translation ready with a complete .pot file
Zero runtime dependencies — no Composer or npm required

Perfect for

Nonprofit organizations and 501(c)(3) charities
Churches and religious organizations collecting tithes and offerings
Schools, PTAs, and educational fundraisers
Animal shelters, hospitals, and community foundations
Crowdfunding campaigns, memorial funds, and tribute giving
Any site that needs to accept PayPal donations with recurring support

Integrations

Each integration is disabled by default and only activates after credentials are entered.

Mailchimp — auto-subscribe donors to your mailing list
Constant Contact — auto-subscribe donors on donation completion
ActiveCampaign — add donors to your CRM and email lists
Brevo (Sendinblue) — auto-subscribe with optional double opt-in
Zapier — trigger 5,000+ app workflows on donation events
Slack — receive rich donation notifications in any channel
Twilio SMS — get text alerts for donations, refunds, and disputes
Google Sheets — log every donation to a spreadsheet automatically

Shortcodes

Add the donation form to any page or post:

[donadosu_donation]

Examples:

[donadosu_donation campaign="building-fund" goal_amount="50000" goal_current="auto"]

[donadosu_donation display_mode="modal" donation_mode="both" fee_coverage="1"]

[donadosu_donation amounts="25,50,100,250" min_amount="10" button_text="Donate Now"]

Add a self-service subscription management portal:

[donadosu_donor_portal]

Donors enter their email, receive a secure magic link (valid for 30 minutes), and can view or cancel their active subscriptions. No account required.

Full shortcode and block attribute documentation is available in the plugin settings help tab.

Translations

DonateOcean is fully translation-ready and ships with a complete .pot file. Community translations are welcome through the translation platform once it is available for this plugin.

External Services

This plugin relies on third-party services to process payments and (optionally) sync donor data to external systems. Each service is described below, including what it is, when data is sent to it, what data is sent, and links to its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The plugin only contacts a service when the relevant feature is configured by an administrator; optional integrations remain inactive until their credentials are entered on the plugin settings page.

PayPal (required for online donation processing)

PayPal is the payment processor that handles every online donation. Without PayPal credentials, the plugin cannot accept online donations; manual (offline) donations recorded in the admin are the only exception.

What it is: PayPal’s REST API (Orders v2, Subscriptions v1, Webhooks) and the PayPal JavaScript SDK used to render the payment buttons.
When data is sent: each time a visitor initiates a donation (order creation), completes payment (order capture), creates or manages a subscription, when an administrator issues a refund, and whenever PayPal posts a webhook event that the plugin verifies.
Endpoints contacted: https://api-m.paypal.com (Live mode) or https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com (Sandbox mode). The PayPal JavaScript SDK is loaded from https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js on any page that renders the donation form.
Data sent: donation amount, currency, frequency (one-time or recurring), donor name, donor email, billing address (when provided), shipping address (when provided), campaign identifier, and the order or subscription identifier.
Partner attribution: the PayPal JavaScript SDK is loaded with a PayPal Partner Attribution ID (BN code) of mbjtechnolabs_sp. This is a non-personal integration identifier provided by the plugin’s PayPal technology partner (MBJ Technolabs). It does not transmit any donor data, does not change the donation amount, fees, or where funds are deposited (donations are always paid into your own connected PayPal account), and is used only so PayPal can recognise the integration. It can be removed by filtering the SDK attributes if you prefer.
PayPal Terms of Service: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/useragreement-full
PayPal Privacy Statement: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/privacy-full

Optional integrations

Mailchimp — an email marketing service. When enabled, the plugin contacts https://<dc>.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/ on each completed donation to add the donor to the configured audience. Data sent: donor name, donor email, and the Mailchimp list ID. Terms of Service: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/ — Privacy Policy: https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/
Constant Contact — an email marketing service. When enabled, the plugin contacts https://api.cc.email/v3/ on each completed donation to subscribe the donor to the configured list. Data sent: donor name, donor email, and the Constant Contact list ID. Terms of Service: https://www.constantcontact.com/legal/terms — Privacy Policy: https://www.constantcontact.com/legal/privacy-center
ActiveCampaign — a CRM and email marketing service. When enabled, the plugin contacts the administrator-supplied ActiveCampaign account URL on each completed donation to add the donor as a contact and attach them to the configured list. Data sent: donor name, donor email, and the ActiveCampaign list ID. Terms of Service: https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/ — Privacy Policy: https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/privacy-policy
Brevo (Sendinblue) — an email marketing service. When enabled, the plugin contacts https://api.brevo.com/v3/ on each completed donation to subscribe the donor to the configured list (optionally with double opt-in). Data sent: donor name, donor email, and the Brevo list ID. Terms of Service: https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/ — Privacy Policy: https://www.brevo.com/legal/privacypolicy/
Twilio SMS — a cloud-based SMS service. When enabled, the plugin contacts https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/ to send a text message to the administrator-configured notification phone number when a donation, refund, or dispute event occurs. Data sent: the administrator’s notification phone number, the Twilio “from” phone number, and an SMS body containing the donation amount, currency, and campaign name. No donor personally identifiable information is sent by default. Terms of Service: https://www.twilio.com/legal/tos — Privacy Policy: https://www.twilio.com/legal/privacy
Google Sheets — Google’s spreadsheet service. When enabled, the plugin contacts https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token to authenticate with a service account, then https://sheets.googleapis.com/v4/spreadsheets to append a row on each completed donation. Data sent: donation date, amount, currency, donor name, donor email, campaign, and donation identifier, written to the administrator-supplied spreadsheet. Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms — Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Slack — a team messaging service. When enabled, the plugin contacts the administrator-supplied Slack incoming-webhook URL on each completed donation to post a notification message. Data sent: donation amount, currency, campaign name, and (if the administrator has not disabled it in settings) the donor name. Terms of Service: https://slack.com/terms-of-service/user — Privacy Policy: https://slack.com/trust/privacy/privacy-policy
Zapier — a workflow automation service. When enabled, the plugin contacts the administrator-supplied Zapier webhook URL on each donation event (completed, refunded, subscription created, subscription cancelled) to trigger a Zap. Data sent: the donation payload including amount, currency, frequency, donor name, donor email, campaign, event type, and donation identifier. Terms of Service: https://zapier.com/legal — Privacy Policy: https://zapier.com/privacy
Google Analytics 4 / Google Tag Manager (optional, disabled by default) — Google’s web-analytics and tag-management services. Only active when an administrator enables tracking and supplies a Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXXXXX) and/or Container ID (GTM-XXXXXXX). When active, the visitor’s browser loads https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js and/or https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js and Google receives standard analytics data (such as IP address, page URL, and donation-conversion events). These tags are only rendered after analytics consent: the plugin integrates with the WordPress Consent API (statistics category) when a consent-management plugin is active, otherwise honours the plugin’s “require consent” setting and the donadosu_analytics_has_consent filter. Terms of Service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/ — Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Apart from the optional Google Analytics / Tag Manager integration described above, the plugin does not send any data to DonateOcean servers or to any other analytics or telemetry service.

Data Storage

Donation records, donor profiles, and plugin settings are stored locally in the site’s database. Payment processing is handled by PayPal; full card details are never stored on the site server by the plugin. PDF receipts are generated on demand and are not retained on the server after delivery.

Privacy

DonateOcean stores donor information (name, email, billing address, donation history) in your database as post meta. No donor data is transmitted to the plugin author.

For convenience, the donation form may also remember a returning donor’s own contact details (name, email, phone, and company) in their browser’s local storage on the device they donate from, so the form can pre-fill on their next visit. This data stays in the visitor’s own browser, is not transmitted anywhere by this feature, and can be cleared by clearing the browser’s site data.

The plugin integrates with the core privacy tools to fulfill data subject requests:

Personal data export — a donor’s complete giving history can be exported via Tools > Export Personal Data.
Personal data erasure — a donor’s personally identifiable information can be erased via Tools > Erase Personal Data, while preserving anonymized aggregate financial records.
Automatic retention — administrators can configure automatic erasure of donor PII after a set number of months.
Uninstall cleanup — before deleting the plugin, administrators can opt in from the settings page to remove all DonateOcean data from the database.

For details on data shared with third-party services (PayPal and optional integrations), see the External Services section above.

DonateOcean – Donations via PayPal