Better Giving vs Charitable

Better Giving is a fundraising and financial platform for nonprofits built around an embeddable donation form. The form accepts card and bank or ACH gifts, PayPal and Venmo, Apple Pay and Google Pay, stock, donor-advised funds, IRA or QCD gifts, and cryptocurrency. Fundraising tools include recurring donations, peer-to-peer campaigns, dedication gifts, program-specific giving, goal progress bars, automated receipts, and reporting. Organizations can export donor-level records and giving history through CSV or API at no charge. The platform and donation form are public code and can be self-hosted with an organization’s own payment gateway. The free Fundraising & fund management plan is free, with all features included and donor contributions optional. Self-hosted software is free, but organizations pay gateway processing costs and manage receipts, compliance, and operations. Fiscal sponsorship costs $2.90 gift. Better Giving says donations are handled by Stripe; its security policy describes TLS 1.2+ in transit and AES-256 at rest, and says raw card data is not stored or processed by Better Giving.

Charitable is a self-hosted WordPress plugin for donation campaigns and fundraising. A visual drag-and-drop builder provides live preview for campaign creation, while campaign pages, recurring gifts, automated receipts and donor records support ongoing fundraising. The free Charitable Lite plan costs nothing and includes unlimited campaigns and donations. It accepts Stripe, Square, PayPal and offline donations; Pro adds ten more payment gateways. Recurring donations begin with Plus, and peer-to-peer fundraising begins with Pro. Donor management includes profiles, giving history, notes, and adding, editing or deleting donation records. Charitable says it integrates with 5,000+ email marketing, CRM and payment platforms and keeps data within the customer’s WordPress website rather than storing sensitive information. Paid plans start with Basic at $69 a year, billed yearly. Paid plans include ticket support; free users use the WordPress.org forum. The plugin requires WordPress 5.9 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.