Woo and Donations

Hi @jpm2f

Just to make sure we are on the same page, how did you add the donation form? For better assistance, can you provide a video showing the issue on your end? For video, you may use https://loom.com or https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/. Please follow the instructions on that page and then paste the URL into this thread.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

We want donors to choose their own donation amount and be able to choose more than one project to donate to.

To do this we have tried several plugins.

They all have the same problem when adding the short codes to the WC shop – only the first short code will generate a usable donation. The remainder always show up on the page preview as “Only one donation form per page allowed”. This happens with several plugins. We have contacted the developers of these plugins and they all say the same thing – it is a restriction of WC and they cannot help us.

I do not understand why it is not possible to have a single page, containing multiple project donation forms, and for a visitor to simply enter their amount into projects they wish to support, for those donations to end up in a single basket and from there a single checkout.

Hey, @jpm2f!

We appreciate your suggestions and are always looking for ways to improve our products and services, and input from users like you is invaluable.

We have a website where you can submit feature requests and upvote the ones other people submitted and you like. You can check that out here and suggest this restriction is removed.

Regarding handling this right now, I suggest creating a page for each donation option and then linking all the donations pages on a page so the person que check the project list. And you can add a link to the page with all projects in each project’s page so they can easily come back to it. ??

Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help or if you have further questions.

Have a wonderful day!

Thank you for your suggestions.

Firstly, as we both know, submitting a suggestion for an update to WooCommerce will never be given any attention by the developer team. Woo developers have a reputation for not paying any attention to such submissions, and even if they were interested in making the change, it would likely take months, which we do not have.

Second, creating one donation per page is completely impractical. That would mean 30 donation pages. No visitor is going to waste their time going through multiple page changes just to make a donation to a few projects. Besides which the donation on each page could not be collected to a central page, and then to a basket, as this would be a mess and terrible user experience. Not to mention is not something that the payment gateway at checkout would support.

Why are WooCommerce passing the blame on what should be a simple fix for them. Is it the case that WooCommerce are not interested in nonprofits as clients, and therefore have no interest in their requirements?

Whatever the reason, I would appreciate an explanation as to exactly why WooCommerce will only allow one donation form per page please.

The reason must be substantial, given that on the face of it this restriction is ridiculous.

Hi @jpm2f,

Firstly, as we both know, submitting a suggestion for an update to WooCommerce will never be given any attention by the developer team. Woo developers have a reputation for not paying any attention to such submissions, and even if they were interested in making the change, it would likely take months, which we do not have.

I understand this would take time and you need a quicker solution. However I still would encourage you to submit such request as it may help you in the future, or other merchants facing the same issue.

Edit: I think you’ve submitted the request already; I found?this one. I’ve upvoted it to help your cause.

Second, creating one donation per page is completely impractical. That would mean 30 donation pages. No visitor is going to waste their time going through multiple page changes just to make a donation to a few projects. Besides which the donation on each page could not be collected to a central page, and then to a basket, as this would be a mess and terrible user experience. Not to mention is not something that the payment gateway at checkout would support.

After reading the thread, I was about to suggest the same as my colleague, but I see it has already been suggested and dismissed. Another option would be to have your donations as products that you can add to the cart. You can create a page for all the donations and add a direct add-to-cart link for each donation, so you can have all of them on one page without the need to redirect to individual pages.

Why are WooCommerce passing the blame on what should be a simple fix for them. Is it the case that WooCommerce are not interested in nonprofits as clients, and therefore have no interest in their requirements?

Whatever the reason, I would appreciate an explanation as to exactly why WooCommerce will only allow one donation form per page please.

The reason must be substantial, given that on the face of it this restriction is ridiculous.

To be honest, I only learned about this limitation today. I think this is meant to avoid issues by having multiple checkouts on a single page which can potentially lead to conflicts and unexpected behavior. I’m asking our developers and get back to you once I learn more about this.

To do this we have tried several plugins.

Can you share a list of the plugins you’ve tried for this, though? I’ve found there are plugins that do include multiple donation forms in one page. So I think this depends on which plugin you’re using, too. For instance I’ve found this add-on for GiveWP that supports more than one form per page: https://givewp.com/addons/donation-upsells-for-woocommerce/. Have you tried it already?

This one also includes a workaround to bypass this restriction: https://www.wc-donation.com/documentation/advanced/multiple-donation-forms-on-one-page/, though they mention that there’s the risk of it malfunctioning.

I hope this helps so far.

Thanks!
-OP

Hi again, @jpm2f

Here’s another option to consider from our Marketplace: https://woocommerce.com/products/advanced-donation/. Feel free to ask any pre-sales questions through the “Get support” button on the right or review its documentation to learn more. For instance, you can use its multiple causes for donations feature, as I think it’ll suit your needs just fine! Learn more here: https://woocommerce.com/document/advanced-donation-4/#section-5.

Keep in mind, if you want to try our products, you can leverage our 30-day refund policy. In a nutshell, it gives you 30 days to try it out, and if the product doesn’t work the way you need or you think another product would work better, we are more than happy to offer a full refund. You’ll find the details of [our refund policy here](https://woocommerce.com/refund-policy/).

Cheers!
-OP

Thank you for your reply.

1. “I see it has already been suggested and dismissed.” … Yes, for obvious user experience reasons. I’d appreciate you not making it sound as if this is a fickle choice by us.
2. “Another option would be to have your donations as products that you can add to the cart.” … This is what we have been doing. Each project is a product. Each product is a donation. Only the first product/donation is displayed, the rest shown up as “Only one donation form per page allowed”, as mentioned above. (and a direct add-to-cart link for each donation is not possible)
3. GiveWP, like many “to help charities” plugins is far too expensive, exploiting charity’s needs and capitalizing on offering only the most mundane and largely redundant capabilities in their lower priced packages.
4. The workaround in https://www.wc-donation.com/documentation/advanced/multiple-donation-forms-on-one-page/ does not work. Besides, this plugin is not supported by the developer. We tried for weeks to get any response.
5. From the Slack forum we were recommended against using https://woocommerce.com/products/advanced-donation/ by another charity. Too expensive anyway.
6. We have tried the WooCommerce Support several times with requests. Most have been ignored.
7. Another charity advised us to avoid needing the services of your refund team, as they are not reliable and take too long.

We are building a charity platform which shows donors where 100% of their donation goes and what the donations are used for. Donors object to watching their contributions being spent to cover the commercial profit of companies, rather than the cause to which they are donating. And, like WooCommerce, most solution providers refuse to provide discounted or free services to support charities or conservation. meaning they become simply too expensive to justify to donors.

I look forward to perhaps hearing from your developers at some point.

Hi @jpm2f,

Thank you for your detailed answer!

“I see it has already been suggested and dismissed.” … Yes, for obvious user experience reasons. I’d appreciate you not making it sound as if this is a fickle choice by us.

Please be reassured that wasn’t my intent at all. Apologies if it came across this way. I was simply thinking of options on the go as I read the thread! ??

“Another option would be to have your donations as products that you can add to the cart.” … This is what we have been doing. Each project is a product. Each product is a donation. Only the first product/donation is displayed, the rest shown up as “Only one donation form per page allowed”, as mentioned above. (and a direct add-to-cart link for each donation is not possible)

As I understand you’re having them as a donation product through a third party plugin (if so, which one you’re working with at the moment?), can you try this setting them up as regular products instead?

From the Slack forum we were recommended against using?https://woocommerce.com/products/advanced-donation/?by another charity. Too expensive anyway.

Can you share more details about this? Why was itn’t recommended? Thank you for your input on the price. We appreciate any feedback you can give us to improve our products, services, and offerings.

I look forward to perhaps hearing from your developers at some point.

My team has asked me to ask you the list of plugins you’ve tried for this, as the limitation seems to be on the plugins side, not WooCommerce side. I’d love to learn more about the plugins you’ve tried already and review such limitations.

Thank you for your eply.

1. “you’re having them as a donation product through a third party plugin” … No. The products are added in WooCommerce as regular products. The plugin is only to permit donors to enter their own contribution amount – its called Donations for WooCommerce. However, we have attempted the same with other plugins and, upon adding a second or third “product” the Woo Shop page always reverts to the result, “Only one donation form per page allowed” displayed for any product beyond the first one.
2. Advanced donation – poor and long delays on support, too expensive for what it is supposed to be able to accomplish, donors increasingly object to parts of their donations being used to pay for commercial profit.
3. “My team has asked me to ask you the list of plugins you’ve tried for this, as the limitation seems to be on the plugins side, not WooCommerce side. I’d love to learn more about the plugins you’ve tried already and review such limitations.” … I am not here to service you and do your work for you. The fact remains that the same result occurs with each plugin we have tried. Blaming the plugins for what is clearly a limitation of the WooCommerce platform, is not acceptable. I suggest if you wish to learn more about the plugins, either ask the developer teams or trial them for yourself.

In the meantime, I would like to know how and when this limitation will be addressed please, and in the meantime how we may be able to circumvent the limitation.

To recap:

We need to be able to list multiple projects for donation on a single page. The donations need to be donor-nominated amounts. Each “Donate button”, on each project must sent that contribution to a basket without leaving the multi-donation page. When selection is complete, the donor must be able to review the basket and proceed to a single payment checkout. The first stage of this process, the listing of multiple self-nominating donations, on a single page, is not possible. This is a problem.

Thank you.

Hi @jpm2f

The limitation of having only one donation form per page is not a direct restriction of WooCommerce, but rather a common practice among many eCommerce platforms. This is done to avoid potential conflicts and unexpected behavior that could arise from having multiple checkout processes on a single page.

However, as a potential workaround could be to have each donation as an individual product. Customers can then add multiple donation products to their cart from a single page and proceed to checkout.

Alternatively, you can try a plugin like Charity Donation Offers for WooCommerce, Donation Platform for WooCommerce, or Charitable. All these plugins support creating multiple fundraising campaigns in minutes.

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.