Awesome Motive Acquires WP Charitable Plugin

Awesome Motive, makers of popular plugins like OptinMonster, WPForms, and MonsterInsights, acquired WP Charitable this week. The plugin is used by more than 10,000 non-profits for creating fundraising campaigns and collecting online donations. It does not charge any transaction fees and currently has a 4.9/5-star average rating on WordPress.org.

“Wes and I launched Charitable in 2015 because we were tired of seeing non-profits use hosted fundraising platforms that charge hefty fees and strip them of the ability to brand and control their donation pages,” WP Charitable co-founder Eric Daams said in his farewell post.

“After being a small team splitting our time on the product as well as our agency business for the last 7 years, we are ready to pass the reins to someone who shares the same passion and has the resources to make Charitable even better than it is today.”

Awesome Motive CEO Syed Balkhi said the company’s non-profit users had long been requesting a beginner-friendly donations plugin. They could either acquire one or build one from scratch. WP Charitable’s timing to sell coincided with Awesome Motive’s next move on expanding tools for non-profit customers.

“As you know, at Awesome Motive, our mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys,” Balkhi said. “Our software today powers over 20 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.

“Along with our core mission, we believe that companies should be forces for good.

“The WP Charitable plugin allows us to use our knowledge, experience, and resources to empower those who are changing the world for good.”

WP Charitable’s chief competitor is GiveWP, a donation plugin and fundraising platform with more than 100,00 users. While WP Charitable doesn’t collect any transaction fees whatsoever, one of the big differences with GiveWP is that it collects a 2% fee on Stripe donations taken via the company’s free Stripe integration with GiveWP core. There are no fees for GiveWP’s commercial Stripe add-on.

Demonstrating one of the more endearing aspects of the WordPress ecosystem where competitors often support each other, GiveWP co-founder Matt Cromwell congratulated WP Charitable on the acquisition.

6 years ago I gave a shout-out to the makers of @wpcharitable for their 1st year of success.

Today on the acquisition by @wpbeginner!

BONUS: I have a new nemesis for GOOD in @dimensionmedia

Here's to doing more GOOD than we can accomplish alone. https://t.co/dYtTLunq3P pic.twitter.com/GFNdt4oejO
— :Cromwell: (@learnwithmattc) June 22, 2022

WP Charitable co-founders said current users can expect “business as usual” without any interruptions. They will be helping the transition process but moving on to their own new endeavors. David Bisset will be leading product development moving forward with Awesome Motive. Balkhi said he has an “an extensive list of ideas and a feature roadmap” that the company will begin working on with the plugin’s new team.