WordPress Donations Using Bluefire

There are tons of WordPress donation options….but very few of them specialize in non-profits like churches and ministries. Even fewer do it for no monthly fee and a percentage in the same ballpark as the big names like Stripe and PayPal. These wordpress donation plugins tie in with a forms plugin like Gravity Forms, but they still 1) don’t specialize in church stuff and 2) either carry you to another site to complete the donation or require additional site security.

That’s why I need to tell you about Bluefire! Back at the beginning of 2014 I began researching online giving options for our church and my own personal ministry. For our church I had really grown tired of people having to go to the PayPal website to complete their payment. PayPal just screams ‘unprofessional and cheesy.’ Clarifier, Bluefire isn’t a donation plugin per se, but it acts like one. You set up a bluefire account basically past the giving window into your site. Its software that adds functionality to your site.

My personal ministry utilized Stripe, and while I like Stripe, I didn’t like that I needed to have multiple premium wordpress donation plugins to set up stripe giving and even a separate paid plugin for Stripe. Although givers could complete the payment with Stripe and never leave our site, I paid $150 for all the donation plugins necessary plus a fee every year to upgrade the plugins. It was getting ridiculous.

Really by chance I came across this awesome company that caters to non-profits. Our church implemented it first. Followed by my ministry. Followed by everyone I work with now. I have YET to hear a bad review. This wordpress donation plugin is by far the best I’ve seen. Here is what it looks like on my personal ministry site.

It’s not just for online website giving though! Does your church have credit/debit giving on your giving envelopes? Chances are you pay monthly fees to use a merchant like Authorize.net to process your cards. That’s probably in addition to your Paypal. Besides online giving directly on your site Bluefire has a virtual terminal for you to process cards for the same percent as the online giving. Maybe your church also has like a book store or coffee shop? You’re either using cash only or you have something like a Square reader.

Bluefire has that too! When you sign up for Bluefire you can order a card reader and process cards at the point of sale! So now, instead of having PayPal, Auth.net, and Square to do online, virtual terminal, and point of sale you just have Bluefire to do all three! That means all your electronic giving and reporting is in one place. Your admin and accountant will love you!

On the next page we’ll look at some of BlueFire’s main Features that I personally love! Remember, this is a little more than downloading a wordpress donation plugin. You will have to set up an account with them the same way you did PayPal…but you’ll be glad you did!