How to Choose Suggested Donation Amounts on WordPress

Three presets plus a custom amount

Three suggested amounts are enough for most pages. A fourth can work if you have a clear “sponsor a unit” level. More than that and donors spend time comparing instead of giving, which is the opposite of what a preset is supposed to do.

Always offer a custom amount. Some people want to give less than your lowest preset. Others want to give more than your highest. Hiding that field loses both groups. FundCollector, a donation plugin for WordPress, supports preset buttons and a custom amount on the same form.

Why presets work: anchoring, not pricing

A donation is not a purchase, but the numbers you show still act as an anchor. When someone sees 10, 25 and 50 next to each other, 25 starts to feel like the normal choice, even if that donor had no fixed amount in mind before landing on the page. This is why a set of presets that are all very low quietly pushes the average gift down, and why it is worth treating the numbers as a deliberate decision rather than a placeholder.

Tie each amount to something real

Presets convert better when they map to a cost the donor can picture:

• A week of food for a shelter animal
• One school kit
• A day of venue hire for a youth club
• A tree, a test kit, a transit ticket for a team

Write that link in the page text, not only in your head. “25 covers a week of food” is clearer than a bare 25. If you cannot name a unit, use round numbers that match how people already give in your country (10, 25, 50 or 20, 50, 100). Avoid odd figures like 27 or 43 unless they map to an actual cost; without that context they read as arbitrary and can make donors pause to double-check the number.

Order and the middle amount

Place amounts from low to high. Many donors pick the middle option when they are unsure. Set that middle amount at the gift you actually want as a typical one-time donation, not at a token figure.

The lowest amount should still be worth processing. A very small preset can train people to give the minimum even when they would have given more. The highest amount should be reachable for a committed supporter, not a figure that looks like a joke. Some pages leave the highest preset unlabelled, or replace it with “Other amount”, once a campaign shows that very few donors use the top button anyway.

One-time amounts and monthly amounts are different

If you offer monthly giving, do not reuse the same numbers. A 50 one-time gift and a 50 monthly gift are not the same decision, since the monthly gift repeats every billing cycle and the donor is aware of that when choosing. Monthly presets are usually lower (5, 10, 20) because the commitment repeats.

Recurring donations are available in FundCollector Pro via PayPal (worldwide) or Mollie (organizations based in Europe). If you only use the free version, keep the form focused on one-time presets and a custom amount.

Currency and rounding for an international audience

If donors give in more than one currency, avoid presets that look natural in one currency and awkward in another. A set like 10, 25, 50 usually rounds cleanly across most currencies; a set copied directly from a page in a different country sometimes does not. When in doubt, check how existing supporters already round their gifts and follow that pattern rather than importing numbers from an unrelated campaign.

Review after the first campaign

Look at which preset was used most, how often people typed a custom amount, and whether many gifts sat just below a preset (a sign the next button is too high). Then adjust. Amounts are not a one-time design choice, and a set that worked for a launch campaign can feel outdated a year later once your average gift has grown. The donation page CRO guide covers the rest of the page around these numbers.