Regular giving is where charity income grows, and Direct Debit is how UK donors expect to give regularly. It costs the charity less per collection than a card, it does not stop when a card expires, and it carries the Direct Debit Guarantee that donors trust. Tinwell connects your WordPress donation form to GoCardless so a supporter can set up a monthly gift by Direct Debit without leaving your website. This page explains how it works, what it costs, how Gift Aid and your CRM fit in, and how to set it up.
Why Direct Debit for regular gifts
Card-based monthly giving fails quietly. A donor’s card expires, the bank reissues it, the next payment bounces, and unless someone chases it the gift is gone. Across a year that attrition is one of the biggest leaks in a regular giving programme. Direct Debit draws on the donor’s bank account rather than a card, so there is nothing to expire. It is also cheaper to collect: GoCardless charges a small per-transaction fee rather than a card percentage, and for a £10 monthly gift the difference adds up over hundreds of donors.
Donors are used to it, too. Their energy bill, their council tax and their gym all collect by Direct Debit, and the Direct Debit Guarantee means they know they can get a refund from their bank if anything is collected in error. That familiarity removes friction at the moment a supporter decides to give every month.
How Tinwell and GoCardless work together
GoCardless is a UK Direct Debit provider that handles the Bacs side: mandates, collection dates, failures and retries. Tinwell connects to your GoCardless account so that when a donor chooses “Monthly” on your form and picks Direct Debit, they enter their name, sort code and account number on your page, confirm the mandate, and the regular gift is set up. The mandate, the schedule and every collected payment are recorded against the donor in Tinwell. Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay stay available on the same form for one-off gifts and for donors who prefer a card for monthly giving.
What the donor sees
- They choose Monthly and an amount on your donation form, with an impact line showing what the gift does each month.
- They enter their details and, if they are a UK taxpayer, tick the Gift Aid declaration.
- They choose Direct Debit as the payment method, enter their bank details and confirm the mandate on your page.
- They receive a confirmation with the first collection date and the Direct Debit Guarantee wording, as the scheme requires.
- From then on, each monthly collection appears in your Tinwell dashboard and, if connected, in your CRM.
Donors can change their amount, pause or cancel in Tinwell’s donor portal, which cuts the emails asking you to do it for them and keeps you compliant with the donor’s right to cancel.
You can try both sides in the live demo: the donation form, the donor portal and the admin dashboard, with sample data.
What it costs
Tinwell takes nothing per donation; Direct Debit is included in the licence at £249 + VAT a year. GoCardless charges its own per-transaction fee, which you pay GoCardless directly; its current UK pricing is on gocardless.com. At the time of writing it costs about the same as a card on small gifts and less on larger ones, with a discount for registered charities. The bigger reason to steer monthly donors towards it, with the ordering and wording on your form, is that a Direct Debit does not lapse when a card expires.
Gift Aid on Direct Debit gifts
A Gift Aid declaration made with a monthly gift covers future donations as well as the first one, so a Direct Debit donor who declares once is eligible every month. Tinwell records the declaration against the donor and each collected payment, and includes every eligible collection in the Gift Aid export for the period, laid out for HMRC Charities Online. The Gift Aid guide explains the declaration rules.
Your CRM
When a Direct Debit is set up, Tinwell writes the donor, the regular schedule and the consent state into Beacon, Donorfy or Raisely through the official API, and each collection is written as it happens. Lifetime value and gift rhythm update on the donor record without anyone importing a file.
Failures, retries and cancellations
Some collections fail: insufficient funds, a closed account, a mandate cancelled at the bank. GoCardless reports each one, and Tinwell shows the status on the donor’s record and in the dashboard so you can follow up while the donor is still warm. Cancellations made by the donor at their bank are reflected automatically. Nothing silently disappears from your regular giving figures.
Setting it up
- Create or sign in to a GoCardless account for your charity. GoCardless will verify the organisation before collections can start, so do this first.
- In Tinwell, under Settings, then Payment Gateways, paste an access token created in your GoCardless dashboard; the settings screen walks you through it, including the webhook GoCardless uses to report each collection.
- Turn on Direct Debit as a payment method for monthly gifts, choose your suggested monthly amounts and the impact wording.
- Set up a £1 monthly gift yourself to see the mandate flow and the confirmation, then cancel it in the donor portal.
- Point your “Give monthly” buttons and your next regular giving appeal at the form.
The set-up docs for the donation plugin cover each step, and if you take the free onboarding add-on at checkout our team will connect GoCardless and test it for you.
Asking for monthly gifts well
The form can only convert the people who reach it, so the ask matters. Three things work for most charities. Lead with the monthly option on appeal pages aimed at existing supporters, and the one-off option on pages reached from search or social. Keep the suggested monthly amounts small and anchored to something concrete (“£6 a month feeds a dog for a week”); Tinwell’s impact line does this on the form. And tell donors plainly that they can change or stop the gift themselves at any time in the donor portal, because the fear of being locked in is the main reason people choose a one-off gift instead.
Direct Debit and hosted platforms
Most hosted donation platforms are built around cards, and Direct Debit, where it exists, is an add-on or a separate product. Because Tinwell runs on your own site and connects to your own GoCardless account, Direct Debit is simply another payment method on the same form, with the same Gift Aid handling and the same CRM sync. See how that compares with JustGiving, Donorbox, Enthuse and CAF Donate, read about all the features, or take the product tour.