Skins for four kinds of cause, from one codebase
Candidate's feature list does not describe a single design with a colour switcher. The vendor names a pet rescue skin, plus charity and church skins, and pitches the theme at charity, political campaign, church and similar organisations. That reads as a family of starting layouts aimed at different causes, each with its own front-page emphasis, rather than one homepage you repaint.
For a political campaign the useful thing is that a candidate-led front page and a congregation welcome page are treated as separate starting points, so you begin closer to your cause than you would with a stripped-down corporate theme. The vendor does not break down what each skin changes beyond its name, so the demo is where the real differences have to be judged.
Donations ship as a WooCommerce system, not a giving plugin
The one component the vendor gives a product name is Universe Funder, described as a WooCommerce crowdfunding system. Treat that as an architectural statement: a contribution is processed as a WooCommerce order, sharing the shop's payment gateways, cart and order records instead of sitting in a separate donation plugin with its own reporting.
The update history points the same way. A 2023 release records a change to PayPal API donation buttons; another records WooCommerce support files being refreshed alongside a MailChimp API version. Both the giving path and the shop path get touched when the theme is maintained, which is what you want if fundraising lives inside commerce.
What the vendor does not describe: how a campaign page is assembled, whether goals are tracked, or what reporting exists. If your funding depends on recurring gifts, donor records or receipts, those are questions for the online documentation before you commit.
Forms come from the page builder layer
Alongside WPBakery Page Builder the vendor lists a WPBakery Form Builder. That pairing matters for a nonprofit site, because the enquiries that drive it are usually forms: volunteer sign-ups, contact requests, donation interest. Having form building inside the same builder that composes the page means those forms do not have to come from a separate plugin with its own styling and its own update cycle.
The rest of the layout system is theme-level rather than builder-level: boxed or wide page versions, three homepage variants, a sticky header and a three-level dropdown menu. There are also two slider engines (Revolution and Flex), 13 gallery types, three portfolio post types, six blog post types, ten custom widgets, unlimited sidebars and a shortcode set covering columns, tabs, accordions, pricing tables, alerts and lists.
That breadth has a cost visible in the editing experience. Because pages are shortcode-built, much of your content sits inside shortcode markup rather than blocks. The marketplace records Gutenberg Optimized as "No", which does not remove the block editor from your WordPress install, but it does tell you the demo pages you inherit were not authored in it; mixing block layouts in gives you two editing systems side by side.
Events and forums are third-party, and support for them is excluded
Calendar functionality comes from The Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro, both listed as compatible plugins. The same applies to bbPress at 2.5.x and 2.6.x, which would add a discussion area for a campaign or congregation inside the same install. These are integrations with other people's plugins, not features the theme supplies itself.
The vendor says this plainly: support is not provided for third-party plugins and modules, and help with them requires a personal licence from their own sites. So the theme's role with a calendar is stylistic and structural; when the calendar misbehaves, the fix comes from that project's support channel. WPML, Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce sit in the same compatibility list, with WPML being the relevant one for a bilingual campaign or church. All of these are declarations recorded from the vendor and marketplace listing in early November 2026, not tests against your plugin versions.
What the package contains, and the two stated exclusions
The file list names PHP, CSS and JS files plus layered PSDs, and the vendor's own feature list mentions 36 PSD files, so design source is part of what you receive. The clipart used in the preview is not: the vendor states it was bought from a stock photo service and is not included in the stock file, so any imagery you saw in the demo has to be replaced or licensed separately.
The second exclusion is support scope, covered above. Beyond that, browser support as declared runs from IE9 through Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera, which reads as a historical list rather than a statement about how the theme behaves in current browsers. The vendor also describes its documentation as well documented and points to an online version, which is the sensible place to check campaign setup and donation configuration details that the feature list leaves out.
Compatibility ranges and version numbers change with each release; check the live listing rather than relying on any article.
Questions & answers
Do I need WooCommerce to take donations with Candidate?
Yes, by design. The vendor's crowdfunding component, Universe Funder, is described as a WooCommerce system, so the donation flow runs through WooCommerce orders. The vendor does not describe a giving path that works without it, which means a site whose only commercial activity is fundraising still carries the shop plugin.
Can I use the block editor even though Gutenberg Optimized is marked No?
The block editor remains part of WordPress, so nothing stops you from using it. The practical issue is that the theme's demo pages and its layout elements are built as WPBakery shortcodes. Building new pages in blocks alongside them leaves two editing systems in one site, so decide early which one will hold your main content.
Who supports The Events Calendar or bbPress on a Candidate site?
Not the theme vendor. The description states that support for third-party plugins and modules is not provided and that a personal licence from the plugin's own site is needed to get help. Calendar and forum problems therefore go to those projects, while the theme covers how they are styled and placed.
Is the demo artwork included in the theme files?
No. The vendor says the preview clipart was purchased from a stock photo service and is not part of the stock file. The package file list covers PHP, CSS and JS files and layered PSDs, so plan on sourcing your own images.
