The best online fundraising platforms for charities

CAF Donate

 

Built by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), CAF Donate allows you to create online donation forms and buttons and easily add them to your website, emails, and Facebook pages. You’ll first need to sign up for CAF’s reporting tool, CAF Charity Dashboard, but then you get access to in-depth reports about your campaigns, donors and donations.

 

More than 5,000 (mainly small-to-medium) charities use CAF Donate to fundraise and process donations. In 2018 alone they raised over £27 Million for UK charities.

 

They offer a slightly-different fee structure to other platforms, with no monthly charges. Instead, they levy a staggered donation fee depending on the type of donation.

 

The 3.6% processing fee is for one-off donations only. The processing fee is reduced to 2% for regular donations (plus £1 set-up fee for each new direct debit)

 

Membership fee: None

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 3.6%

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: None

Total to Charity: £12.05

 

 

Crowdfunder

 

Crowdfunder have helped 80,000 individuals, charities, businesses and community projects to raise over £70 million so far.

 

Crowdfunder can be used by a variety of people and organisations to raise money for any cause and therefore has varying fees to reflect that. For charities, the platform waives any processing fees, so fundraisers set up for or by charities are free and donors are encouraged to donate extra to cover costs.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: none

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: £3

Total to Charity: £9.50

 

 

DONATE™

 

Registered charity National Funding Scheme, operating under the public-facing DONATE™ brand, provides a range of mobile and contactless fundraising tools for charitable organisations to maximise their fundraising.

 

Launched in 2013, DONATE™ is an integrated platform that provides convenient and effortless individual giving via SMS text, contactless and mobile web. Services also include a text-raffle and full charity auction capability. Its simplicity has delivered case studies demonstrating increases of 17x amounts raised.

 

The DONATE™ platform offers key benefits for charities, including real-time integrated reporting across text/web/contactless, case studies, fundraising advice and PR support, regular payments of donated funds to charities and much more.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:
Processing Fee: 4.5%

Gift Aid: If applicable
Total To Charity: £9.55

 

 

Donr

 

Donr is a text giving service that has been built from the ground to support easy fundraising efforts. The platform prides itself on being easy-to-use and no fuss.

 

The service gives charities the ability to set their own custom keywords, which supporters can text to a short code mobile phone number to make a quick and easy donation.

 

Users can sign up to Donr in minutes, create their campaign with Donr Dashboard, add their keywords, and start fundraising. It’s as simple as that!

 

Donr claims that it is the only provider of Text Giving that doesn’t charge for keywords.

 

What charities get for a £10 text donation:

Processing Fee: 0.

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: 5% of donation amount.

Total to Charity: £12.50

 

For card donations, donors need to pay an additional processing fee of 1.4% + 20p.

 

 

Enthuse

 

Rather than being its own platform, Enthuse allows charities to run their own fundraising platform on their website, and set up branded fundraising pages with their own custom branding.

 

It lets charities set up branded fundraising pages through a range of paid-for packages, allowing charities to have a more direct relationship with their supporters, which the company says significantly increases the donations charities receive.

 

Enthuse charges some extra fees for access to its online fundraising technology, which vary according to whether you are setting up a hosted website or integrating donations with your existing website. Donors have the option to cover some of the transaction fee.

 

The platform allows charities to set up customisable fundraising pages through a range of paid-for packages. Enthuse gives charities complete branding autonomy for their fundraising pages, as well as bespoke data management, event fundraising management, customised corporate fundraising and an inter-connected community fundraising portal.

 

For a full list of fees, visit the Enthuse website.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

 

For donations product only:

Processing Fee: 0%

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: 0%

Total to Charity: £12.50

 

For fundraising and donations products together:

Processing Fee: 0%

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: 1.9%+20p

Total to Charity: £11.98

 

 

Evershare

 

Evershare is a new platform that arose to meet the demands of contactless payments, ensuring cashless donations. The platform has combined secure open banking technology with the QR scanning platform, offering a QR-enabled donation platform. Donors simply have to scan, enter their details, and donate.

 

For more information, visit the Evershare website.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 0.5% + 5p

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: Free to £15

Total to Charity: £12.40

 

 

Facebook Fundraising

 

Facebook has recently introduced its Facebook Fundraising option, which allows charities to create a fundraiser and receive donations directly from Facebook, Network for Good, or PayPal Giving Fund.

 

Charities based in the UK can receive funds either directly from Facebook payments or through PayPal Giving Fund United Kingdom.

 

All donations are sent to the fundraiser creator’s personal current account through Stripe, Facebook’s fundraising payment processor.

 

More information on receiving funds can be found on the Facebook Fundraisers Page.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: None.

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: None

Total to Charity: £12.50

 

 

GiveWP

 

GiveWP is a Wordpress fundraising plugin that allows you to accept donations through your charity’s own Wordpress site. Charities are free to design their donation page as they wish and can offer a variety of payment methods. The platform also allows users to keep track of donors, have multiple donation pages for different products and more.

 

They charge an annual fee for using the platform and offer a variety of packages, starting at $240.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: No

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: No

Total to Charity: £12.50

 

 

Givey

 

Givey is a fundraising platform that exclusively focuses on smaller charities, with a focus on social giving. It lets supporters donate to UK-based charities through social media such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Vimeo.

 

Smaller charities make up 95% of the sector. Yet 90% of donations go to larger charities. This platform seeks to level the playing field, by helping smaller organisations to reach a like-minded supporter base.

 

The platform is joint-best for money given to charities, with a £10.00 donation (with Gift Aid) raising £2.50 for charity. Businesses can run match-funding schemes where they can match each employee donation up to double the amount raised, and the platform offers free marketing support for charities.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: None

Gift Aid: Charities can claim it themselves from Givey’s data

Service Fee: None

Total To Charity: £12.50

 

 

GlobalGiving

 

Global Giving is a non-profit organisation that allows people to build free fundraising webpages, as well as connecting charity projects with corporate fundraising opportunities and CSR initiatives. The platform provides corporate and match-funding opportunities, plus training, support and tools for charities.

 

In 17 years, the platform has raised over $421 Million for over 24, 000 projects. The community is free to join, with no application or subscription fees. Instead, they retain a 5-12% non-profit support fee on donations, plus a 3% processing and transaction fee. This means that a donation of £10 (with Gift Aid) would raise £11.25 for charity.

 

Global Giving do make a commitment to raise more money than they take in fees from your organisation. For every $1 that goes to Global Giving in fees, they raise an average of $2 for your cause through matching funds, corporate partner donations, bonus rewards, marketing efforts and gift cards.

 

Membership fee: None

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 3%

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: 5-7%

Total to Charity: £11.25

 

 

GoFundMe

 

GoFundMe has partnered with PayPal Giving Fund to deliver funds. Donations are processed by PayPal and GoFundMe before being sent to the PayPal Giving Fund – a non-profit organisation which collects and distributes them to the chosen charity. All charities registered with the Charity Commission in the UK are listed in GoFundMe’s charity directory and funds are passed automatically to the charity by PayPal Giving Fund.

 

Since starting in 2010, GoFundMe has raised over $5 Billion benefiting over 2 Million individual giving campaigns.

 

Unlike many competitors, 100% of Gift Aid goes to the charity. In November 2017, GoFundMe announced that it was no longer charging a 5% fee per donation for US, Canada, and UK individual campaigns, and instead rely upon tips left by donors to support the website. Many other platforms have since followed GoFundMe’s example and dropped these fees.

 

The platform offers smaller teams the opportunity to set up fundraising campaigns quickly and easily. The GoFundMe free-to-use charity fundraising platform has recently been launched, with ‘donate anywhere’ button integration for ease of payment, which could well see the platform offer even greater benefits to charities in the future.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 2.9% + 25p per transaction

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: None

Total To Charity: £11.96

 

 

JustGiving

 

As mentioned, Just Giving was one of the first platforms for fundraising online and remains one of the largest. It currently has 22 million users worldwide.

 

UK charities pay a monthly subscription fee of £15 + VAT or £39 + VAT. Fees vary depending on country, but below reflects the UK charges.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

 

Processing Fee: 1.9% + 20p

Gift Aid: Yes (5% charge)

Service Fee: none

Total to Charity: £12.11

 

 

Localgiving

 

Localgiving is a fundraising platform for charities, community groups, and non-profit companies. Organisations can receive one-time and monthly donations, raise funds for an unlimited number of projects and deliver crowdfunding campaigns. Individuals have the ability to set up fundraising pages for their favourite organisations.

 

It provides its members with small grants, regular match funds, fundraising competitions, free training opportunities and expert fundraising support. In 2020, Localgiving has provided over £2 million in extra funding for its members through grant programmes and match funding campaigns.

 

Membership fee: £80+VAT per year

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 1% plus 16p for debit cards

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: none

Total to Charity: £12.11

 

 

The Big Give

 

The Big Give is a match funding platform and have worked with over 10,000 charities in the UK. They help these charities to raise vital funds, develop their skills and build their profiles to accurately reflect their cause and encourage people to give.

 

They run the UK’s biggest online match funding campaign, The Christmas Challenge. An account is free to set up and there are no monthly charges. Donation fees are processed through their website via their payment processor, Stripe.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 1.9% + 20p

Gift Aid: Yes (4% fee)

Service Fee: No

Total to Charity: £12.01

 

 

The Good Exchange

 

The Good Exchange is a non-profit bringing projects requiring funding to those with grants to give via transparent automated matching with corporate foundations, businesses and individuals. Each project can also receive public donations.

 

Charities complete a single online form: outlining details of the project. Once submitted and approved, the campaign is published on the platform, and the giving begins. Live projects will be shortlisted for funding and automatically matched with organisations based on their specific grant-giving criteria.

 

Over 1,500 charities are registered with the platform, which has raised a total of £11,904,041 for charitable causes.

 

As of 1st October 2019, The Good Exchange has now removed fees for donors and funders –read more in our news story here.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: None

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: None

Total to Charity £12.50

 

 

Total Giving

 

Currently, 13,000 charities are registered with Total Giving and use of the platform is completely free to charities that are signed up. It claims no sign ups or ongoing fees and separates itself from some other fundraising platforms by removing the ‘middle man’ aspect. Instead, funds donated through Total giving are sent directly to the charity itself.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: No

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: No

Total to Charity: up to £12.50

 

 

Virgin Money Giving

 

Virgin Money Giving is a non-profit platform that wascreated by Virgin Money to help charities raise more money online. They have helped 18,000 UK charities and 890,000 fundraisers to raise more than £685 Million.

 

What charities get for a £10 donation:

Processing Fee: 2.5%

Gift Aid: Yes

Service Fee: 2%

Total To Charity: £12.05

 

Virgin Money Giving has announced that they will stop operating on 30 November 2021. You can find out more information on their website, or check out our article on the subject.