Which Online Fundraising Platform for 2024?
Maximise your donations
Online fundraising platforms are an indispensable tool for charities as part of a Digital Fundraising strategy. When every penny counts, it's important to maximise donations by choosing the best online platform for your charity.
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Factors to Consider
When we're advising new clients on choosing a fundraising platform, these are some of the factors we consider before making a recommendation:
- How transparent is the platform about their fees, terms & conditions?
- Is the website built well? Will your charity & your donors' data be secure? What does the platform do with that data?
- Are they regulated in any way, such as by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)?
- Will your donors feel confident and comfortable using the platform?
- Do you know any other charities with experience of using the platform who can give you honest feedback?
Some platforms have ratings on Trustpilot or other ratings sites, but these reviews can often be skewed to reflect the donor experience, as many more donors submit reviews than charities. While it is very important to consider the donor experience, these ratings do not necessarily reflect the experience of charities setting up and administering their account on the platform.
There are very few online fundraising platforms which are completely free for charities to use, so the amount of money the charity will actually receive from any donations is undoubtedly an important factor to consider. Because of this, the default order in which the platforms are presented in our table is by how much a charity would actually receive from a £10 donation, plus Gift Aid, made using a debit card.
Broadly, there are 3 types of fee that we look at (excluding Gift Aid which is covered later):
- 1. Membership Fee
- There are a handful of platforms who charge a one-off joining fee or an annual/monthly fee for the use of their site. These fees need to be factored in, in addition to the cost per donation. Don't immediately discount these sites as there may be some particular features or functionality which make the platform worth including in your shortlist, despite the additional fee.
- 2. Platform Fee
- Most sites charge a platform fee per donation. This is most commonly a percentage of the donation and is essentially an administration fee to cover the running costs of the site. Some platforms allow the donor to cover this cost, in addition to their donation.
- 3. Payment Processing Fee
- Most platforms pass on the charges they incur for processing the payments made by donors. Again, this is most commonly a percentage of the donation and is likely to vary slightly, depending on the method of payment chosen. Debit cards usually incur the lowest payment processing fee.
- Relevant data is collected, allowing the charity to make their own Gift Aid submissions.
- Gift Aid processing is included as a free service.
- Gift Aid is processed at a percentage fee per transaction.
- Are you registered for Gift Aid?
- Do you need your chosen platform to process and collect Gift Aid for you?
- Is the charity in a position to be able to make the Gift Aid submissions themselves?
Most, but not all, online fundraising platforms provide the ability to take one-off donations.
In addition to this, there are a number of other types of fundraising which platforms may support. For example:
- Regular giving
- Fundraising events e.g. sponsorship for an individual taking part
- Team fundraisers
- In Memory giving
- Raffles
- Events (e.g. tickets for admission)
- Membership
- Auctions
- Lottery
- Crowd funding
This is by no means an exhaustive list!
You should also consider whether you prefer to use a single platform to manage all your needs or if you could take a mix & match approach.
- Do you need to link to or integrate into the charity website?
- Do you need your own branding?
- What reporting and donor management functionality do you need?
- Do you need to integrate with any other software the charity uses (e.g. finance systems)?
- Do you need to split donations between more than one charity or more than one project?
Best Fundraising Platforms 2024
Now that you have a good understanding of all the factors to consider, access our 2024 Guide to the Best Fundraising Platforms to see our analysis and recomendations including 30 of the top platforms.
The digital Guide is available to purchase and download for £10.00 below.
"A very useful resource, especially when people start quizzing me on the costs of all the different platforms. So often they are astonished that I don't have all this info in immediate recall. Now I will have it ready to share!"
HEAD OF FUNDRAISING & COMMUNICATIONS, halow project
