If you are reading this article, you probably asking yourself a question: what are the best fundraising platforms to use?
Crowdfunding is probably one of the best ways to raise money as it is simple and gives you the freedom to share your cause with anyone and ask for help just by creating an online donation campaign.
To help you to find out which of the various fundraising sites to chose from, we’ve made this list of the best charity fundraising sites. So choosing the best one should become a little easier.
What makes a fundraising platform a great one?
The majority of fundraising websites offer all the same features. However, a good platform for supporting causes should offer you something more to make you their constant user.
There are some crucial questions to consider. Here are some of them:
Does this fundraising platform have a fee?
Inadequate fees can undermine your efforts in collecting money, so, first of all, you should check different platform fees and payment processing fees. Below we will figure out which fundraising sites have the lowest fees and which fundraising sites don’t charge at all.
Does it offer human to human customer support?
It really annoys when you need help, but get an automated response instead. So, the customer support that you can rely on can really make a difference. For example, if you bump into technical trouble, you will definitely want to talk with a real person and not wait for the whole day for a reply from a team.
Do they have a team fundraising option?
It is great to have an opportunity to share fundraising responsibilities with a group of close friends and family members. You can join efforts and make a greater impact. However, not every fundraising platform has this feature.
The Best Fundraising Platforms for Charities
GoFundMe
Speaking of crowdfunding platforms, GoFundMe is probably one of the best known and largest companies. It is a well-known and trusted brand in terms of fundraising.
GoFundMe claims itself a free fundraising platform with a 0% fee. It means that they have no fundraiser fee, but still have a payment processing fee. Which is 2.9% plus a $0.30 fee per donation. These fees go directly to the payment processor of GoFundMe. If you want to know more about GoFundMe fees, read this post.
GoFundMe also has a team fundraising service, designed for groups that want to fundraise together. It doesn’t matter whether your fundraising group is large or small, it allows you to boost your fundraising efforts.
Customer support is rather good and has a live chat that supposed to be available 24/7.
However, the large one is not always the best one. Despite the famous brand and various community projects, it is not the only option where you can raise money for a good cause.
Igloo
Igloo is a very young, but promising fundraising platform. In fact, it is a fundraising community platform that allows non-profits and for-profits organizations to raise funds for their cause by gaining their users/community followers to share their cashback and profits from their ads and search results with their favorite organization. Our review of Igloo.la you can read here.
This platform also has a very convenient chrome browser extension, so it becomes, even easier to use it. Here you can take a look at Igloo plug-in and decide whether to use it or not.
Nevertheless, now customer support can be reached only via email, it is readily available and willing to help.
Speaking about team fundraising, Igloo is the platform for it. You can create a united account under one Igloo and start fundraising together with your friends, family, or colleagues. It is a perfect way to maximize your profit.
Tab for a Cause
Tab for A Cause utilizes ad revenue as a way for users to raise money for different charitable causes every time they open a new tab.
They aim to be user friendly and be a no-hassle way for people to make an impact – even from home. Tab for a Cause has recently surpassed a million dollars raised total and is working towards adding 10th charity.
You can find Tab for a cause on social media @tabforacause (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and @tabforacause (Tik Tok)
DonateKindly
DonateKindly is a free donation tool that is simple to set up and add to your organization’s website.
It is also a 0% platform fee. DonateKindly charges no transaction and installation fees.
It is designed for small and growing non-profit organizations. This service suggests you install a widget to start fundraising. So if your non-profit is just a start-up and you do not have a big team, DonateKindly makes it easy to accept donations through your website.
You can add multiple users to your organization account and they will be part of your team.
Still, there are no reviews about customer support, however, taking into consideration, that the company is rather small, they probably are quick in response as there won’t be a lot of requests.
Fundly
Fundly has one of the simplest websites among crowdfunding platforms. They have a good and user-friendly interface.
The fees are rather low, but Fundly has a platform fee. It charges a 4.9% platform fee, plus a 2.9% credit card processing fee and $30 per each transaction.
Since recent time Fundly allows you to create teams to fundraise for your cause page. So, all the donations made from each team will go to the main campaign page.
If you have a fundraising problem, the Fundly support team will help you solve it as soon as possible.
Chuffed
Chuffed is another 0% crowdfunding platform. It crowdfunds only social and non-profit projects.
Donation campaigns on Chuffed receive 100% of the collected donations. That is because of the optional donation model, which means that you donate to the website’s operations only if you want to. However, when a supporter makes a donation, Chuffed charges a $0.30 and 2% credit card as a processing fee.
Customer support can be reached with a special form on the website, so you can write in chat and get an answer to your question.
Chuffed also has a team fundraising option called Chuffed Team Tools. So, instead of sharing an account, you can give every member of your community or friends/family specific roles to help you run your campaign.
99Pledges
Starting a fundraising campaign at 99Pledges, you are able to receive a donation page to share with friends, family, or anyone you want via email and social media.
99Pledges charges no fundraiser fees. You only pay standard credit card and PayPal fees of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
You can create a group fundraiser, where each participant gets their own page. It is perfect for team fundraising.
99Pledges is an event-style fundraising platform, that brings in donations from friends and family who want to support students and schools. These can be both individual donations and large group projects.
Fundraising.com
Fundraising.com is a small, but good platform for gathering online donations. It works a little differently from the platforms listed earlier. You create your own online fundraising store, where you can sell anything to collect money for charity.
You can easily invite your supporters to participate by shopping on your personalized fundraising store and by sharing your store’s link either on social media and by email.
Since the company is rather small, it is not easy to find reviews on customer support. However, testimonials on their website are very positive.
You can start your own fundraising company or join a group. Fundraising.com charges 40% of the revenue, which is rather high but probably is fair enough for the service they offer.
Bonfire
Bonfire is a unique fundraising website that allows both individuals and nonprofits to raise money by selling custom apparell,namely t-shirts. It takes a not more then a few minutes to design yout own t-shirt, set the prices, and launch your fundraiser.
Bonus, being a nonprofit and fundraising on Bonfire, be sure that Bonfire will send the funds directly to the organization your raising money for after your campaign ends.
Bonfire offers a lot of custom apparel designs in a variety of styles, fits, and colors for you to choose from for your fundraiser. You can also create your own online t-shirt store to have all of your products and fundraisers in one place.
Speaking about the fees, if you enable the option to receive additional donations at checkout, Bonfire will charge an 8% fee for transaction fees. The other 92% goes right to you. However, If you’re a nonprofit organization, then the donation fee is only 3.5%.
DonorsChoose
DonorsChoose was started by a high school teacher, now it is a popular fundraising website for classrooms in need in the US.
With over two million supporters, DonorsChoose has funded a million projects and improved the education of over twenty million students. The idea is that no school should be low on funds and no student should go without proper resources to encourage learning.
DonorsChoose fundraising pages allow you to post photos while breaking down exactly where each donation goes and tracking your campaign’s overall success.
The good news is that DonorsChoose is free for teachers around the United States. Also, if your fundraising goal isn’t reached, all supporters will be able to redirect their previous donations to your next project.
Kindful
Kindful platform offers several fundraising and donor management tools that help nonprofits build stronger relationships with their communities and improve their donation process.
Kindful has 12 different fundraising tools, including such popular features like donation pages, event ticketing and registration landing pages, donation buttons. Donor management tools include must need features like donor accounts, donor life cycle analytics, list segmentation, and relationship tracking.
Kindful is not free of charge. If you have less than one thousand contacts and don’t need their full suite of tools, then you can signup for one of their product packages. The Kindful Triple Play package starts at $199 per month and the Donor Insights package starts at $299 per month. However, if you have more than a thousand contacts, then pricing starts at $100 per month and be as high as $700 per month.
To sum up:
Every fundraising platform has its unique features. Probably, it is worth trying each of them to know which one is the best. Our recommendation is to pay attention to newcomers, that can turn out to be promising market players.
