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Australian charity donation platforms compared (Updated)

ChangePath isn’t just a charity assessment website. We’re a not-for-profit ourselves. In order to continue to exist in any kind of sustainable form, we need to be able to accept donations. You might assume this is a relatively easy task (every charity needs some way of raising money) but there’s a blizzard of potential web platforms out there competing to do so. To help small charities cut through this thicket of marketing, we’ve put together a short guide to the major Australian platforms, what they’re good at, and how to decide between them.

As you would imagine, these platforms aren’t directly comparable – some offer services that others do not, or have a different focus. The solutions that a large charity would be looking for are very different to what a newly established charity is interested in. For this article we’re looking at the sector from the perspective of a small Australian not-for-profit looking to raise money because, well, that’s what we are.

(Note: This article will only be good for a few months. Web payment platforms change their prices and offerings so often that anything published on the topic will quickly be out of date. Also, I’m not getting paid by any of these guys.)

Update Feb 2018: Added one new platform, other minor updates. If you would like your platform to be listed in this article, just let me know in the comments.

 

What donation platforms do

Let’s take a step back. What do payment platforms actually do, and how are they helpful to your non-profit? Obviously, not all platforms offer all services, but these are some of the basic facilities that many provide.

Hosting donation pages

The bread-and-butter of many online payment platforms, they will host a donations page on your behalf, collect donations, and send the proceeds to you. This means you don’t need to worry about receipts or credit card compliance. They do, however, generally take a cut of the donations you receive.

Allowing others to fundraise on your behalf

Larger platforms will often allow members of the public to create personal fundraising pages that collect money for your cause. This allows your supporters to get more actively involved and can be an entirely new donation stream. It’s especially good for social media, as it allows supporters to reach out to their friends and family easily.

Hosting events

A newer addition is that some platforms will actually host entire events, occasionally handling registration and ticketing as well as donations and a web presence.

 

Sidenote: State-by-state registration

Charities hoping to fundraise across Australia need to register for permission to fundraise in every state and territory they hope to do so.

This is generally free, but does require a bit of paperwork and means you must have an auditor. Some more stringent states (such as WA) require all office-holders to provide current police checks.

A comprehensive guide to fundraising legislation can be found at the Funding Centre.

In general, it pays to ask whether you will need to apply in any particular state – online fundraising especially is a bit of a grey area, and many states have unwritten rules about what they consider to be in-state fundraising and what they don’t. In general, it seems like you should have fundraising permission in at least one state (preferably your home state) and then check with all the other states whether you actually need to get their license. We found that WA and QLD are both happy to waive the requirement for a license as long as you don’t do any direct marketing to their residents, but it’s a fine line. Just send an email to confirm within your particular circumstances – better to have it in writing from the source.

Comparing charity payment platforms

This is not an exhaustive list of payment platforms, but it covers the major ones that accept Australian dollars as standard [act_tooltip title=’1′ content=’Companies that work in other currencies will mean that you lose out in exorbitant currency conversion fees on top of the ordinary costs.’].

The way these platforms generally make their money is by taking a cut of all donations that pass through their doors. As you’ll see, the amounts they charge vary but they’re often around 5%. They can also charge fees to join or annually.

Also, because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m implicitly endorsing anyone, they’re in alphabetical order.  (I’ll explicitly endorse some platforms at the end, don’t worry).

 

Benojo

Fees: None

Cut: Credit card charges only: 1.4% + 30c

Who can register: Any ACNC registered charity.

Pricing information: https://benojo.com/pricing/

Websitehttps://benojo.com/

Benojo offer a quite slick online fundraising service, especially considering it’s very low cost. There are donation, fundraising, ticketing, payroll giving and volunteering tools.

 

DonatePlanet

Fees: Annual fee of $95

Cut:  5.5% fee, plus 2.2% credit card fees

Who can register: You don’t need to be ACNC registered, or even an organisation – you can raise funds directly through an appeal linked to the Donate Planet Foundation Limited.

Pricing information: https://donateplanet.com/faqs/

Website: https://donateplanet.com/

DonatePlanet are a Sydney-based not-for-profit that hosts donation pages for charities as well as fundraiser pages. Fundraiser pages are relatively slick but minimalist – you get a single photo and some text. They don’t pass on details of donors (aside from name and amount donated), which is good from a donor perspective but might be less valuable to charities.

 

enablr

Fees: None

Cut:  0% for small-to-medium sized charities, 2.5% for large charities (plus 0.65%+10c credit card fee for all transactions regardless of charity size)

Who can register: “Charities and not-for-profits”, though there appears to be a company registration as well.

Pricing information: https://enablr.org.au/why-enablr

Website: https://enablr.org.au/

A new service as of late 2017, enablr is a slick, highly functional fundraising platform with an almost unbeatable cost structure.  Offers individual donations, peer-to-peer donations, campaigns, events, and a suite of products. Worth a look.

 

everydayhero

Fees: Annual $600+GST fee

Cut:  6.5% plus merchant transaction fees (1% to 2.45%)

Who can register: Charities, sporting clubs, schools and other organisations.

Pricing information: https://partner.help-au.everydayhero.com/hc/en-us/articles/201705937-Australia

Website: https://www.everydayhero.com/uk/

One of the larger services, everydayhero offers extremely slick fundraising pages mainly based around events and allowing the public to fundraise on your behalf. This doesn’t come cheap though – they’re one of the most expensive platforms both in terms of annual cost and per donation. Aimed mainly at larger, established charities.

 

Givebot

Fees: None

Cut:  6% fee plus credit card charges (1.4%-3%)

Who can register:  Charities

Pricing information: http://givebot.co/fees

Websitehttp://givebot.co/

Givebot is slightly different to the rest of the platforms on this list – donors pay via a chatbot in Facebook Messenger, rather than through a webpage. Charities can add a single image as well as some conversational text about their cause. Note that you will need to provide information on where the money has gone to every donor.

 

GiveEasy

Fees: Varies by plan (None to $199 per month)

Cut:  5.5% for free, down to 3.5% for biggest plan

Who can register: Unknown

Pricing information: https://www.giveeasy.org/campaign-pricing/

Website: https://www.giveeasy.org/

Interestingly, GiveEasy offers not just a fundraising platform, but also app building and a number of other more bespoke services. They also have a tiered funding model, where you get different services depending on how much you pay monthly. The fundraising pages are quite slick, with some nice editing ability.

 

GiveMatcher (possibly defunct)

Fees: None

Cut:  If they’re your only fundraising platform and you raise less than $5m, 0% (not including a 1.5% credit card fee). Large charities are charged 3.4% if they’re your preferred fundraising platform, 4.5% if they’re listed as an option on your fundraising page, and 6% otherwise.

Who can register: Must be a charity (registered with ACNC) as well as have an ABN

Pricing information: https://www.givematcher.com.au/faqs-for-charities

Website: https://www.givematcher.com.au/

GiveMatcher has two ways it tries to differentiate itself from the pack – a 0% charge for small charities (assuming you fundraise exclusively with them) and the fact that philanthropists can match donations. It hosts events, campaigns and fundraisers, with slick and well-produced fundraising pages where you can have updates and messages from donors. The only caveat is their strict criteria – you must be registered with the ACNC to take part. Their site has been down for some time now, and they aren’t answering questions, so they may be no longer in operation.

 

GiveNow

Fees: None

Cut:  Credit card fees only (0.30-0.90% for Visa and Mastercard, depending on DGR status, and 1.43% for Amex.) Direct debit has no fee

Who can register: All not-for-profit and community organisations which are incorporated. No political parties or individuals.

Pricing information: https://www.givenow.com.au/about/faq

Website: https://www.givenow.com.au/

GiveNow has the honour of being the cheapest platform for charities, with no annual fees, no service fee and less than 1% credit card fees no matter what size the organisation. They’ve had a recent update that’s expanded their feature set to include goal-based funding and different fundraising campaigns under each charity, which is a welcome addition. The features on offer are kept to the essentials – members of the public can’t set up fundraisers, for instance, and there’s no events functionality. Charities can set up a fundraising page and that’s more or less it. Then again, it is free. Great for small charities and not-for-profits.

 

GoFundraise

Fees: Plans – from free to $230 to ‘Price on application’.

Cut:  6% fee (4.95% if you pay for the premium plan) plus 1.1% – 2.1% credit card fees

Who can register: Need to be registered Australian charity.

Pricing information: https://support.gofundraise.com/hc/en-us/articles/201282100-Signing-Up-to-GoFundraise-as-a-Charity-FAQs

Website: https://www.gofundraise.com.au/

GoFundraise is heavily focused on individual fundraisers and events. Despite a very nice homepage, the actual fundraising pages on GoFundraise aren’t actually that sharp. The events pages, which also have the option to coordinate ticket sales, are by contrast rather nice. They’ve also introduced reduced-rate fundraising pages (0.49% fee).

 

JustGiving

Fees: None

Cut:  5% fee on online donations, plus 1.65% processing fee

Who can register: Must be registered Australian charity or non-profit

Pricing information: https://pages.justgiving.com/charities.html

Website: https://www.justgiving.com/

The only international entrant, JustGiving is based in the UK but has a few Australian charities that utilise it. The charity pages are, just from personal opinion, some of the nicest I’ve seen design-wise though without donor input would look rather sparse.

 

mycause

Fees: None

Cut:  Varies by charity. Fees average 5% of gross donations, plus credit card fees

Who can register: Must be registered with the ACNC

Pricing information: https://mycause.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Website: https://www.mycause.com.au/

mycause allows crowdfunding as well as donations, but has a heavy focus on donor-led campaigns rather than direct fundraising. Charity pages are decent, and obviously allow charities to change the colour of the page as well as the images, but the real focus in on people-to-people fundraising. The non-transparent funding model is a turn-off, as fees “average” 5% of donations, varying depending on the agreement with mycause.  You can get a 50% off discount if you put the mycause logo on your website.

 

MyGivingCircle

Fees: None

Cut:  6.5% fee plus credit card charges (usually around 1.5%)

Who can register:  Charities and not-for-profits.

Pricing information: https://mygivingcircle.org/fees/

Website: https://mygivingcircle.org/

An interesting twist on the donation page where the charities ‘compete’ to get additional funding – the more donors or donations they get, the more likely they are to win. It’s an interesting concept, see if it fits in with your fundraising strategy. The donation pages are relatively clean with a few design quirks.

 

Sidenote: collecting online donations directly

Of course, these platforms aren’t the only way to raise money. If you’re just looking to fundraise directly, you can put a donation button on your website and avoid registering with these platforms altogether. This has some benefits, such as meaning you are more in control of the design of your fundraising page and you have more flexibility in how you fundraise. It also comes with different risks. Handling your own donations may mean more development time on your website, and depending on the platform you use may mean you need to be worried about compliance issues.

This should go without saying, but don’t put a form on your website to collect credit card information unless you’re ultra-sure that your security and compliance are 100%. If your finance team and IT team aren’t best buddies, don’t do it. PCI DSS is no joke, and if you’re found to be non-compliant you’re in a world of pain (and by pain I mean fines and sanctions, including no longer being allowed to have a bank account). If you don’t know what PCI DSS is, step away, do not pass go.

In terms of pure payment platforms the giant in the space is PayPal, which allows charities to put a simple ‘donate here’ button on their website which directly links to their bank accounts. Starting at 2.6% (+ 30c) per donation and reducing to 1.1% at the top, it’s better than many of the platforms we’ve talked about above, and if you’re an ACNC registered charity they will reduce that down to 1.1%. Obviously you don’t get any of the fancier features of the platforms above (such as person-to-person fundraising) but it can be a good option.

Another potential option is Stripe, and though this is slightly more technical to install it has a substantial amount more customisability. It’s also cheaper than PayPal, at 1.75% + 30c per transaction.

 

Conclusions

From a certain perspective, it looks like we’re quibbling over small change – so what if they charge 6.5% rather than 5.5%? And yet because it’s over every transaction, those tiny discrepancies really add up. If a platform has services that you can’t do without, then by all means use them. But track it, and make sure that you’re getting more benefit than cost.

Personally, here’s some takeaways:

  • Enablr is a leading contender, with excellent rates and a strong offering. They are (at this stage) new, so we will have to see how it works over the longer term, but for the moment it’s a good option. The same can be said for Benojo.
  • GiveNow is free and has all the essentials, especially following their recent update. This is what ChangePath has chosen.
  • Beyond that, each of the platforms have positives and negatives. There’s nothing stopping you registering on multiple platforms (well, aside from GiveMatcher’s funding scheme).

24 Comments

  1. Patrick

    We use CiviCRM. It’s free software to download, but you have to install it and set up hosting yourselves. We have a merchant facility with Westpac (it’s cheap for charities, seems to be about 1% cut), and we use eWAY as our payment gateway. They are probably not the only one with a charity package, but it costs us $240/year and a 1% cut on credit cards. So, if you have a significant throughput, then rolling your own system using CiviCRM or similar, with a merchant facility and a payment gateway could be a good option.

    For what it’s worth, we were using eTapestry (a product now owned by Blackbaud in the US). We wouldn’t recommend that to save ourselves. It was $600/month plus fees, slow, full of bugs and the support was awful … but then Blackbaud are infamous!

    • Gemma

      Hi Patrick. We’re on CiviCRM and just switching from Stripe (which has been less than functional to eWAY). I’m wondering how you got the 1% fee from eWay? Did you negotiate that we eWay or direct with your bank? Thanks!

  2. Aaron O'Sullivan

    Hi Sam, very clear and concise list. I hope you don’t mind me adding our platform to your list – we’ll you’ll delete this if you do! 🙂

    MyGivingCircle
    Fees : None
    Cut : 6.5% + credit card fees at cost
    Who can register: Not-for-profits and Charities

    Website: https://mygivingcircle.org

    We do donor-matching to encourage regular giving and run cause-based Giving Circles where we provide prizes to the charities and not-for-profits with the most votes. This encourages supporters to vote, donate and advocate for their favourite charities and (we hope!) helps charities raise more money.

  3. M

    The Givematcher site sounds great but won’t load (on multiple devices) and haven’t responded to a message on facebook – are they still active? Thanks

  4. Richard Boult

    Suggest add chuffed.org to the list.
    Social Enterprise. No platform fee to recipient, voluntary donation to donor.
    Sydney based.

  5. Jeremy

    Hi there, I’m the CEO of GiveEasy – we have recently significantly upgraded our donation pages to allow NFPs to fully customise the entire page – I would appreciate if the above is updated. As well we have different pricing models charging anywhere from 3.5% to 5.5% + GST per donation

  6. Chirag

    I spoke to Enablr myself to enquire about the unspecified card fees listed here. They said the gateway they use has a card charge of 0.65%+10c per donation irrespective of the type of card or donation size or the size of the charity etc.

    • Sam

      Good to know, thanks Chirag. I’ll update the article.

  7. Chirag

    I also found that some of these platforms do not allow for all registered charities. Some are limited to just charities which have DGR. Typically the ones with lowest cut and % margins can only take charities with this DGR status.

  8. Vanessa

    Hi – I’m wondering if anyone has used donorbox.org?

  9. Prashan

    Hey ChangePath team – great list. Don’t forget Chuffed.org which is based in Australia and many, many Australian charities use to fundraise online.

  10. Josh Reid

    would be interested to see your thoughts on Funraisn http://www.funraisin.co/

  11. Allan Toole

    Great site thank you so much. Yes PayPal are good for the ‘button’- but they will plague you with documentation and cut you off without telling you quickly. Then to resolve your in the office again for hours.
    Thanks again for your site and that you speak fluent Australian millennial ( new phase)
    Al

  12. Karen

    Hi, thanks for a great summary,. I was wondering if you could also review Raisely.

  13. David

    Hi All,

    I came across a platform called Raisely https://www.raisely.com/. If you want a campaign website with your own branding and own URL they’re certainly worth a look as many of the above don’t facility such functionaliy.

    They’re an NFP social business based in Sydney. The CEO has worked in a large NFP and having meet him can attest that they understand the challenges of fundraising and NFPs.

    They have zero fees, there is still the credit card fee but no add on to that.

    Limitation is they only work with certain organisations which they list as organisations that advance human rights, Improve social welfare, Improve health, Relieve poverty, Advance education, Protect the natural environment. You can ask them if you qualify if you aren’t sure.

    I’m sharing this as they offer something the others on this list don’t.

    Regards

    • Jayson

      They have zero fees because the donors pays or is prompted to pay (instead of the charity) i.e. $50 donation with service fee becomes $52.50 for the donor

  14. Killian

    Thank for great summary, Sam.
    Also,
    https://www.gofundme.com/why-gofundme
    who claim to charge 2.2% plus 30cents per transaction.

  15. Claire Hibbert

    GiveNow also allows for social fundraising (CrowdRaisers, launched March 2018) and transactions on the organisation’s domain (Embed, launched August 2018). This improves the dexterity of the fundraising tools from GiveNow considerably!

  16. Cindy Brown

    You guys are doing great job.

  17. ash

    Great list. Hope you don’t mind us adding http://www.GoodCompany.com.au – Australia’s largest Unified Workplace Giving, volunteering, fundraising and rewards platform.

    For all credit card donations we charge a low 1.1% plus 10 cents

  18. Eric Daams

    Interesting list! For Australian organizations looking to be able to integrate online giving right into their website, another option worth considering is using self-hosted software. Depending on the system powering the website, there is likely to be a donation solution available specifically for that.

    For example, I’m the developer of Charitable, a WordPress donation plugin. We don’t charge any transaction fees & depending on what you need, you may find the free core plugin does everything you need:

    https://www.wpcharitable.com

    Home-grown in Darwin & Bendigo 🙂

    Cheers,
    Eric

  19. Matt

    It appears that some of these costs and offerings have changed in the last couple of years. It would be awesome to have this updated again

  20. House of Volunteers

    Hi Sam,
    Thank you for providing the relevant information through this informative blog. It appears that some of these costs and offerings have changed in the last couple of years. It would be awesome to have this updated again. I hope you don’t mind me adding our platform to your list.

  21. Michele

    A great article, thank you! Do you plan to do an updated list for 2021. Your feedback and suggestions would be appreciated, as things have changed a bit. Thanks again!

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