Giving Tuesday was started in 2012 by the 92nd St. Y in New York and the UN Foundation in response to the growing commercialism of the Thanksgiving weekend in the US. Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are worldwide phenomenons, charities and non-profits around the world are also starting to ramp up their holiday marketing to coincide with the Tuesday after the US Thanksgiving. In 2016 it was estimated to bring in over $168 Million USD!
ideaLEVER has supported non-profits and charities since the very beginning with discounts on services, hosting, as well as licenses for our CMS and blog platform SiteCM and our eCommerce platform CommerceCM. Staff are also active as volunteer board members, coaches, fundraisers, and even blood donors. At the end of the day though, despite the importance of gifts-in-kind and all of those volunteer hours, cash is king for most charities & non-profits and online donations are an important part of that.
Simple Online Donation Solutions
Most of these have low or minimal monthly costs, almost no setup fees, and take a percentage of each donation.
Donation Buttons
In Canada, CanadaHelps.org provides a simple platform for registered charities and non-profits to accept donations online. They take care of donation processing and issue the tax receipts (they are a non-profit) so all charities have to do is sign up and add a simple link or button to their SiteCM or other web site. There are lots of services like this specific to a charities country. Services and fees differ but most have either no or low monthly fees and take a percentage of the transaction. The one drawback we hear is that the charities do not get donor details so cannot market & nurture their donor base as effectively.
PayPal
For charities and non-profits that want direct contact with donors and have a bit more sophistication, PayPal offers non-profit rates that are less than the turnkey providers. Donate button code is easy to embed in your SiteCM web site and donors are taken to PayPal to complete the transaction with their credit card or PayPal. Savings in transaction fees are offset by increased administration issuing tax receipts.
Merchant Accounts & Hosted Donation Pages
Most charities and non-profits will have merchant accounts for processing phone and mail donations. Most payment providers provide preferential rates for charities and many have now come out with hosted donation pages so charities don't have to manage donations coming in on multiple platforms. We partner with several providers to facilitate this.
Donation Management Platforms
These come at a higher cost and generally have significant monthly fees and a great deal of more sophistication. Big players in this space are Blackbaud, Convio, and Donor Perfect. These go way beyond simple online donations and are fully integrated donor management and accounting systems allowing charities and non-profits to track donor behaviour and improve fundraising efficiency. In addition to their significant fixed monthly costs they tend to have a one size fits all solution. If you want to get ahead of the competition you either pay heavily for additional customization, or you are out of luck.
Online Fundraising with CommerceCM
When CBM Canada wanted a more flexible online fundraising platform for Give Joy, their symbolic giving catalog, they chose CommerceCM. CommerceCM gives CBM greater control over the user experience, great reporting on user behaviour, and lower total cost of ownership than the basic symbolic giving solutions offered by the donor management vendors. Integration is handled with nightly donation reports that are imported in too their DMS.
Are you looking for a more flexible online donation system? Contact ideaLEVER
Tags: charity, non profit, donation