Fundraising platforms offer a simple and secure way to support projects and raise donations at a faster rate. We find several online fundraising platforms serving various functionalities. However, some platforms provide the best experience for donors to give online with credit cards, bank transfers, digital wallets and also serve your purpose.
In this article, we will discuss what a fundraising platform is, how it helps to grow donations, special features, the top fundraising platforms, and how to choose one.
What is a fundraising platform?
Fundraising platforms, donation platforms, or fundraising sites are software solutions that organizations can use to accept and process online donations. These platforms are generally used for fundraising campaigns at both the individual and organizational levels. These platforms are more convenient as all fundraising activities are brought under one roof, making the donor giving process easier while maintaining transparency.
What are the essential features of a fundraising platform?
A few of the essential features that make your fundraising platform successful are as follows:
Custom brand page: Fundraising platforms facilitate organizations in creating their own custom donation pages. Organizations should be able to incorporate their non-profit logo, colors, typography, mission statement, and guidelines for donations. Streamlined processes encourage donors to complete transactions conveniently across devices from anywhere.
Secure payment gateway: A reliable payment processor with multiple payment options (credit and debit cards, digital wallets, etc.) increases donors’ trust in the giving process. Incorporating security features, namely, PCI compliance, a privacy policy, and data encryption, ensures that payment processes are secure.
Recurring donation opportunities: Suppose a donor wants to give periodically and might forget to do so, then this feature encourages the donor to rely on your platform. It enables donors to turn a one-time donation into recurring donations (monthly, biannually, or annually) with a mouse click.
Text-to-donate capabilities: Donors rely on mobile and simple steps for giving. Fundraising platforms that are mobile responsive and facilitate text-to-donate capabilities attract donors. Donors can use their mobile phones on the go and type a keyword into the dedicated phone number and receive a payment link instantly.
Donor portals: Donors should be able to complete their donation tasks independently and intuitively. Features like allowing donors to view their donation history, payment information, and modify recurring donation amounts or frequencies make the process easy.
Reporting features: Creating reports and sharing insights with your team members enable you to conduct the campaign successfully. This helps to maintain and access data as required.
Communication tools: Centralized communications via email or text enable you to push fundraising campaigns region-wise, event-wise, or time-bound. Personalized donor acknowledgements and audience segmentation help you make the campaign successful.
How does a fundraising platform help to grow donations fast?
A perfectly built fundraising platform is hassle-free and user-friendly, offering numerous benefits. These benefits attract donors to donate in large numbers.
Expands reach: As it is a streamlined process, it encourages donors to give and support your mission without raising doubts in donors’ minds. Also, it provides satisfaction to the donor.
Provides better security: Online platforms adhere to stringent security protocols, creating a safe and secure environment for donors to donate, while reducing fraudulent aspects.
Saves time: As online platforms digitize everything, it saves time for calculations, reviews, and, in fact, revolutionizes the way you work.
Increases donors’ trust: Online platforms are transparent, boosting confidence and credibility. This strengthens the relationship with donors and expands the network.
Improves campaign success: Online platforms are generally integrated with tracking and analytics tools, making your campaign strategic and ensuring reach and success.
Generate reports: Fundraising platforms consolidate data, enabling you to understand, review and report on ongoing or past campaigns.
5 best fundraising platforms
Donorbox:
Donorbox is an all-in-one fundraising and donor management platform for nonprofits of all sizes. Donorbox enables you to start fundraising in minutes. It helps nonprofits streamline their operations, build trust, and expand their reach more effectively.
It comes with powerful features that make giving convenient, trustworthy, and hassle-free. A few of them are:
Personalized donor profiles:
Each donor gets a personal profile where they can contribute, update or initiate new donations hassle-free.
Flexible payment options:
Donorbox supports a variety of payment methods, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Bank Payments. This facilitates donors ?using their preferred mode of payment as per their convenience.
Recurring donations:
With this recurring donation strategy, donors can donate monthly without re-entering their payment details.
Company gift matching:
Donorbox automates the gift-matching process, helping companies to match employee donations.
Global currency support:
Donorbox supports over 20 currencies to encourage international donors. They can pay using their regional currency.
Multilingual support:
Donorbox supports donors and companies in navigating the platform through multilingual (11 languages) support.
Analytics:
Analytic tools help organizations to identify trends, track donor behavior, and optimize fundraising strategies.
Secure transactions:
Donorbox follows stringent security policies, like an anti-fraud system and encryption technology, to secure donors’ transactions.
Pricing:
Donorbox does not charge any upfront costs. It applies a nominal platform fee of 1.5% on monthly donations. In addition, it charges a payment processing fee as follows.
ACH Bank transfers: 0.8% processing fee + $0.30 per transaction (a maximum fee cap of $30).
PayPal and Stripe: 2.9% processing fee + $0.30 per transaction.
It supports custom donation forms, multiple payment systems, ticketed events, and recurring donations. It offers built-in donor management tools, donor portals, campaigns, and streamlined operations while maintaining stringent security protocols. It’s mobile-friendly too.
Fundly:
Fundly helps smaller nonprofits with less budget start fundraising or crowdfunding.
Fundly allows smaller nonprofits to create campaign pages for select programs and connect with donors through social media. It possesses salient features like ticketing, registration, embeddable forms and buttons, peer-to-peer fundraising, data analytics, social media integration, and reporting.
Fundraisers need not buy fundraising software. They can connect with their donors through Gmail, Yahoo, SurveyMonkey, and Constant Contact, view campaign success and receive notifications from anywhere.
Donately:
Donately is a custom fundraising platform for nonprofits, churches, agencies, and businesses.
Donately has custom layouts that align with brand pages, a robust dashboard, actionable insights, and visibility for peak giving periods. It enables nonprofits, churches, agencies, and businesses to optimize fundraising strategies and encourage sustained donations through the recurring donation button feature. It provides a user-friendly design, data-driven functionality, and builds long-lasting relationships with donors.
Donately helps website visitors convert into donors because it embeds seamlessly into the website.
DonorSearch:
DonorSearch is a prospect research tool that identifies potential donors through wealth indicator analysis.
It provides actionable insights for nonprofits, like understanding supporters’ capacity and their affinity to give. This makes the nonprofits’ jobs easy as they can craft their fundraising strategy, develop communication plans, create events for major donors, and engage prospects through personalized outreach.
DonorSearch helps organizations maximize their fundraising potential.
Mightycause:
Mightycause is an all-in-one fundraising software for organizations seeking variety. It enables them to create crowdfunding or text-to-give campaigns.
Mightycause software offers built-in donation forms, widgets to embed into their website and easy-to-use donor management tools. It enables organizations to conduct unlimited campaigns, create custom donation pages, and encourage monthly recurring gifts.
How to choose the right fundraising platform to grow your donations fast?
If you want to grow donations quickly, then you must look for a fundraising platform that is exceptionally good and unique. Giving should be effortless and trustworthy.
An ideal fundraising platform enables you to collect donations easily, manage donor relationships, and raise funds creatively. Apart from essential features, it should integrate with your website, be mobile-friendly, and customizable to maintain your identity.
Wrapping up:
Now you know what the right fundraising platform is, core functionalities to look for, and how to accelerate donation growth.
First, understand your needs and budget. Compare top providers to make an informed decision and drive long-term success in your fundraising efforts.
