The Good Exchange removes fees for organisational funders & individual donors
Melanie May | 1 October 2019 | News
As of today (1 October) The Good Exchange is making its service free for organisational funders and individual donors, and will also provide a free Gift Aid collection service.
The Good Exchange charges a platform service fee, but does not charge set up, monthly subscription or separate financial transaction fees. To determine the fairest way to collect the fee, The Good Exchange conducted two surveys; one through global research company Vanson Bourne to representatives from across the charitable sector, and one to registered users of the platform, asking where they felt responsibility for covering the cost of running online fundraising platforms should lie.
Findings from both surveys showed the use of online platforms to be seen as a cost of fundraising, attributable to the charitable organisations benefitting from funds raised in this way. As a result, The Good Exchange has decided to make the platform free to use for funders and donors, with fundraising organisations receiving money through the platform holding ultimate responsibility for payment. However, funders and donors will also have the option to contribute to those fees when giving a grant or making a donation.
The Good Exchange will continue to absorb all additional financial transaction fees and on-going running costs within the platform service fee, and will also now provide a completely free Gift Aid collection service.
The Good Exchange has published a guide to explain the new fee structure via its website.
Ed Gairdner, COO of The Good Exchange, said:
“After taking into account views from across the charitable sector where it was clear that the use of online platforms is a cost of fundraising attributable to fundraising organisations, we’re delighted to be announcing this new approach to payment for using our online platform. Whilst we would love to provide a completely free service, to deliver our vision of closing the charitable funding gap, we must continually enhance our offering to attract new funders and donors – and this costs money.
“Grant-givers and donors will be able to contribute all or part of the platform service fee for any fundraising project to which they give a grant or donation.”
The Good Exchange recently celebrated its third year of operations, which saw the platform disburse over 1,200 grants, with a 74% increase in total grant value to over £2.1m, and a 117% rise in the number of applicant registrations.
It has also welcomed a number of funders to the platform this year including County Durham Community Foundation and Sovereign Housing Association, and seen a 70% increase in projects achieving full funding in the last year including Basingstoke Voluntary Action fundraising for its 2018 homeless winter shelter, a radiotherapy centre for Great Western Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and a workshop dedicated to providing support for women who have come to the UK from Iraq.
The Good Exchange has made a number of updates during the past 12 months. These include enabling grant-giving organisations to extract the information entered by charitable causes seeking funding via its single application form into their grant management/CRM systems, and introducing WhatsApp integration, allowing users to add a WhatsApp ‘share’ icon to their organisation and/or fundraising project page, which supporters of fundraising projects can then use to send instant links to their friends and family to drive donations and awareness.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.