DonatePal launches to enable donations to multiple charities simultaneously
Melanie May | 20 February 2020 | News
An online fundraising platform, DonatePal, has launched to help people donate to multiple charities in one transaction, either through the website, or a mobile app.
Users can find charities based on their interests and choose whether to make a one-off donation or to set up regular payments. To give through DonatePal, users set up an account by making their first donation. The payment details are saved, allowing users to donate to a variety of different charities from the list.
There are also options to make one-off, daily, weekly or monthly donations. Users can also opt in to Gift Aid, as well as check their donation history. Donations are transferred to the chosen charities, which also receive the necessary data to enable them to claim Gift Aid.
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DonatePal will provide free basic integration links for charities and NGOs that they can send to supporters, which will direct them to DonatePal with the charity preselected to facilitate a quick donation. Branded integration links that allow supporters to navigate from a charity’s site to DonatePal to donate are also available and are free for a limited time. The app is available on Google Play Store, Apple App Store and donatepal.app.
There is no cost for charities, with a small processing fee passed on to the donor instead. Additional services will be introduced in the future will cost a monthly subscription fee but charities will not be required to use these paid services.
DonatePal has been launched by brothers Shan and Umar Sheikh. Founder and CTO Umar Sheikh says the eureka moment came during Ramadan one year when trying to donate to several charities:
“I just found the whole idea of logging onto multiple websites, filling in loads of online pages and going through numerous security checks really tedious.
“I thought to myself, there has to be a better way, it would be great to have a service which allows you to do give money to lots of charities in one go, and that’s when I came up with the idea of DonatePal.”
The app has been under development for two years and charities currently on the platform include Making Herstory and Physicians Across Continents. Shan Sheikh, DonatePal’s COO, believes the next steps are to register as many charities as possible giving users the chance to choose from different causes they are passionate about and believe in.
He said:
“We are especially interested in working with smaller charities that don’t always get much visibility with a wider audience. We would also like to drive this forward so that we have as many people as possible by the end of the year giving to charitable causes through our app and website.”
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.