A plethora of recent fundraising platform launches
Melanie May | 13 October 2021 | News
The past two years or so have seen quite a number and variety of fundraising platforms launch, offering charities the opportunity to raise funds through everything from match funding to events and online quizzes. In no particular order, here’s a round up.
BOPP
BOPP is an Open Banking payment service that allows anyone with a UK bank account to quickly and securely pay anyone else with a UK bank account, meaning charities can use it to receive payments quickly with no card fees attached. Charities can choose to pay monthly or pay as you go, and there is a 0.5% fee per transaction, capped at 50p. Once set up with the app, charities can generate QR codes that they can add to anything from posters to buckets, and donors simply scan the QR code to give using their banking app. BOPP also collects Gift Aid, and captures marketing consent data, and charities can monitor how much income each QR code generates.
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Givematch
Givematch launched earlier this year to make match funding more fun, and social media friendly. Givematch donors have donations matched based on their referrals, so donors share their favourite campaigns with their friends through a personal link, and when two of their friends donate through it, they have their original donation matched. Friends donating do not however need to give to the same charity, or give the same amount. The tech can be embedded within a charity’s website and also exists on the standalone website Givematch.com. 100% of the donation goes to the charity, providing the donor pays the transaction processing fee.
Devon Mind
Devon Mind launched its own fundraising platform in January – for itself. Designed as an alternative to having fundraising pages on other fundraising platforms, the Devon Mind Fundraising Portal features a range of features and resources to make fundraising for it simple, fun and rewarding. It’s also customisable so the charity can change and add to it whenever necessary, and offers a central portal for fundraisers to make it easier for people to find their campaigns and donate. The charity has designed it using Raisely, which it has previously used for its donation page.
Wonderful
Wonderful.org announced the reopening of its fee-free fundraising platform last October, securing an open banking partnership with payment provider Citizen, and with WHYPAY? taking over as its corporate sponsor and covering Citizen’s transaction fees. This means it doesn’t charge any fees to donors, fundraisers or charities. On the site, people can select a charity to create their own fundraising page, check out a charity’s official events, or see what other people are up to and donate to their efforts. To receive donations, charities just need to register with Wonderful Payments. All operating costs, including the cost of processing payments, are covered and donations paid into the charity account in near real time.
Warp Point
Warp Point is an online fundraising quiz platform that launched early this year. It lets anyone host live, interactive, fundraising quiz streams to benefit their cause of choice. People make a small donation to sign up for each quiz, and can then play along wherever they are in the world, competing with up to tens of thousands of other players. Anyone can sign up for a Warp Point account and host quizzes, from fundraisers holding events for friends and family, to Twitch streamers, and causes. Free-to-use, the only costs are payment fees and a 10% platform fee. The platform is compatible with all streaming platforms, and the system guarantees that while anyone can watch, only those who have made a donation can play along. Once a cause has registered (for free), it is added to the Warp Point database, meaning anyone can then choose to host a fundraising quiz to raise money for it, with the proceeds paid directly to the cause itself.
Springboard
Launched by Digital Jersey, Springboard is Jersey’s first crowdfunding platform, for both community causes and local businesses. It provides a platform to raise seed investment through reward-based crowdfunding, a bulletin board to raise equity, and a platform to donate to local causes. It’s supported by Jersey Business, the Jersey Chamber of Commerce, Institute of Directors, Infinite Lightbulb, Envestors, and the Digital Leadership Programme.
PayPal Generosity Network
PayPal’s crowdsourced fundraising option the Generosity Network launched in the UK last month, along with its Generosity Network for Charity. The crowdfunding facilities are available on the updated PayPal app, enabling community and charity fundraising. The PayPal Generosity Network lets individuals create customised community fundraising campaigns for themselves or others in need, while the Generosity Network for Charity extends this function to campaigns in support of registered charities. Funds raised with Generosity Network for Charity are donated to PayPal Giving Fund UK, which grants the funds to that charity in accordance with PayPal Donation Delivery Policy.
Evershare
Evershare launched a solution this year that combines QR code technology with Open Banking payments, enabling donations to be paid directly from a mobile banking app to a charity’s bank account, with Gift Aid also facilitated through Swiftaid. Evershare provides charities with unique QR codes that can be used on marketing materials including posters, T-shirts, on websites and embedded into email. Charities can see the name, amount, time and place of donation on their Evershare dashboard report. Donors simply scan a QR code to be taken to the charity’s donation request page. They can select how much to donate before going straight through to their banking app and making the donation. They can also add Gift Aid and get a receipt and thank you message. Charities are invoiced at the end of each month with fees depending on whether Gift Aid was made. As an example, if someone made a donation of £100, Evershare would charge 55p (0.5% of £100) plus 5p for the donation.
DonateFlow
Digital agency Ten4 launched DonateFlow to help charities collect donations during the Covid crisis. A white-labelled fundraising platform, it is designed to slot into a charity’s existing website, so they can solicit one-off or recurring donations from users without having to send them away to any third-party site. It’s completely customisable, so charities can add unlimited optional custom questions to the donation page, in any format, use their own imagery, set their own default amounts and frequencies, and write the copy explaining how donations will be used. DonateFlow users just pay payment processing fees, and then if they want to keep using it after six months, a contribution to Ten4’s costs of hosting it.
Transnational Giving Platform
The Transnational Giving Europe Network launched an online European cross-border giving platform in 2020 to facilitate tax-effective philanthropy across Europe. The Transnational Giving Platform aims to simplify the process of European online cross-border donations by allowing individuals and companies to donate digitally to causes and organisations of their choice across Europe, while also benefitting from tax deductions in their country of residence thanks to the Network’s collaboration with national partner foundations. In the UK, its partner is Charities Aid Foundation.
Maanch
Maanch launched in the UK in 2019 with the aim of matchmaking charities with funders by demonstrating the impact of their work, specifically in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The fundraising platform focuses on project-specific funding and uses algorithms to provide automated impact measurement based on UN SDG metrics and a matchmaking tool that automatically connects projects with funders.
StockCrowd
StockCrowd develops software to enable organisations to turn their own website into a personalised fundraising platform. Its crowdfunding and fundraising tool helps organisations to finance projects directly from their website and digital channels, without intermediaries, giving them control of payments, data and traffic.
WELBA
WELBA is a free fundraising and wellbeing app that not only enables individuals, companies and charities to set personal or team challenges, but also functions as a fundraising platform for all users. Individuals can set their own personal wellbeing goals, such as reducing plastic consumption, running a certain distance, practising meditation, or drinking less alcohol, which can all be tracked or recorded via WELBA, and choose to fundraise for every positive change actioned, with over 17,000 UK registered charities featured on the app. Similarly, companies can create challenges for their employees to take part in, whilst charities can host virtual fundraisers, with 100% of donations going to their cause.
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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.