Comparison articles rank platforms by features. The things that decide whether a platform suits a small charity are less visible: what the fees actually come to, whether you get the donor’s details, and what the money is legally allowed to be spent on once it arrives.
The last of those catches charities out most often, and it has nothing to do with which platform you pick.
If online giving is one part of a wider fundraising question, you can book a free clarity call.
What the fees actually come to
Up to four deductions sit between a donor pressing “give” and money reaching your bank account. A platform fee. A payment processing fee. An optional tip the donor is invited to add for the platform. And sometimes a separate charge for handling Gift Aid.
Rates change often enough that quoting them here would mislead you within months. The useful exercise is arithmetic rather than research: take the current rates from the platform’s own pricing page and work out what a £20 donation becomes in your account, with and without Gift Aid.
Two things are worth understanding while you do it.
Platforms advertising themselves as free for charities usually earn from donor tips. That is money a supporter chose to give away, and it did not come to you. Free is accurate from your side of the transaction and incomplete as a description of what happens to the donor’s money.
And percentage fees behave differently on recurring donations. A one-off £20 loses a few percentage points once. A £20 monthly gift loses a few percentage points every month for as long as it runs, which over five years is a significant sum. For regular giving, compare the platform against a direct debit arrangement through your bank or a dedicated provider before assuming the platform is cheaper.
Who the donor belongs to
This matters more than the fees and gets asked far less.
On some platforms the donor gives to the platform, which then passes the money to you. You may receive their name and email only if they tick a box agreeing to it, and plenty do not. On others, the donor gives to you directly, and you hold the relationship from the start.
The difference compounds. A £20 donation from somebody you can contact again is worth more than a £20 donation from somebody you cannot, because the second one can only ever happen once. A charity that raises £3,000 through a platform and ends up with forty anonymous transactions has bought income, not supporters.
Ask three questions before you commit. What donor information do we receive by default? What do we receive only with consent, and how is that consent presented? And can we export it into our own supporter records rather than reading it on a dashboard?
None of this makes a platform wrong. Peer-to-peer fundraising through somebody’s own network genuinely reaches people you could not have reached, and their friends were never going to be your supporters anyway. It becomes a problem when a charity treats a platform as its main donation route and discovers years later that it has no list.
A platform is a payment mechanism, not a fundraising strategy. Charities that arrive at the platform question first usually have an earlier question waiting – who they are asking, and why those people would give. If that sounds familiar, a free 30-minute clarity call is a reasonable place to start.
Why money raised for a project is restricted
Run an appeal for a specific thing – a minibus, a new roof, a year of a particular service – and the money you raise is legally restricted to that thing. You cannot decide later to put it towards salaries because the need turned out to be greater there.
That much most trustees know in principle. What catches charities is what happens when the appeal does not land exactly on target.
If you raise too little, and the purpose cannot be achieved, the starting position in law is that the money belongs to the donors and should be offered back. The Charities Act 2022 made this less painful than it was. Trustees can now resolve to apply the funds to a similar purpose, without contacting donors, where a donor gave £120 or less across the financial year, or where the money came from a cash collection or a lottery. Beyond those cases you agree steps with the Charity Commission for contacting donors first. If the fund is over £1,000, the Commission has to consent to the resolution; at £1,000 or below the trustees’ decision takes effect immediately.
If you raise too much, the position is easier. Once the original purpose has been achieved, there is no obligation to offer the surplus back. Trustees resolve to apply it to a similar purpose, again with Commission consent above £1,000.
And there is a step that avoids all of this. Word the appeal so that it says what happens if you raise more or less than you need. A line stating that funds will be applied to similar work if the target is not reached, or if it is exceeded, changes the legal position at the point of asking rather than leaving you to unpick it afterwards. It costs one sentence on the campaign page, and no charity regrets it.
Gift Aid: claimed by you, or claimed for you?
Platforms handle Gift Aid in two ways. Some collect the declaration and submit the claim on your behalf, sometimes for a fee. Others collect the declaration and pass it to you to claim yourself.
Neither is wrong, but you need to know which you have, because the records behind the claim remain your responsibility either way. If the platform holds the declarations, you need to be able to get them out – at the point you leave, and at the point HMRC asks.
Worth remembering what does not qualify. Raffle and lottery tickets are purchases, not gifts. So are event tickets and anything where the donor receives something in return beyond the permitted benefit limits. A platform that processes all your income through one donation flow can make these look identical when they are not. The Gift Aid guide covers what has to be in place, and the common mistakes piece covers where claims go wrong.
When a platform is the wrong tool
Platforms suit some fundraising and not other kinds.
For regular giving at any scale, run the numbers against direct debit before defaulting to a platform. Percentage fees on a payment repeating for years add up in a way that a one-off donation does not.
For a major donor, there is no case for a platform at all. Somebody giving £5,000 does not need a campaign page, and routing it through a platform costs you a percentage of a gift that was already committed.
For local community giving, cash and bank transfer still work, and many older supporters prefer them. A collection tin at a village hall has no platform fee.
And for a charity with no list and no audience, a platform will not generate donors. The page sits there, findable by people already looking for you. Fundraising platforms are effective at converting attention and poor at creating it, which is why they work well alongside a campaign and badly instead of one. The Code of Fundraising Practice applies to everything you do through them, the same as anywhere else.
If your fundraising needs a plan behind the platform, our marketing and fundraising support covers how the pieces connect.
