GiveNow remains the lowest-cost donation platform for the Australian not-for-profit sector, even after our modest price increase on 1 August 2024.
Our analysis concludes that:
- Organisations pay a lower fee when using GiveNow
- Donors pay a lower fee when using GiveNow
To fully understand these benefits, it’s important to consider all associated fees in the analysis.
1. Organisations pay a lower fee when using GiveNow
While other platforms may claim to be "free," they often exclude costs such as the following:
- Your organisation will incur third party processing fees of Stripe, Braintree, PayPal or similar, to process donation transactions.
- Donors are asked to pay (surprisingly high) opt-in commission fees instead. And often, these fees are paid by your donor and your organisation will never know.
In analysing the GiveNow fees to alternative following players, the GiveNow plans are all on average cheaper for $50 and $100 donations.
* Assumes Visa/Mastercard donation to a DGR organisation, the dominant transaction type for our service.
Fee information used to create this table can be found here: GiveNow, Chuffed, MyCause, Raisely (Pay Fee option), GoFundraise, FunRaisin. GiveEasy fees are difficult to include in this analysis as they use a sliding fee scale, so the closest information publicly available states a $60 donation attracts a very high $3.63 fee to the organisation.
To understand this analysis, you need to understand how the fees are incurred.
1. Platform fee: From 1 August 2024 all the GiveNow plans have a platform, since the Starter Plan now has a modest 1.5% platform fee. But for all plans, it is vital to note that on average we know that donors in 2024 opt-in to cover the platform fee 90% of the time.
This means that organisations on average only incur the platform fee 10% of the time. Therefore over a successful campaign, the effective platform fee for each plan is at most:
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- Starter Plan: 1.50% x 10% = 0.15%
- Basic Plan: 2.75% x 10% = 0.28%
- Pro Plan: 3.50% x 10% = 0.35%
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2. Transaction fee: Our transaction fees for Visa and Mastercard are between 10% - 20% of the cost of Stripe, PayPal or Braintree. We have negotiated a fee that is incredibly low, and this is the fee difference that makes all the difference!
Below is the a table that adds both the platform fee and transaction fee (inc GST) for a number of businesses who provide donation platform services:
Using these fees, the graph above is reflective of the following table:
2. Donors pay a lower fee when using GiveNow
Moreover, when a donor proceeds through the payment process on almost all donation platforms, they are offered to opt-in and cover most or all of the fees. The GiveNow fees that display to the donor is markedly lower than other platforms, resulting in a more respectful experience for your donors.
Accurate as of July 2024. For any comments or updates, please contact us.