Organisations who are on the Pro and Basic plans incur a platform fee. This platform fee can be paid by donors who opt to pay the "Cover Fee" in the transaction page.
For a $50 donation for an organisation using the Basic Plan, it looks like this:
As an organisation, you can control whether or not you make this cover fee a feature of the transaction process (see the bottom of this screen). When turned on, the default view for the donor is for the cover fee to be added to the donation amount, as above. So the donor needs to opt-out by choosing "Remove" if they do not want to pay this fee.
How do donors respond to the Cover Fee?
Our most recent analysis of donor behaviour, released in September 2021, indicates that the vast majority of donors pay the platform fee on behalf of the organisation.
On average, since January 2020 until August 2022, donors will cover the low GiveNow platform fees more than 85% of the time. This is an overwhelming reason to ask your donors for assistance in covering your fundraising fees.
Key learnings from analysis of our data
To assist you with your online fundraising planning, we thought you might also like to note the following conclusions that can be made from our September 2021 analysis:
- Regular donors versus one-off donors: One-off donors are prepared to pay the cover-fee more often. Regular donors created in 2021 will cover the platform fee approximately 75% of the time.
- Different donation levels: As you would expect, the desire to pay the platform fee does decline the higher the donation value. What is very interesting is that for donations between $5 - $200 donors are prepared to cover the platform fee almost 90% of the time.
- Times of the year: The desire to cover the platform fee by donors does decline during June of each year, as well as during times of emergency giving (such as the bushfires of January 2020). At these times we see that the rate drops to about 80% of donors paying the cover fee.
- Is there a donation "sweet spot"? Yes, sort of! Rather there are "sweet spots". Donors appear to be more inclined to pay the cover fee when the initial amount they donated was either $30, $50 or $100. When these amounts are chosen, more than 90% of donors pay the cover fee. Yet, for example, for $35, $45 and $75 donations, this rate drops below 80%. The differences are not huge, and we are not sure why, but it is interesting and should be considered in your online fundraising plan.
How to turn on the "Cover Platform Fee" feature
For organisations that are using the Pro or Basic Plan, you can turn on the cover fee option for your cause listing.