Online giving websites charging commission!!

MikeSalter

Wondering if anyone could help me... I am running the marathon for Cancer Research next year but I have noticed that many of the online giving websites such as justgiving and virginmoneygiving are looking to charge a commission for each donation. Obviously I'm looking to avoid anyone donating to me having their gift eaten into into what is (for just giving anyway) a for-profit corporation.

Does anyone know of a no fee donation website, or a way to at least reduce charges below 2% of total for Virginmoneygiving and 5% of total for Justgiving?

Many thanks...

Mike

borders_dude

Isnt there a way you could get donations via a paypal account and perhaps have a link from it on a blog site, that way you can keep people updated to training progress etc as well.

GiveItBack

If it makes you feel any better the cost of doing it this way is probably less than the costs to you or a charity in terms of time and or other processing costs.

The Gift Aid collection rate is a lot higher than many other ways, so overall it tends to work out more efficient.

Savvy_Sue

I will second what GiveItBack said.

These sites enable secure giving, they sort out the Gift Aid, they pass the money direct to the charity's bank account in a timely way (at least I assume Virgin does, not sure if we've used them yet), they have the viral networking capabilities that make it easy to ask all your friends to sponsor you. But these things cost money, and their services are worth paying for IMO! (Yes, I work for a charity!)

edgex

If you had read their websites properly, you would have seen why they have to make a charge.

how do you think the donations are actually paid?
they make a charge to the donators card, which they get charged for by their bank, same as a shop.

how do the people doing marathons, other activities etc have a webpage that allows them to put all the info online, & allow donations to be done securely online?
yep, the giving website supplies all that, at no cost to the individual or donor.

how does all the gift aid information get collected, & then processed so that the charities get the gift aid payments from the government?
yep, the giving website deals with all that.



if the charities thought it wasnt worth using their services, they simply wouldnt use them.
for a lot of smaller charities, it has massively improved their donation capabilities, which they simply wouldnt have the resources to do themselves.




you do know that charities have to have audited accounts, & that their auditors will be charging & making a profit from this?
& that they will use printers for various items, who will be charging & making a profit from this?

& even if you collected all your sponsorship monies in cash, & deposited it into the charities account, their bank/s will be charging them for various services, & making a profit.



at the end of it all, it dosnt matter what these various sites charge.
every £ you raise that goes through one of them, is 95p the charity would not otherwise have had.

MikeSalter

Thanks for the advice guys, I understand the benefits these websies can bring and am intending to use one, I just thought there may have been a less costly route to maximise benefit.

I understand that charities make use of private companies in their daily business, but I doubt many people would be aware that Justgiving is a for-profit company like any other, and furthermore that they work by taking a cut of every donation.

Edgex: Much as I would expect someone to shop around when using any service, it makes sense to seek the most competitive option in this sector too. The reason I have asked on here is that I actually have read their small print.

If I know they will take commission I can encourage people to donate with gift aid to me in person, so your final point is not entirely valid.

Savvy_Sue

MikeSalter wrote: »

If I know they will take commission I can encourage people to donate with gift aid to me in person, so your final point is not entirely valid.

Actually, you can't personally collect the Gift Aid, it's only charities who can do that.

So you could get everyone to fill in a paper sponsor form and send this off to the charity with the dosh, but then THEY will have to do the claim, and that's not a trivial operation when you have 50 sponsored walkers who each have at least one page full of sponsors - you have to go through and check that everyone who's ticked the Gift Aid Box has given their full address, and look up their postcode if they didn't give it, and decipher their handwriting if you can't find the postcode, and work out which amounts are and which are not Gift Aided, excluding the ones for which you don't have the full address.

Honestly, I don't begrudge JustGiving their cut! :rotfl: Although I agree that finding the 'best value' provider of these services is the way to go, and there are a few others out there. Sorry I don't have time to do this for you, but if you search this forum for JustGiving there is at least one thread asking which of these services is best - bmycharity is another so actually searching for that might work better.

fengirl_2

If you object to paying commission to a commercial company, look for charities who use CAF Bank to collect donations - CAF Bank is a charity.

edgex

fengirl wrote: »

If you object to paying commission to a commercial company, look for charities who use CAF Bank to collect donations - CAF Bank is a charity.

ah, but they only operate basic bank accounts for charities, not services for receiving online donations

the CAF do have a seperate fundraising support package, where charities can add online donations to their own website, it isnt available for individual fundraisers
the back-end of which is operated by a commercial billing company
& it dosnt say on their website how much they charge

GiveItBack

MikeSalter wrote: »

Thanks for the advice guys, I understand the benefits these websies can bring and am intending to use one, I just thought there may have been a less costly route to maximise benefit.

I understand that charities make use of private companies in their daily business, but I doubt many people would be aware that Justgiving is a for-profit company like any other, and furthermore that they work by taking a cut of every donation.

Edgex: Much as I would expect someone to shop around when using any service, it makes sense to seek the most competitive option in this sector too. The reason I have asked on here is that I actually have read their small print.

If I know they will take commission I can encourage people to donate with gift aid to me in person, so your final point is not entirely valid.

I'm with you on shopping around.

Do go and compare bmycharity with the others, but once you've found the one that's most efficient, make sure you encourage all your donors who are eligible to allow gift aid to be collected.

I appreciate that you're looking to maximise the benefits and minimise the costs, as Sue outlines, from the charity's point of view, doing it this way is much more cost efficient than a sponsorship form.

fengirl_2

CAf does a whole lot more than banking - including collecting donations on behalf of charities.