Is totalgiving legit?

I probably can not post the link here... but i am a trustee of a small charity. totalgiving seem to have taken our charity details (available to all who go look on the charity commission website, and are suggesting we sign up with them... and that people use them (much like justgiving etc) for fundraising.

They claim to be zero fee, zero commission.
But i can not see how they make any money... and if they make no money, then either someone is funding them altruistically, or just maybe they are going to run away with donations...

I’ve googled for 10 minutes, but cant find out anything significant about them.

Anyone know if they can be trusted?
Thanks.

Comments

  • Savvy_Sue
    Savvy_Sue Posts: 45,892
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    I don't know anything about them, but our charity registered with them a couple of years ago. I shall try to find out later this week if we've actually used them.

    It's not listed in the MSE article on charitable giving sites, or on the couple of reviews of the field I found. It gets a good result here.
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  • Savvy_Sue
    Savvy_Sue Posts: 45,892
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    edited 26 May 2018 at 10:13PM
    Discovered that this seems to be a 'skimming' site that pulls info from the Charity Commission about any charities registered there. I looked at our charity's entry on there and was not impressed: there were random capitals and the wording didn't seem to be perfect. We didn't actually register, they just pulled our details in, so we haven't used them.

    When we looked into it a couple of years back as a potential means of online fundraising, the no fees thing was very misleading, as they were actually using a payment processor that does charge fees, it's just that they don't. It was tied up with Paypal, which we dislike using.


    Obviously things may have changed, but FWIW we use Virgin and JustGiving.
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  • I run a small charity and we have done all our fundraising via TotalGiving. There is zero charge to charities from TotalGiving.

    Yes, there is a transaction fee from the payment providers charged by the payment providers. We have enabled Stripe, GoCardless and PayPal and are registered with all as a charity so their fee is modest (typically 1.5% or just over). I regard this as a small price to pay for enabling us to take online donations from anywhere.

    Each donation through TotalGiving comes direct to the charity when it is made. On sites like JustGiving, donors pay JustGiving who then deduct fees and transfer money to the charity once or twice a month.

    I don't know all the sources of funding TotalGiving. Some comes from the other business interests of the entrepreneur/philanthropist who established TotalGiving, and some from corporate sponsors. Certainly none comes from charities like ours who use TotalGiving.

    If the "pro forma" on TotalGiving for your charity has errors, it is worth checking if these are also on the Charity Commission website. I know when ours was first set-up it did not look great, but that was only because the way the Charity Commission chose to display our details looked the same. To correct whatever is on TotalGiving just register as a charity (no fee, no catch) and then put the words and logo you want on the TotalGiving profile.

    TotalGiving have been going for 10 years. They have given us brilliant service. In 3 years we have raised over £100,000. Even at that level it would be hard to justify the cost of a site like JustGiving which charges a monthly subscription just to be in the platform plus a much larger transaction fee. JustGiving have the brand name but I can't really see why any charity would want to use them given their fees when equivalent service is available on other sites.

    I don't know why TotalGiving is not on the moneysavingexpert charity-fundraising-sites review page; I certainly think it should be.

    I have no relationship with TotalGiving except as a small charity very satisfied with the service they have given us over 3 years.
  • martindow
    martindow Posts: 10,188
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    How do Total Giving finance themselves if they charge no fees to the charities? It does appear to be in too good to be true territory.
  • I think that Total Giving are certainly quick at giving you your donations quickly with little taken away but getting your gift aid is another matter. See the advice I got in trying to claim my gift aid worth £865.

    "Gift Aid needs to be claimed directly from within the system, please note that to submit your Gift Aid claim online you will also need to be registered for HMRCs charities online service please see –(the gov.uk web site) for more details.

    To set up Gift Aid please follow the below steps from within Donation Manager:

    Click on 'Advanced' within the left menu.
    Then select 'Gift Aid Authorisation' from the left menu.
    Please fill in the Government Gateway Login section and the Authorised Official section.
    Please click the 'Update Details' button to save these details.

    Once you have Gift Aid setup within the system you will need to Reconcile the donations you have received. To do this please follow the below steps:

    Click on 'Donations' within the left menu.
    Then select 'Our Donations' from the left menu.
    Within the 'Our Donation' section please select each donation so they turn blue that you have successfully received into your PayPal or bank account.
    Click the 'Reconcile Selected' button at the bottom of the page to confirm to us that all details are correct and you have received the donation.

    Once you have reconciled donations you can create Gift aid claims within the system by following the below steps:

    Click 'Donations' within the left menu.
    Then select 'Gift Aid Claims' from the left menu.
    Click on the 'Create Claim' button.
    Select the date range for the donations you wish to claim on. (Please leave the Adjustment and Adjustment Reason blank unless you have made a mistake on a previous claim)
    Click the 'Create Claim' button to submit the claim to HMRC.

    Please note that HMRC pay the Gift Aid directly into the charity's bank account.

    I hope this helps, any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

    Kindest Regards
    The Support Team
    Raise Your Profile Ltd
    Helping Charities Succeed

    I think my charity would have succeeded much better if we hadn't used Total Giving - I have also used Localgiving who are much more expensive but claim the gift aid for us and pay it into our account without being prompted. I suspect that I am going to struggle with getting our charity registered with the HMRC and may never see our £865.
  • 00ec25
    00ec25 Posts: 9,123
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    Fit wrote: »
    I suspect that I am going to struggle with getting our charity registered with the HMRC and may never see our £865.
    either you are a registered charity or you are not

    if you are, then claiming gift aid is a simple process, so i have no idea why you have dug up this old thread unless you are somehow connected with the company you appear to be promoting
  • I have replied to an old thread because I have only learnt today that I should have set up Total Giving to allow gift aid to be paid into our account 8 months ago when the donations started coming in. This information is relevant to charities who are searching for an appropriate on-line platform for donations. I have no connection to Localgiving but happen to use them for our charity donations. We are a registered charity and getting an HMRC registration is a long winded process that needs to be done before seeking gift aid on Total Giving but was not necessary on the site we use. Charities need to be aware of these details when choosing their platform for donations.
  • Try something like Just Fund Me. I'm in the same boat, I'm looking for funding for a health related blog.
    Advent Challenge: Money made: £0. Days to Christmas: 59.
  • seatbeltnoob
    seatbeltnoob Posts: 1,296
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    edited 17 June 2019 at 2:50AM
    total giving sounds too good to be true, because other charity fund-raising portals are just milking charities with sky high commissions and fees.

    Justgiving is a big company, not giant, but very big considering they're in the charity sector. There's is no reason for a company like justgiving to make £27M in profits, or have the staff numbers they do.



    Their services is just a website that takes payments.


    The charity sector can be so wasteful and corrupt sometimes, sometimes it's just ineptitude.



    Totalgiving probably are financed by an alturistic billionare, or maybe they're doing what all big tech companies do, start off by offering free services for years, building their user base and then start slapping fees around.
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