This article will tell you about some of the best online fundraising platforms for NGOs. Find the complete details below.
You can organize fund-raising campaigns using such platforms in an effective way which can help in achieving your goals.
1. Causes:
If you are planning to create a petition, organize a protest against something wrong in society or want to raise money for a noble cause, then causes.com is the best place for you to go. It is a free online platform which provides simple tools to spread your word for a good cause and raise funds easily. Causes.com has helped more than 170 million people to organize fund-raising campaigns and get assistance from people all over the world for 5,00,000 good causes.
The campaigns created under Causes are integrated automatically with Facebook and hence whatever updates you post will be shared through newsfeeds and Timeline in Facebook. You can also promote your campaign through Twitter by tweeting updates and also by sending emails to interest lists. NGOs and Non-profit organizations can build a support community and organize fundraising campaigns using Causes.
Once they create a campaign, they can invite their friends from Facebook to join their support group in promoting the campaign. The non-profit organization or NGO should be registered with GuideStar and should be categorized under 501 (c) (3) organizations in order to receive donations through causes. The donations received are exempted of any tax and Causes does not take any part of the donations. The entire amount is transferred to requesting organization taking a very small portion of 4.75% for credit card processing and maintenance.
2. DonateNow/Network for Good:
Network for Good is another platform that helps to fundraising campaigns for non-profits and good causes. They are very large group and have helped more than 80,000 non-profit organizations to raise funds worth more than 700 million dollars. Whether you are an individual who wants to raise funds for noble cause, or corporation who likes to donate to your community or a non-profit agency willing to help poor people, you can make use of Network for Good to reach your goals.
There are various services available that helps to promote your campaign for good causes and get supporters. There are accredited by Better Business Bureau and follow all the standards laid down for quality and accountability of a charity network.
They have a secure and easy-to-use donation system which powers efforts in online fundraising campaigns organized by NGOs and has more than two hundred thousand virtual volunteers throughout the globe. Other features available in DonateNow/Network for Good include options to maintain donation history, downloading badges to show your liking for a particular charity, purchasing charity gift card online etc.
DonateNow service present 3 different plans for Non-profit organizations which include “Lite” plan with five percent transaction fee for every donation, “Main” with three percent transaction fee. The latter require a one-time fee of 199 dollars for account setup and also a monthly fee of 49.95 dollars. They also provide a service known as “EventsNow” to host your fundraising events along with e-mail service for which they charge 0.99 dollars per ticket and 5.5 percent transaction fee.
3. Crowdrise:
Yet another platform for crowd sourcing which was co-founded by popular Hollywood actor Edward Norton, Crowdrise is used for online fundraising, sponsored volunteers, team fundraising, fundraising for special occasions and personal funding. Crowdrise is supported by various celebrities like Will Ferrel, Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen.
It is easy to start fundraising campaigns through Crowd rise and for all activities inside the website you will accumulate points. If you raise 1$ through Crowdrise, you will be given 10 points and for offering to featured charities, you will be earning double points. Winners who get higher points will get clothing, gift cards and electronics as prizes.
There are excellent solutions provided by this platform to organize fundraising campaigns for non-profit organizations and you can open basic accounts in Crowdrise without paying any setup fee. In order to open a featured account, you will be required to pay annual fee of 229 dollars per year. Also five percent of amount will be deducted as transaction fee for donations which are made using Crowdrise.
Also donations less than 25$, a transaction fee of 1$ is charged and for higher amount 2.5 $ is charged. The Barron’s have named the Crowdrise community as “Top 25 Best Global Philanthropist”.
4. DonorsChoose:
An online charity that helps students by donating funds for their projects is called Donorschoose. The teachers working in public schools throughout America can post the project requests for their classroom on this website. These requests can be any requirement like sketches for art class, piano for music class, test tubes for a chemistry project etc. Donors can go through the requests and donate any amount for projects that they wish to help. Once the funding requirements of the project are met, the essential materials and donations are delivered to the school.
Once the project is completed, you will obtain photos of completed projects, cost report of how the amount was spent and also a thank-you letter from a school teacher who posted the request on the website. If you provide an amount more than fifty dollars you will obtain thank-you letters from the actual students. You can donate as less as 1$ and get recognized for the charity work that you have done.
This website originated at a Bronx high school in which resource scarcity of learning materials was experienced by teachers. One of the teachers in the school, Charles Best thought that lot of people will be ready to help such school students if they were reached out for help in a proper way. That led to origin of Donorschoose which became a very popular fundraising platform for school projects.
5. FirstGiving:
FirstGiving is good platform to organize fundraising events for non-profits and comes with plenty of campaign management tools which make the job easier. All you need to do is creating a fundraising page and provide all details about the cause for which you are collecting the donation. More than 8000 nonprofits have benefitted through this website and raised more than 1 billion dollars for various noble causes. You will be deducted five percent of every donation you receive through the site.
So, if you happen to be an NGO and looking to raise funds for your charitable work, the above listed options can work wonders if utilized effectively. You may also check out Blackbaud’s fundraising management options since you may require expert software tools to manage the fundraising too.