YouCaring, GoFundMe, other sites help individuals raise money for personal causes & nonprofits

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, bloggers, social media managers, individuals.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

After Superstorm Sandy hit in October 2012, individuals created campaigns and inspired people to donate money using online fundraising tools (including the ones mentioned in this article). These people raised millions of dollars and made many people’s lives a little bit easier.

This type of crowdfunding may not be new, but in increasing numbers, people around the world are creating all kinds of campaigns — for creative projects, technology, nonprofits and much more.

Individual fundraising, which we’ll examine in this article, means money raised from individuals. Two types exist:

• Individuals raising money for nonprofits
• Individuals raising money for a personal cause

If you work with a nonprofit, you might also want to check out our top five social fundraising tools, which help organizations raise more money by making the process social. The following tools all have social sharing capabilities as well.

Websites for fundraising as an individual

You want to raise money — say, medical expenses for a loved one, tuition costs for someone around the globe — but chances are you’re not sure how to go about doing it.

While you could use PayPal to raise money by integrating it into a website or through email — and many of the following sites rely on PayPal for donations — these eight tools will give you a more attractive and more engaging platform; one that has a better chance of raising the money and awareness you need.

YouCaring (for personal causes)

1YouCaring is a free fundraising website created specifically for individuals wanting to raise funds for personal causes. More than 16,000 fundraisers have been held to date. Most tools charge some type of fee, but not this one. The site is supported entirely by donors.

How do they achieve this? When people donate to a fundraiser, they have an option to donate a percentage of their total to YouCaring. The only money taken out (about 2.9 percent of the total plus 30 cents) will be from credit card processors PayPal and WePay (expected to be available this month). Money is sent instantly (in most cases) to the fundraiser’s account as soon as it’s donated, so you won’t have to wait until the end of the campaign to get your money.

For campaigns, the site has seven categories: medical expenses, memorials and funerals, tuition assistance, adoption fundraising, funding for mission trips, helping a neighbor and more.

Benefits:

• It’s free.
• You get donations instantly.
• A thank-you message (personalized by you) is automatically sent to your donors.
• Pictures and videos (only from YouTube currently) can be added to pages.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and email.
• Allows anyone to comment on the page.
• Page creator can make updates.
• Campaigns are promoted to the front page. Also, projects are promoted through Twitter and on their Facebook page.
• Offers fundraising tips and a blog.
• The site is secure: All donations are processed using Secure Socket Layer encryption, or SSL.

Downsides:

• No way to embed a widget on another site.
• Pages have a big YouCaring banner at the top.

GiveForward (for personal causes)

2GiveForward provides online fundraising pages for free. Their website says they are the No. 1 platform for medical fundraisers. Other options for pages include pet medical and funeral/memorial.

Desiree Vargas Wrigley and Ethan Austin created the site in early 2008 to allow anyone to raise money for anything. They have had more than 25,000 individual fundraisers published on their site and have helped people raise more than $27 million.

A fundraising page is free to create, and at the end of the fundraiser, GiveForward deducts 7 percent for processing fees. However, donors now have the option to cover the processing fee for their individual contribution. Also, PayPal deducts 2.9 percent of the total plus 30 cents. Creators get the money when the fundraiser reaches its end date, and the maximum time for fundraisers is four months.

Benefits:

• Users get their own personal fundraising coach, who will helps users reach their goals and answers any questions they may have.
• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• Anyone can grab a widget to help promote the fundraiser.
• Anyone can send “hugs” or comments.
• Anyone can get updates on the project using RSS.
• You get your money, even if the goal is not reached.
• The site offers fundraising tips on its blog.
• The site is secure: They use 128-bit SSL encryption.
• You can make your page private if you wish, meaning that it won’t show up in Google.

Downsides:

• The fundraising goal and amount raised is generally small.
• The overall design of the page is a little cluttered.
• Social integration is adequate: Only Facebook and Twitter are included on the pages.

GoFundMe (for personal causes and for charity)

3GoFundMe is an online fundraising service that allows regular people to create personal donation websites and to raise money for charity. Some nonprofits also use the site. (Note: If you work for a nonprofit, it might be a good idea to get listed in the GoFundMe charity directory by contacting the site.)

Its website says it’s the most popular website for personal causes, and that it grew more than 500 percent from 2011 to 2012 (it launched in 2010). FastCo.Exist says its the third most successful crowdfunding platform after Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Users can select one of three types of campaigns:

1. Personal donation campaigns. These type of projects receive money immediately after it’s donated, and there are no time limits or collection requirements.
2. Charity fundraising campaigns. Money raised for charity is sent to the selected charity on a monthly basis. All donations are sent via check.
3. All or nothing campaigns. Supporters are only charged if you reach your funding goal.

Creating a page is free, but GoFundMe deducts a 5 percent fee from each donation you receive. Also, the site partners with FirstGiving, which deducts a 4.25 percent fee to process and deliver all donation payments to charities. Or for individuals, a 2.9 percent plus 30 cent fee per transaction is deducted by WePay or PayPal.

Benefits:

• Users can choose different colors for pages.
• The fundraising page does have a GoFundMe banner at the top, but it is small.
• The home page shows recent donations, which might encourage others to check out and donate to campaigns.
• The site promotes campaigns on its blog and social media.
• Offers a customizable widget and badge that anyone can embed on a website or blog.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and email.
• Creator can post updates, and each update has a donate button on the bottom of it.
• Each page has a printable sign, which anyone can use to help raise awareness and money.
• GoFundMe tries to answer all emails within five minutes.
• To protect donors and prevent misuse, a member of the GoFundMe team checks that the campaign creator has a valid Facebook account connected to their page, the page has a photo or video and the page has raised at least $100 in donations. After this, the page will be listed in the search directory.
• An email is sent to you each time someone donates to the page.
• People can set up recurring, monthly donations.
• The site is secure: They use SSL processing.

Downsides:

• Must have a Facebook account to show up in the site’s search.
• People must use Facebook to make comments on the page.
• Most of the messages explaining what the campaign is about get shortened, and people must click the more button to keep reading.

Fundraise.com (for personal causes and for charities)

4Fundraise.com is a social fundraising platform founded in 2011 for raising money for personal causes or for raising funds for nonprofits or other organizations. The site also offers pages and support for events, including ticket sales, donations and Salesforce integration.

Users can choose to receive their donations on a monthly basis or in one lump sum at the end of the campaign. Money is sent by check or by electronic fund transfer to the user’s bank account. A page is free to create, but a 4.5 percent fee plus credit-card processing costs are charged to each donation.

Benefits:

• Good, clean design of the campaign pages, with large, horizontal images.
• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• The tour of the pages’ features is helpful and well designed.
• The pages do have a Fundraise.com banner at the top, but it is very small.
• Multiple donate buttons.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
• Users get a dashboard with analytics to see how their campaign is doing.
• Offers an email center, allowing users to send thank-you messages and reach out to hundreds of donors at the same time.
• Offers users a one-line code to embed the donate form on a website.
• The site promotes some campaigns on its blog. They also feature campaigns on their homepage and show recent fundraising activity on the homepage, too.
• Pages are mobile-optimized, and users have access to a free iPhone app.
• Donors can choose from $25, $50, $100 or another amount.
• Allows people to make recurring donations.
• The site is secure: They use 128-bit SSL encryption.

Downsides:

• Pages don’t have a place for campaign updates.
• People can’t comment on the pages.
• People can only donate with a credit card or debit card, not using PayPal.

Razoo (for charity)

5Many nonprofits use Razoo to raise money, but individuals can also create fundraising pages to raise money for nonprofits. Nearly one million officially vetted nonprofits are registered on the site. More than 300,000 people have used the site to support their favorite causes.

Pages are free to create, but the Razoo Foundation, a nonprofit itself, deducts 2.9 percent, or 4.9 percent after April 1, 2013. Funds are given to the nonprofits once a month.

Benefits:

• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• Recurring and anonymous donations available.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and email.
• Small Razoo banner on the top of all pages.
• A free iPhone app is available.
• A Facebook widget allows you to embed the fundraiser on a Facebook page.
• Has an embed code for putting a widget on your blog or website.
• The homepage features campaigns and shows recent donations.
• Anyone can leave comments on a page.
• Pages are mobile optimized.
• All donations are tax deductible, and donors instantly receive a tax-deductible receipt.
• The site is secure: They use SSL encryption.

Downsides:

• Online donations must be at least $10.
• Can only donate with a credit or debit card, not using PayPal.
• The goal and amount raised on the pages are small.

FirstGiving (for charity)

6FirstGiving allows nonprofits and individuals to create fundraising pages. The website has been around for 10 years, and more than 8,000 nonprofits have used it to raise more than $1 billion.

Pages are free to create, but FirstGiving deducts 7.5 percent service fee from all online donations. Also, donors have the option to pay this fee so that all money reaches the nonprofit.

Benefits:

• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• An embeddable widget is available to put on a website or blog.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email.
• Offers fundraising tips and a blog.
• A few causes are featured on the homepage.
• Site is secure: They have 256-bit SSL security.

Downsides:

• Design is a little cluttered and not as good as some of the other tools.
• Only donors can make comments on pages.
• Can only donate with a credit or debit card, not using PayPal.
• No recurring donations.

Crowdrise (for charity)

7Crowdrise provides online fundraising websites for individuals, nonprofits and event fundraising. People can create fundraising pages for their favorite causes.

Charities choose from among three plans:

1. Basic. With this free plan, Crowdrise deducts a 5 percent fee plus a $1 fee on donations under $25 and a $2.50 fee on donations above $25.
2. Featured. This plan costs $49 a month or $490 a year, and Crowdrise deducts a 4.95 percent fee plus $1 per donation.
3. Royale. This plan costs $199 a month or $1,990 a year, and Crowdrise deducts a 4.95 percent fee and no transaction fee per donation. This plan also get custom, branded pages.

To get their money, charities can choose to receive a lump sum check every 30 days or they can receive each donation in real-time.

Benefits:

• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and email.
• Visible “Donate” button and amount raised.
• Pages do have a Crowdrise banner at the top, but it’s small.
• Donations are tax deductible, and donors automatically receive email receipts.
• Users get Crowdrise Impact Points for raising money, donating to causes and getting votes.
• The site is secure: They use SSL processing.

Downsides:

• Online donations must be at least $10.
• No recurring donations.
• Only donors can make comments on pages.
• Crowdrise doesn’t promote causes very much.

IndieGoGo (for personal causes)

8IndieGoGo allows individuals and nonprofits to create fundraising pages. The site started out for creative projects only, but now it has expanded to causes and entrepreneurial projects as well. (Its chief competitor, Kickstarter, is still strictly for projects, not charitable causes.)

IndieGoGo charges a 9 percent fee on all funds raised, but if you reach your goal, you get 5 percent back. Also, nonprofits get a 25 percent reduction on platform fees. Campaign creators can keep all the money they raise, even if the goal is not reached. Or they can opt to keep the money only if the goal is reached. Creators who choose the first option will also have to pay a 3 percent credit-card processing fee, plus a $25 fee for non-US campaigns.

Benefits:

• Photos and videos can be added to pages.
• Each page has a shortened, shareable link.
• Can provide donors with perks for donating certain amounts.
• Good social integration: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and email.
• Creators can provide updates on projects.
• Creators have a dashboard with analytics.
• Anyone can get an embed code to add a widget to a website, blog or email.
• Offer a blog with tips and other info.
• They say they respond to all emails in 24 hours or less.
• Donations can be accepted through PayPal or by credit or debit card.
• Indiegogo helps spread the word about campaigns through an algorithm they call the gogofactor. Sharing, tweeting and getting people to “like” your campaign will boost your campaign’s visibility.

Downsides:

• All pages have pink and green (IndieGoGo’s colors) on them.
• Pages must offer perks to donors.

A few fundraising tips

• Be specific. Tell people why they should contribute to your campaign. Introduce yourself and describe your project and why it’s important to you. On its website, Indiegogo advises people to, “Keep it concise, yet personal.”
• Create urgency. According to the GiveForward website, they’ve seen that the most successful fundraisers typically last four to six weeks, as people are more inclined to donate when there is a shorter time frame and a higher sense of urgency.
• Do something unique. You should have a little fun so that people want to reach out and give money to your campaign. The Crowdrise website suggest coloring your hair blue when you raise $500.
• Tell your friends and family. According to the GoFundMe website, personal campaign donations come mostly from friends and family, not strangers.
• Share and use social media. According to the Razoo website, shared fundraisers raise $18 more in donations, on average.
• Be persistent. “The biggest difference I have seen between successful fundraisers and non-successful is persistence,” Luke Miner of YouCaring told me. “Most people give up in the first few days of fundraising, instead of continuing forward with the promoting, and lose hope.”

What did we miss? Which individual fundraising tools have you used? Add your experience, feedback and suggestions in the comments section!

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)
• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)
• top five social fundraising tools (Socialbrite)
• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)
• A directory of top cause organizations (Socialbrite)

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Leverage the power of your social network to raise donations

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, fund-raisers, cause supporters.

Facebook recently recommended four fundraising applications that keep fundraising inside of Facebook.

What’s great about these applications is that they leverage the strength of Facebook by encouraging donors to share your fundraiser with others, see friends who have also donated, and make fundraising transactions more frictionless.

Justgiving: Share your donation

1justgiving is a UK-based fundraising platform where individuals can share their charitable giving actions on Facebook. This app gives people a way to share when they make a donation and support a friend or charity. Last year, people raised more than $40 million for charities through the justgiving app on Facebook. Their U.S. offshoot, FirstGiving, also has apps for Facebook.

WeTopia: Gamified giving

2WeTopia is a social game lets allows players build villages and earn points that turn into charitable donations. To date, players have provided more than 1.6 million gallons of drinking water and over 760,000 hot meals for children in Haiti, 45,000 meals for U.S. children living in poverty, and more than 3,000 warm coats to children in Afghanistan and the United States.

FundRazr: Crowdfund your idea
3FundRazr (a personal fav of mine) is a social fundraising app that helps people raise money. Fundrazr launched its open graph website integration with comment, donation and milestone actions.

Causes: Organize, advocate and fundraise

4The venerable Causes provides online tools for organizing, advocacy and fundraising campaigns. Not For Sale launched a campaign that raised $154,000 in two months and funded the launch of a beverage company working to fight human slavery.

Tools come last

Keep in mind that while these tools are useful, what makes online fundraising work is storytelling and planning.

Without a story that speaks directly and emotionally to a potential donor, and without the integration of email, direct mail, blogging, etc., you won’t get the full effect from these applications.

Have you used any of these applications? If so, share your experience in the comments below!

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How to raise money to support your favorite cause

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, cause supporters, businesses

By Vivian Ramirez and J.D. Lasica
Socialbrite staff

In the old days — before 2005, remember? — we would solicit our friends to raise funds through walk-a-thons, cake raffles and similar homespun events. If you were raising money for a favorite cause, you’d look to your immediate friends, family and co-workers.

Today, social media has changed the game. With the surge of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, you can reach a much wider audience to raise money for your cause. The success of such online efforts varies widely: 30,000 runners in the Flora London Marathon raised $7.3 million through the online fundraising platform Justgiving. On a smaller scale, the Trail of Tails Pet Walk and Festival raised $41,000 for the Jacksonville, Fla., Humane Society using social media tools. And New York dancer Amanda Gravel raised $988 using the widget ChipIn for the campaign against breast cancer.

How did it work for them? Social tools now make it easy to solicit donations using fundraising widgets or badges, social networks like Twitter and Causes (part of integrated with Facebook). With Network for Good or PayPal usually handling the transaction, the solicitors can concentrate on sharpening their message and targeting the right recipients. Not all take the same approach: Some let you add advertising to your site, or create personal webpages, as a way to support your cause instead of ponying up dinero.

Depending on the size of your campaign and budget, cause advocates and small nonprofits now have lots of tools to choose from — further down, we’ll tell you about the ones for mid-size and large nonprofits. (See last month’s 10 mobile apps for social good for ideas on how to donate or volunteer using mobile devices.)

Here are 24 tried-and-true tools for online fundraising. Have we used them all? No. But if you’ve used some of these, add your observations. And we know there’s a 25th out there, so tell us your favorites in the comments below.

ChipIn: The easy way to collect money

1ChipIn is the most popular widget used by fundraisers today for distributed fundraising. It’s a simple tool you can place on your website or on a Facebook profile page. It amounts to a donate button that comes with a thermometer that measures the campaign’s progress. If you don’t have a site, you can subscribe to ChipIn and they’ll host your campaign for free. Subscribing to ChipIn is free, but you’ll need to set up a PayPal account to process donations. Every monetary contribution made through ChipIn is charged at a rate beginning at 2.5 percent of the amount donated.

GlobalGiving: Donate to grassroots projects

2GlobalGiving is an online marketplace for philanthropy where anyone can post an idea and get it funded. The nonprofit connects donors with community-based projects that need support in the United States and abroad. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution and get regular progress updates — so you can see your impact. The organization sustains itself with a 15 percent optional fee you can add so that 100 percent of your donation goes directly to the project.

Change.org: Empowering people to take action

3A social enterprise, Change.org helps to raise awareness about important social causes and to empower people to take action, chiefly through partnerships with leading nonprofits. Actions might range from joining an organization and making a personal pledge to signing an online petition or calling a congressperson’s office about an issue like homelessness or sustainable food. In addition to signing petitions or leaving comments, you can raise funds by creating a page with photos, videos, logos and supporting materials. Change.org’s fundraising pages use donation widgets with progress thermometers that track the amount raised. Basic membership is free; it costs $20 a month for those who want customized pages. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent for every transaction.

ChangingThePresent: Make the world a better place

4ChangingThePresent is a nonprofit that connects you with more than 1,500 meaningful if nontraditional charitable gifts — for instance, “stop global warming for $20″ or “adopt a tiger for $40.” Browse by cause or nonprofit to find a gift for friends or for your own charitable giving. The service also encourages donors to make simple donations of any amount through their home pages. A premium profile costs $100 per year. Donation processing fee: 3 percent of each donation plus 30 cents.

Razoo: Experience the joy of giving

5Razoo is a new way to donate and raise money online. Whether you want to donate money, run a fundraiser for your favorite nonprofit or raise money as a nonprofit, Razoo offers simple, secure tools to achieve your goals. A nonprofit based in Washington, DC, Razoo helps donors find inspiring giving opportunities and helps nonprofits and volunteers with fundraising pages, social media tools and donation processing.

Causes: Empowering anyone to impact the world

6Causes is a wonderful way to gain attention for a cause. Co-founded by Sean Parker, an early member of Facebook’s executive team, Causes allows fundraisers to solicit donations from their own contacts and recruit volunteers who want to participate on behalf of a cause. People who use the site as a way to socialize can also participate in fundraising ideas by posting Cause profiles on their Facebook page. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent through Network for Good; only Facebook members anyone can donate.

givezooks!: Support a cause in minutes

7givezooks!, an online fundraising platform, lets individuals, nonprofits, foundations and companies create an account and start raising funds for a cause. It’s new givezooks!eventslets nonprofits create and publish events online, create, send and track email invitations and reminders, promote causes through Facebook and Twitter, sell tickets and manage RSVPs. Transaction fee for events: 2.5 percent per ticket purchased or donation received (up to a maximum of $19.95/per ticket). For online campaigns for nonprofits, monthly subscription fees start at $129/month with no transaction fee.

FirstGiving: Tools to benefit charitable causes

8FirstGiving is a U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based JustGiving. The site provides easy-to-use tools to benefit charities. Subscribers are able to fundraise through their own Web pages on the site. The basic platform of is free. For those who want to customize their pages and to link them back to their own sites, the annual fee is $300. Donation processing fee: 5 percent plus 2 percent for credit card processing.

SixDegrees: Spread a ripple of good

9SixDegrees.org, an affiliate of Network for Good, enables social networking with a social conscience. Through the site, you can support your favorite charities by donating or creating fundraising badges — as well as check out the favorite causes of other people, including celebrities. Through tools such as donation widgets, which can be posted in places around the Web, people are encouraged to give to causes easily. The badges provided by SixDegrees can be customized by adding photos, videos and other narratives. Progress is tracked at the top of the badge, though the badges do not have thermometers. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent with no setup costs.

RT2Give: Retweet a worthy cause, give $10

10RT2Give is Twitpay‘s fundraising solution for nonprofits that handles secure processing of donations over social networks such as Twitter. Last month on World Malaria Day, three organizations teamed up for a week and used RT2Give to raise money for disease-preventing bed nets. (Each $10 donation was matched by the Case Foundation up to $25,000.) Twitter itself used the TwitPay platform for donations to its Hope140 campaign to #EndMalaria. The site can use some copy editing: It says “pay with bank account,” but then asks for your credit card number. Expect to see a lot more of these campaigns on Twitter (note: Twitter-based Tipjoy bit the dust last year).

JustGive: Removing barriers to charitable giving

11By setting up a fundraising page on JustGive, nonprofits can solicit donations and set up a Donate Now button that they can use on their own sites. Donation processing fee: 3 percent with no set-up costs or monthly fees.

Crowdrise: Using social networks to raise funds

12Crowdrise is a new service that gives cause supporters an easy way to crowd-source fundraising. Whether you’re running a marathon, volunteering or have causes that you care deeply about, create your own fundraising pages, choose from over a million charities to raise money for and then share them on social networks. Crowdrise provides incentives to users by awarding bonus points toward prizes.

YourCause: Fundraising through personal Web pages

13 The mis­sion of YourCause is to empower indi­vid­u­als to change our world — leveraging your own voices, net­works and spheres of influ­ence to improve the lives of oth­ers. The ded­i­cated and accom­plished Your­Cause team is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the efforts of a car­ing member com­mu­nity and the causes they cham­pion so passionately.

Better The World: Raise money for causes by surfing

14Better The World is a plat­form that lets you raise money for your cause simply by surfing the Web — and down­loading a side­bar that will be used to dis­play rel­e­vant ads on the pages you visit. Char­i­ties span­ning the whole world have part­nered with the com­pany to give users every­where many options to choose from.

Pifworld: Play it forward

15The letters PIF in Pifworld stand for “play it forward.” Playing it forward is donating online to a charity project and inviting friends to do the same. The Amsterdam-based site launched in March 2009 and currently has over 45 charity projects on the platform. By mobilizing communities, together we can create positive change and eventually help wildlife, save a rainforest or build a school.

PincGiving: A platform for online fundraising

16PincGiving helps corporations and charities with their philanthropic goals. Donate to the charity of your choice in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia; enable fundraising on your organization’s website; create a peer to peer fundraising campaign or access millions of dollars in grant money, all in the currency of your choice.

Universal Giving: Donate or volunteer for global causes

17Universal Giving is a marketplace that allows people to give and volunteer with top-performing projects all over the world. The organization passes along 100 percent of the donations you make to the nonprofit of your choice.

SocialVibe: Partnering with brands to support charity

18SocialVibe is a micro-fundraising social media utility that connects nonprofits and individuals with brands, empowering them to engage with sponsors and share branded content with their social graph to benefit their causes. SocialVibe has raised over $700,000 for more than 40 nonprofits by getting corporate partners to engage in a more interactive means of advertising. Users of the site don’t have to donate money at all as corporate sponsors do all the donating. Individuals are simply encouraged to donate ad space on their social network sites by adding the SocialVibe widget to their MySpace, Facebook or other networking pages or blogs.

Giving Impact: Empowering supporters through sharing

19Giving Impact, a Web-based service from Minds on Design, describes itself as “an online fundraising platform for nonprofits that empowers supporters through sharing and offers organizations flexibility to run multiple campaigns with a custom donation experience at an affordable price.” Like any new venture, proceed with caution, but we wish them well. Giving Impact charges a monthly fee of $30 with a $1 transaction fee for donations under above $20; donations are handled through PayPal.

Tools for larger fundraising efforts

Nonprofits looking to launch much wider campaigns that entail more sophisticated outreach and monitoring may want to look into higher-end fundraising packages. Depending on your needs, these solutions may provide better support for long-running or large-scale campaigns. In general, these services may cost from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars or more for a campaign. This is not a comprehensive list of fundraising solutions but rather a few that struck a chord with us:

Artez: Turn supporters into fundraisers

20Artez Interactive provides a suite of online fundraising tools that let you tailor a campaign to your nonprofit’s specific needs. Supporters can easily make donations and purchase tickets to an event. Artez also make it easy for you to extend your event or cause’s brand into the realm of social media, and it provides customers with a rich set of reporting tools.

Convio: Converting fans into lasting donors

21Convio provides marketing, fundraising, advocacy and donor database tools to nonprofits. Its TeamRaiser for Special Events module allows users to translate their mission into online or integrated marketing programs that can acquire, engage and convert individuals into becoming lasting supporters. Users are able to set up individual and team fundraising pages with measurement and reporting capabilities. Constituent360, an online constituent database, is included as part of TeamRaiser.

Care2: Access to a huge community of social activists

22Care2 doubles as both an online community with more than 12 million people who actively involve themselves in both social and environmental causes and as a platform for activism and fundraising. By bringing together nonprofits, individuals and socially responsible businesses, it is able to help nonprofits and companies find new supporters for their causes and in the process help them grow targeted email lists of supporters, activists and potential donors. About 500 large and mid-size nonprofits have used Care2’s social networking strategies, which include its click-to-donate races, email strategies, online petitions, healthy living solutions, eco-shopping and e-cards. Campaign fees start at about $5,000.

Donor Perfect: Helping cultivate donor relationships and achieving terrific fundraising results

23Donor Perfect comes in packages for small and growing nonprofits and packages for mid-size and large nonprofits. Depending on the size of your organization, Donor Perfect offers an online software solution to encourage giving among your supporters. Smaller packages are priced at $39 and $119 per month and the premier package costs $199 per month.

Kintera: Supporting your organization’s walkathon and other “team” fundraising events.

24Kintera’s Friends Asking Friends is being used by larger nonprofits such as Amnesty International USA. Since it allows the creation of sophisticated and customized distributed campaigns for fundraisers with multiple pages, it has become a convenient tool for many large-scale campaigns. With the use of this software, administration can be centralized no matter how many the supporters and volunteers there are or how many pages had been set up for the charity’s purposes. Setup fee for Friends Asking Friends is $1,400, plus a percentage of each donation solicited.

Final thoughts

Determining which tool is best for your organization requires planning and research. Look around and know what other organizations are using and how it works for them. If you’re planning to purchase software, compare prices and see if the price is worth the potential payoff. Consider whether your staff is equipped with the technical skill to run the software. If not, are you willing to spend a bit more for technical support?

If you’re an individual supporting a cause or a small nonprofit, you should try out some of the free online tools. Go ahead, start supporting your cause!

Do you use other tools for online fundraising? What has worked for you? Tell us #25!

Related

• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)

• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)

• A directory of top cause organizations (Socialbrite)

• Social bookmarks of fundraising tools and cause platforms (compiled by JD Lasica on Delicious)

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