10 Nonprofit Fundraising Platforms to Inspire More Giving
Running a successful fundraiser is no easy feat! From marketing your nonprofit’s campaigns to planning events to managing an ever-changing list of donor data, your organization has its hands full. Rather than overburdening your nonprofit’s team with extra tasks, tap into the power of technology and leverage a robust fundraising platform.
With a user-friendly platform, you’re able to reduce planning, improve your donor experience, and integrate with your existing database. You can streamline the entire fundraising process, giving your organization more time to advance your mission.
In this article, we’ll explore a few leading fundraising platforms for nonprofits:
- OneCause
- Fundly
- Bonfire
- Grassroots Unwired
- Virtuous
- Fundraise Up
- Donorbox
- Give Lively
- 99Pledges
- KindKatch
A nonprofit fundraising platform is an essential tool to add to any fundraising toolkit. As you read through this list, reflect on your organization’s donor base and goals. Then, evaluate how each platform could give your nonprofit a leg-up in driving record fundraising success. Let’s get started!
Fundraising Platform FAQs
Before we examine the top fundraising platforms for nonprofits, we’ll answer a few related FAQs.
What are the Benefits of Using a Nonprofit Fundraising Platform?
Nonprofit fundraising platforms offer nonprofits a number of benefits, including:
- Increased donations: Develop a user-friendly donation experience, guaranteed to take your fundraising results to the next level.
- Heightened reach: Connect with a broader audience of individuals with multiple marketing channels and social sharing features.
- Stronger supporter relationships: Collect donor insights and send targeted messaging to boost your retention rate.
- Easier event management: Reduce administrative burden with an all-in-one system for ticketing, managing your guest list, and more.
- Insightful analytics: Improve future fundraising campaigns with data tracking and analytics tools, so you can make informed adjustments to your strategy.
But as the need for fundraising platforms grows in the nonprofit world, so does the number of fundraising platforms available to invest in. There’s a wide variety of fundraising solutions, but not every platform might meet your nonprofit’s needs.
How Much Does It Cost to Use a Fundraising Platform?
Every fundraising platform has a different price, making it difficult to gauge how much it will generally cost a nonprofit to adopt this kind of software. However, you can generally expect costs associated with:
- Software: Some providers will allow you to use their software for a single upfront price, whereas others require a monthly subscription or individual user licenses.
- Implementation and setup: Larger, more complex fundraising platforms require specific implementation and setup help from the provider or you may partner with a tech consultant, which may incur additional costs.
- Donation processing: Some fundraising platforms take a small percentage of every donation to offset payment processing and transaction fees.
- Training and support: While many providers offer training and support for free, others require payment to access these services.
All of these fees can add up, so be sure to get a thorough understanding of a fundraising platform’s costs before deciding to partner with them. Don’t be afraid to ask the provider for all their related costs to ensure you’re making an informed decision.
How Do I Choose the Right Fundraising Platform for My Nonprofit?
Selecting a fundraising platform vendor to work with is a unique process for every nonprofit, as every organization has different needs and limitations. In general, use the following four considerations as the foundation of your choice:
- Budget: Your nonprofit’s software budget is probably the strictest limitation you have when choosing your fundraising platform. Keep in mind what we discussed above about associated costs and be sure to get an accurate estimate from the provider.
- Necessary features: While it’s tempting to invest in software with tons of features, what’s ultimately important is what functionalities your nonprofit needs. Look for providers that fulfill your needs and perhaps provide a few additional features.
- Integrations: The fundraising platforms you’re considering should integrate with your existing tech stack to ensure interoperability and prevent data silos.
- Tech experience: While all nonprofits should look for a user-friendly fundraising platform, if your team has very little tech experience, you’ll want a solution that offers free training and ongoing support to ensure you always have the help you need.
Before making a decision, make a list of potential fundraising platforms and sit down with key stakeholders to discuss them. Get feedback from staff members and board members who will be directly using these tools and use that information to narrow down your list.
1. OneCause | Best All-in-One Fundraising Platform
Whether you’re planning an in-person event, an online peer-to-peer campaign, or a hybrid fundraiser, we have you covered. OneCause is a comprehensive fundraising platform with extensive experience in supporting nonprofits of all shapes and sizes to grow their impact. With a full suite of easy-to-use digital features, our software has been designed by nonprofit experts to make fundraising seamless and flexible.
We understand how important the giving experience is for donors and your organization. To help you expand your reach and revenue, OneCause delivers a modern and user-friendly giving experience that allows donors to donate anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Our all-in-one platform has helped nonprofits raise over $6.5 billion to support building better tomorrows, one fundraiser at a time! Let us unlock generosity for your cause, too.
Top Features
With OneCause on your side, you can leverage top-of-the-line fundraising features, including:
Event Management
The OneCause Fundraising Platform allows you to create and customize fundraising micro-sites, manage online ticket sales and RSVPs, streamline registration and event closing with express check-in and self-checkout options, send segmented communications, and more. Plus, it includes real-time analytics so you can easily examine giving, donor engagement, and event results, and adjust your strategies to drive more revenue for your cause.
We also provide a host of AI tools to help you transform your fundraising processes and boost your results. OneCause AI™ powers your mission with features that boost your event readiness, deepen supporter engagement, and elevate ongoing fundraising efforts.
Auctions
OneCause makes any auction, whether live, virtual, or hybrid, an engaging experience through its intuitive Mobile Bidding and Auction Software. Forget the paper bids and confusing spreadsheets and let your donors manage the entire auction experience right from their phones.
During the event, your guests can submit their bids, receive outbid notifications, purchase raffle tickets, and complete an instantaneous checkout process when the auction timer has hit zero. OneCause will generate immediate real-time event analytics so you can assess whether you’re hitting your fundraising goals.
Online Giving
Your nonprofit needs a way to effectively manage the inflow of donations and drive supporter engagement. With the OneCause Online Fundraising Solution, you can develop eye-catching online campaigns with personalized donation forms bound to spark generosity. We have all the tools you need, whether you want to easily develop fundraising campaign landing pages or streamline the donation process with 2-click donations.
Plus, we follow international PCI standards for data security, ensuring that all donation transactions occur safely and donors’ personal information is protected. We accept payments through credit card, ACH, and various digital wallets, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo.
Text2Give®
As people spend more time on their phones than ever before, your organization has a golden opportunity to put your messaging directly in front of your target audience. OneCause Text2Give allows you to set up a keyword, create custom calls-to-action that will motivate donors to give, securely collect donations, and track all donor data in a user-friendly database. Use text-to-give as an independent fundraiser or couple it with your auctions, peer-to-peer fundraisers, or other events to maximize donations.
Price
OneCause offers a variety of auction, donation, and event management packages to fit your organization’s needs. With Professional, Enterprise, and Nationals plans, your nonprofit can select which features are most important to optimize your fundraising approach. Check out the OneCause Pricing & Packages page for more details on flexible payment options.
2. Fundly | Best Fundraising Platform for Crowdfunding
Fundly is a crowdfunding platform that helps nonprofits share their message and raise donations quickly. Whether your organization wants to collect funds for a certain project or generally fuel its annual fundraising campaign, this platform has the user-friendly tools you need to engage with supporters at a high level.
Top Features
- Customizable fundraising pages: Shine a light on your nonprofit’s story, highlighting the reason for your campaign and the need for donor support. Fundly makes it simple to add your nonprofit’s custom photos and videos to bring your mission to life.
- Mobile-friendly design: Your crowdfunding campaign page will automatically be optimized for mobile devices, allowing mobile users to conveniently access and complete the donation experience right from their phones.
- Secure payment processing: When it comes to accepting donations online, your nonprofit needs to be certain that your information—and donors’ private billing and contact information—is secure. Fundly’s payment processing system, Stripe, meets the PCI Service Provider Level 1 requirements, protecting your data from leaks.
- Social integrations: Fundly understands how important it is to broadcast your campaign, so they also provide social media integrations to take your campaign to Facebook and maximize social impressions.
Price
While Fundly offers the use of its platform for free, its payment partner, Stripe, will charge a 2.9% + $0.30 fee per donation for credit card processing. This percentage fee may vary depending on where your donors are located. For more information, explore Fundly’s pricing page.
3. Bonfire | Best Fundraising Platform for Merchandise
Bonfire is a fundraising platform that allows nonprofits and other organizations to design and sell t-shirts to their fans and supporters. The experts at this company know how valuable merchandise sales are as a sustainable revenue source and a way to make donors feel even more connected to your cause.
With this provider, your nonprofit can easily develop branded merchandise that will make your donors enthusiastic about giving. Then, when they wear your merchandise out in public, your organization will gain even more recognition.
Top Features
- User-friendly t-shirt design tools: With Bonfire, you can instantly become a t-shirt design expert with 500 free, customizable templates. Add your logo, color scheme, and other branded elements to your custom tees. Bonfire allows you to upload your own personalized, ready-made design or add text and clipart from their clipart library.
- eCommerce storefront: With your very own online store, your organization can sell all of its merchandise in one designated hub, accessible to anyone with a computer or mobile device. Add a custom touch to your storefront by adding your branded colors and typography.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising support: Tap your most loyal supporters to take charge and launch apparel-based fundraisers on your behalf. After they design their own shirts related to your cause, supporters can share their fundraising campaigns with their personal networks. As a result, you’ll be able to acquire new supporters, drive revenue, and increase brand awareness.
Price
Bonfire calculates the price of your t-shirts based on how much it costs to manufacture and print. To estimate the cost of your t-shirt order and how much your organization can make, use Bonfire’s pricing calculator. As a special perk just for nonprofits, Bonfire will reduce your processing fees from 8% to 3.5%.
4. Grassroots Unwired | Best Fundraising Platform for Advocacy Groups
Grassroots Unwired is a leading fundraising platform for advocacy groups and nonprofits interested in launching an advocacy campaign. Built by advocacy experts, this fundraising platform is known for its mobile canvassing technology, which replaces clipboard canvassing with a more streamlined solution. Grassroots Unwired helps you develop tailored communications for your target audience, capture e-signatures for petitions, and collect secure donations for your cause.
If your organization wants to influence public opinion on a given issue or simply build visibility for your cause, this provider will help you collect, track, store, and leverage supporter data.
Top Features
- Offline functionality: If you’re at an in-person protest or demonstration with supporters, you may not have reliable wifi or cell service. However, there will likely be attendees eager to donate on the spot. Grassroots Unwired allows you to securely process credit card payments, even if you’re offline. Their native app locally stores and encrypts credit card information and completes the transaction process as soon as you regain connectivity.
- Canvassing tools: With Grassroots Unwired, there’s no need to jot down contact and credit card information on a clipboard and bring it back to headquarters for processing. Instead, canvassers can pull out their tablets and record all this information in an intuitive database. Supporters’ email addresses are instantly verified and their responses are safely stored, so you can reach out to them later to help power your mission.
- Mobile integrations: Grassroots Unwired offers a variety of third-party integrations so you can text or email supporters with information related to your campaign immediately after storing their information in your database.
Price
To learn more about the cost of this nonprofit fundraising platform, reach out to Grassroots Unwired for a demo.
5. Virtuous | Best Responsive Fundraising Platform
Virtuous is a constituent relationship management system (CRM) and fundraising platform designed to help nonprofits build strong donor relationships. This platform prioritizes responsive fundraising, meaning its features empower your nonprofit to convert data into human connections, allowing you to boost retention numbers with ease. To achieve this, Virtuous leverages data intelligence to generate personalized donor communications for all supporters, no matter the size of their donation or your donor list.
Top Features
- 360-degree donor views: As part of their robust CRM, Virtuous will create donor profiles so you can better understand your supporters’ interests, preferred mode of communication, donation history, demographics, and more. Monitor these profiles in a customizable dashboard to fit your organization’s needs.
- Automated communications: If you’re managing hundreds or thousands of supporters, it’s impossible to actively keep up with individual communications on your own. To create and sustain one-on-one conversations, use Virtuous’ data intelligence to automatically send personalized emails, text messages, and mail.
- Online giving tools: Streamline your online donation management with custom donation pages, donation tracking, and email confirmation and receipts. With these solutions, you can improve the donation experience while reducing your organization’s administrative burden.
Price
Virtuous offers several different plans to meet the needs of nonprofits of all sizes. The Starter Plan is ideal for small nonprofits that have under 5,000 contacts, while the Platform Plan is ideal for growing nonprofits that have between 5,000 and 30,000 contacts. The Enterprise Plan is ideal for large nonprofits that have anywhere from 30,000 contacts to millions. Check out the Virtuous pricing page to learn more.
6. Fundraise Up | Best Global Fundraising Platform
Fundraise Up is a fundraising platform built for multi-country and global fundraising. Its tools allow users to activate giving at home and abroad with country-specific features. With this solution, you can personalize your donation requests in a way that will boost revenue and lead to stronger donor relationships. Plus, Fundraise Up can help you enhance your fundraising website with pre-built elements, including sliders, overlays, and buttons, to drive engagement and more conversions.
Top Features
- Global fundraising: FundraiseUp empowers you to fundraise from any country with global payment methods, 135+ supported currencies, and language localizations. Based on a donor’s location, the platform will automatically show the features that make the most sense, leading to frictionless donor experiences that comply with regional and local requirements.
- Scalability: On high-volume giving days, like GivingTuesday and December 31st, your nonprofit can confidently handle an influx of traffic. Fundraise Up can process 200 transactions per second, allowing your organization to successfully receive its donations and making the transaction process smooth on the donors’ part.
- Fraud protection: Fundraise Up uses various security tools, including proxy detection, country flagging, and proprietary AI, to prevent fraud before it happens. With its advanced behavior analysis tool, Fundraise Up accurately detects suspicious behavior stemming from website traffic and transactional data patterns.
Price
Fundraise Up offers Quick Start and Enterprise packages. The former is best for organizations processing $300,000 or less in online donations annually, while the latter is for organizations processing more than $300,000 in online donations annually. Explore the Fundraise Up pricing page for more information.
7. Donorbox | Top Fundraising Platform for Fast UX
Donorbox is a fundraising platform that prioritizes efficiency and convenience in the donation experience, on both the administrative and donor side. This provider offers streamlined donation forms, customizable fundraising pages, and donate buttons to quickly direct supporters through the giving experience. With a positive donation experience, supporters will be eager to give again, allowing your nonprofit to collect more donations and power stronger donor relationships.
Top Features
- Quick setup: Launching your campaign with Donorbox can be done in four simple steps, taking as little as 15 minutes. You’ll create an account, develop a campaign form, add a payment processor, and go live. Donorbox offers free customer support throughout the process, so your organization is prepared to bring in donations as quickly as possible.
- Fast checkout: Donorbox’s ultra-swift checkout process creates a 4x faster checkout than typical forms. By only asking donors for the most important information to complete the transaction, supporters can complete your donation form in just a few clicks.
- Multiple payment options: Donorbox knows that payment flexibility can open up your nonprofit to wider audiences, leading to an influx of critical support. As a result, they accept multiple payment methods, including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, PayPal, and more.
Price
Donorbox offers three packages to meet your organization’s needs—Standard, Pro, and Premium. Standard is free to use with a 1.75% platform fee, Pro is $139 per month with a 1.5% platform fee, and Premium is a custom solution designed for your nonprofit. Explore how this solution can improve your nonprofit’s approach to fundraising with its pricing page.
8. Give Lively | Best Free Fundraising Platform
Give Lively is a free fundraising platform for nonprofits with limited budgets looking to fundraise online. With its expansive tech suite that covers digital fundraising, event fundraising, and peer-based fundraising.
If your organization is hosting a virtual fundraiser, you can leverage customizable campaign pages branded to your unique nonprofit, text-to-donate to deepen impact, and more user-friendly tools. Give Lively makes it easy for nonprofits to step into the 21st century and fully adapt to modern fundraising solutions.
Top Features
- Customizable donation widgets: Integrate streamlined donation widgets directly into your nonprofit’s website to increase the speed of the donation process and give users a positive giving experience. Plus, you can fully customize these versions of your donation form so they fit seamlessly into your website design.
- Team fundraising tools: Fundraising doesn’t have to be an independent activity! Give Lively makes it easy for donors who share the same values to come together and make collective appeals to people in their personal networks. As a result, donors will find a deeper sense of community and be able to raise even more revenue.
- Live donation display for events: Allow donors to see your fundraising progress in real time so they know how close you are to hitting your goals. Not only does this help donors see the impact of their contributions, but it could also encourage people to push your nonprofit past the fundraising finish line.
Price
Give Lively is entirely free, so your nonprofit won’t incur any setup fees, platform fees, membership/subscription fees, or annual/monthly fees. Learn more about Give Lively’s philosophy and how they’re able to power their operations at no expense to charitable organizations.
9. 99Pledges | Best Fundraising Platform for Pledge-Based Events
A-thon style events are growing in popularity, and 99Pledges wants to make hosting these engaging fundraisers as simple as possible for participating organizations. Whether you want to host a walk-a-thon, read-a-thon, or dance-a-thon, 99Pleges will help you and your donors lead successful campaigns.
99Pledges allows organizations to easily develop custom team pages and enables volunteers to create their own pages that can be shared with friends and family members to collect pledges. By rallying your supporters around your cause, you can supercharge your fundraising efforts and make supporting your nonprofit a rewarding experience.
Top Features
- Pledge donation model: On each participant page, friends and family members of your volunteers can submit a pledge based on how long or how much a certain activity is completed. These pledges are easy to manage on individualized fundraising campaign pages, allowing you and your supporters to track their fundraising progress.
- Easy setup for supporters: 99Pledges will complete the entire setup process for your organization for free, automatically creating participating fundraising pages for each fundraising volunteer who signs on. Supporters can then add personal touches, including their personal fundraising goal and why they’re raising money for your organization.
- Highly shareable: With social integrations, 99Pledges allows supporters to easily share their participating fundraising pages via Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and email. This can increase the visibility of your campaign and bring in more donations.
Price
99Pledges is a free platform with a $0 startup cost. You’ll be charged the standard transaction fee, which is 3.49% + $0.49 per transaction. Contact the 99Pledges team to learn more.
10. KindKatch | Best Fundraising Platform for Audience Engagement
KindKatch is a fundraising platform designed to simplify event management and boost donor engagement, leading to more revenue. The experts behind it know how important storytelling is in building donor relationships, and they’ve designed their platform with this in mind.
With KindKatch, you can curate personalized videos that are bound to inspire emotional connection and easily share them with all of your supporters. This platform empowers nonprofits to send thousands of texts or emails per month and will give you intuitive campaign metrics so you can track the success of your videos and make adjustments as needed.
Top Features
- Content database: Capture moments from your events and programs and store them in a designated hub. This way, you can easily repurpose content and send it to motivate donors to give.
- Mobile app and desktop portal: Sharing your content with supporters shouldn’t be difficult. KindKatch simplifies the process by allowing nonprofits to share videos from the KindKatch mobile app or desktop portal in seconds. Supporters will receive this content directly by email or text messages. Sharing your content with supporters shouldn’t be difficult. KindKatch simplifies the process by allowing nonprofits to share videos from the KindKatch mobile app or desktop portal in seconds. Supporters will receive this content directly by email or text messages.
- Customized landing pages and CTA buttons: To facilitate your event management, KindKatch makes it simple to create personalized landing pages branded to your nonprofit and persuasive CTA buttons that will drive donor conversions.
Price
KindKatch offers three plans at a 20% discount for nonprofits. Their standard plan includes 2,500 MMS/SMS texts per month, 10,000 emails per month, and onboarding and strategy sessions, and costs $134 a month before the discount. Explore their plans and features on their pricing page.
Fundraising Platforms: The Ultimate Tool to Boost Nonprofit Giving
If your nonprofit is ready to amp up its fundraising strategy, you’ll need to work with a leading provider in the nonprofit sector. The right software will fit within your nonprofit’s budget, meet your existing and future needs, and set your organization up for sustainable growth over time. If you’re eager to learn more about nonprofit fundraising platforms and how you can optimize your fundraising approach, explore these additional resources below:
- 14 Top Fundraising Software Tools to Maximize Giving. Need an overview of fundraising software that’s helpful for nonprofits? Read this guide.
- 16 Premier Silent Auction Software Solutions to Grow Revenue. If you plan to host a silent auction, you need dedicated software. Discover the top solutions here.
- 15 Premier Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Platforms for Nonprofits. It’s crucial that peer-to-peer fundraising is easy for your ambassadors. Choose a platform that streamlines the process for maximum giving.