13 Dynamic School Fundraising Platforms to Upgrade Giving

Your school doesn’t have to power through the fundraising process alone. The right fundraising platform built for schools can ease your administrative burden, streamlining everything from event management to marketing.

There are a variety of fundraising solutions available for schools. In this article, we’ll explore these top platforms so you can make the best decision for your organization:

1. OneCause
2. 99Pledges
3. ShopRaise
4. Double the Donation
5. Fundly
6. Bonfire
7. Snap! Raise
8. PledgeCents
9. DonorsChoose
10. DonorSearch
11. Funds2Orgs
12. Booster
13. JotForm

Backed by the support of a comprehensive fundraising platform, your school will be well on its way to pulling off successful fundraiser after successful fundraiser.

1. OneCause: Best All-in-One Fundraising Platform for Schools

Whether you’re planning a peer-to-peer campaign or a lively school auction, OneCause has all the tools and features you need to bring your fundraising events to life.

OneCause is the premier all-in-one fundraising solution for schools of all shapes and sizes, helping them through every step of the fundraising process. Since its inception in 2008, OneCause has powered over 60,000 fundraisers and raised over $6.5 billion for causes around the world.

OneCause simplifies fundraising, not only on the administrative side but also for your supporters. With over 63% of donors reporting that ease of giving is an important consideration when determining whether they donate to an organization, it’s critical that you leverage a platform that provides an exceptional donation experience. OneCause meets this need to a tee by offering a modern, user-friendly giving process that empowers your school’s community members to give from any device, at any time.

Top Features

The OneCause fundraising platform offers a full suite of innovative features to boost your school’s reach and revenue, including:

Event Management

If your school wants to host a walk-a-thon, talent show, or other exciting event, OneCause can help you manage an unlimited number of fundraisers year-round, whether in-person, virtual, or hybrid. With OneCause, you can sell tickets and manage RSVPs online, offer contactless express check-in and check-out to reduce wait times, send segmented communications before, during, and after the event, and more.

When your event is over, OneCause will provide a full look at how your fundraiser performed with automatically generated data analytics. From overall revenue results to individual donor behaviors, you’ll have a 360-degree view into whether you met your goals and how you can optimize your fundraising strategy for the future.

Auctions

A school auction is one of the most engaging events you can host to get your entire community excited about fundraising. With OneCause Mobile Bidding & Auction Software, you can forget about disorganized paper bids and spreadsheets and instead enable supporters to jump right into the bidding action from their phones. Mobile bidding creates an unparalleled donor experience, allowing donors to set maximum bids, purchase fixed-priced items, and receive automated outbid notifications.

Your auction won’t be complete without stirring up some friendly competition, and OneCause makes this simple with powerful gamification features. From scoreboards to fundraising thermometers, immerse all of your supporters in the fundraising experience and rally them around your goals.

Online Giving

Taking the fundraising process online can help your organization reach even more community members and embed convenience right into the donation process. Simply leverage the OneCause Online Fundraising Solution to develop fundraising microsites and customized donation forms, and even tap your loyal community members to create their own personalized fundraising pages. OneCause also uses secure SSL/PCI processing to keep your donors’ private information safe and reliably transfer funds to your school’s account.

Text2Give®

Whether you’re running an annual text-to-give campaign or plan to couple text-to-give with another fundraiser to maximize revenue, OneCause has you covered. With our intuitive Text2Give® software, you can confidently reach supporters with fundraising appeals and capture mobile donations anytime, anywhere.

Here’s how it works:

1. Create and promote your keyword: Pair a unique keyword related to your campaign with your assigned short or long code and share it with your community.
2. Supporters opt into your campaign: Supporters text the keyword to your code and are sent a mobile-friendly link to a streamlined, mobile-optimized version of your donation page.
3. Supporters give to your mobile fundraiser: Supporters use their credit card, debit card, or digital wallet to donate to your school in just moments.

Then, you can seamlessly collect donor data and send email receipts so donors can receive tax deductions.

Price

OneCause offers multiple plans to meet your school’s needs, with Essentials, Professional, and Enterprise packages available depending on your school’s size and the extent of the fundraising features you’re looking for. Check out the OneCause Pricing & Packages page for more details.

2. 99Pledges: Best School Fundraising Platform for Pledge-Based Events

99Pledges is a fundraising solution that makes it easy to bring walk-a-thons, read-a-thons, and other pledge-based events to life. With 99Pledges, your school can design a custom team fundraising page and empower your students to create their own personal fundraising pages in just moments. Students can collect pledges from friends and family members and set their own fundraising goals, with all the revenue going back to your school’s initiatives. This is a great option to get everyone in your school’s community—from faculty to students to extended family members—involved in fundraising.

Top Features

99Pledges makes running an “a-thon” style event as seamless as possible by offering the following features:

• Easy set-up: No need to stress out over setting up a new solution! 99Pledges takes care of the hard work by setting up their platform on your behalf for free. This way, you’ll have more time to plan your pledge-based event and won’t have to worry about the technical side of setting up fundraising pages or collecting pledges.
• Custom fundraising pages: Once everything is set up, your school can easily customize your central fundraising page to fit your unique branding—from adding photos of current students to including an inspiring story of why you’re fundraising. Plus, students who create their own fundraising pages can also add their personal touches, helping to show friends and family members why they’re seeking their support and how much they’re hoping to raise.
• Real-time campaign analytics: 99Pledges enables you to track total donations raised and display a progress bar right on your main fundraising page to attract more support. Plus, you can also view individual donor contributions and see who your top-performing fundraisers are. This will come in handy when it comes time to thank your fundraisers and donors for all their support!

99Pledges will transfer your earnings to your account 24 hours after your fundraiser concludes, allowing you to get to work on improving your school as soon as possible.

Price

99Pledges is a free platform with a $0 start-up cost and a 0% platform fee. However, your school will be responsible for the transaction fee, which is 3.49% plus 49 cents per transaction. Get in touch with the 99Pledges team to learn more.

3. ShopRaise: Best School Fundraising Platform for Giving While You Shop

ShopRaise is a fundraising app that allows you to turn everyday shopping into revenue generation for your school. From purchasing new clothes to ordering groceries online, your supporters can donate year-round at no additional cost to you or your supporters. Up to 10% of every purchase goes directly to your school, helping you to potentially raise thousands of dollars each year.

Since the success of online shopping fundraisers depends heavily on your school community’s participation, you’ll need a strong marketing plan to encourage parents, faculty, and alumni to download the necessary app and browser extension. ShopRaise makes it easy by creating a branded landing page for your school that you can easily share with your community, helping you to turn their shopping dollars into impactful donations with minimal effort.

Top Features

ShopRaise can help you maximize the success of your online shopping fundraiser through the following features:

• Access to custom marketing materials: Along with creating a landing page customized to your school, ShopRaise will also develop emails, flyers, and social media posts that contain your school’s unique logo, branding, and messaging. These can all be used to get the word out about your shopping fundraiser to members of your school’s community and beyond.
• Built-in reporting suite: With ShopRaise’s data reporting tools, you can view how many people have the app and how much they’ve contributed to your school. Then, easily export participant information into your CRM so you can thank them and deepen their involvement in your school.
• Shopping versatility: Participants can either give to your school by shopping online for products of their choice or through ShopRaise’s gift card fundraising features. With the latter, your supporters can buy gift cards from more than 200 retailers and a portion of the proceeds will go back to your school. Gift cards can then be used for both online or in-person purchases, granting your participants shopping flexibility.

With ShopRaise, you can establish a predictable donation pipeline without asking your supporters for any money. Simply pair an online shopping fundraiser with any fundraising event to boost results or host one year-round to bring in extra revenue for your school.

Price

ShopRaise is free to set up and free for your supporters to download. Learn more about ShopRaise’s fundraising tools and how they empower schools and organizations of all types to power change in their communities.

4. Double the Donation: Best Matching Gift Fundraising Platform for Schools

Double the Donation is a matching gift fundraising platform that helps schools increase the impact of their donations. With their versatile matching gift database, 360MatchPro, Double the Donation makes it easy for your donors to look up their match eligibility through their employers and potentially double (or triple) the size of their gifts to your school. 360MatchPro integrates with every major donation form, CRM, and peer-to-peer tool, ensuring your eligible donors will always be able to leverage available matching gift opportunities.

Top Features

Double the Donation empowers schools to capitalize on corporate giving initiatives through these key features:

• Auto submission: Rather than filling out complex forms or navigating from one portal to the next, some donors can get their gifts matched right from your donation page through auto submission. This speeds up the matching gift process, maximizes the chances that you’ll receive a match, and creates a more positive user experience.
• Automated emails: Double the Donation automatically powers off emails to all of your eligible donors with matching gift forms and instructions. This way, you can readily educate qualified donors about matching gifts and direct them to start the matching gift process. Plus, these emails can be customized to match your brand and messaging to build trust.
• Data analytics: Receive automated data reports in real time on what percentage of your gifts are matching gift eligible, where your different donors are in the giving process, and where your biggest revenue opportunities are. You’ll always know exactly how your fundraising efforts are performing and how you can optimize your strategy to boost the number of matching gifts.

Your students’ parents work for a number of different employers, and chances are, many of these employers offer matching gift opportunities. Leverage a matching gift platform like Double the Donation so you can ensure that these free fundraising dollars don’t fall through the cracks.

Price

Double the Donation offers three pricing plans:

• 360MatchPro Small Nonprofit Plan: $999 a year for small organizations with less than $1,000,000 in annual revenue and $10,000 in annual matching gift revenue
• 360MatchPro Standard: $2,5000 a year for organizations raising over $10,000 in annual matching gift revenue
• 360MatchPro Enterprise: Starting at $30,000 for larger organizations that need more robust features

Visit Double the Donation’s pricing page for more details.

5. Fundly: Best Crowdfunding Fundraising Platform for Schools

Fundly is a crowdfunding platform that makes it easy to attract a large pool of donors to your campaigns. With its full suite of user-friendly tools, Fundly helps schools create branded fundraising pages that inspire donations and create a seamless giving experience. Whether you’re raising money for a short-term campaign or want to establish a reliable year-round donation pipeline, Fundly makes crowdfunding a breeze.

Top Features

Fundly offers the following tools to upgrade your digital fundraising strategy:

• Multimedia capabilities: Fundly allows you to feature emotionally compelling photos and videos front and center on your fundraising pages. With an interactive slideshow feature, you can show off who your fundraiser will support and grab the attention of your prospective donors. Plus, Fundly allows you to embed your video content from YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook to tell your school’s story.
• Social integrations: Getting your fundraising page up and running is only half the battle! You’ll also need to get your page in front of as many people as possible, which Fundly makes easy with its built-in Facebook integration. With Facebook OpenGraph, you can broadcast key campaign activity and showcase your fundraising progress in real time to inspire supporters to give.
• Mobile optimization: Your fundraising page will be automatically optimized for mobile, ensuring your donors can give from anywhere at any time. Plus, Fundly’s mobile app allows you to manage your campaign from your phone, handling everything from thanking new donors to posting blog updates.

Once donors give to your school through Fundly, they can rest assured that their private information will be kept safe. Fundly’s payment partner, Stripe, safely transfers funds from their bank account to your school and protects your data from getting leaked. This way, you can maintain trust with your donors and retain their support.

Price

Fundly has 0% platform fees and their mobile app is free to download and use. However, Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction for credit card processing fees. To learn more about how Fundly uses donor generosity to power its platform, visit the Fundly pricing page.

6. Bonfire: Best School Fundraising Platform for Product Fundraising

Bonfire is a product fundraising platform that lets you sell t-shirts for your cause. Product fundraising is a win-win for your school and its donors; the profits go directly to your programs, and your donors get to take home a customized tee in exchange for their gift. Bonfire makes this process easy by providing an all-in-one product fundraising service so you can design shirts that show off your school, sell them in a digital storefront, and deliver them to your community members to stir up pride for your institution and boost your visibility.

Top Features

Bonfire helps you sell more merchandise and boost revenue through the following features:

• T-shirt design tools: Create amazing tees that feature your school’s logo, color scheme, and more visual branding elements with Bonfire’s easy-to-use design studio. If you’re not sure where to start, Bonfire also offers text and clipart from their clipart library that you can copy and paste right onto your shirts. Once your tees are ready to be sold, Bonfire helps you create a user-friendly eCommerce storefront that can be accessed on any device.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising: Tap your devoted community members to take charge of the fundraising process and create their very own t-shirt fundraisers, with all the proceeds going back to your school. From your school’s baseball team to your robotics club, anyone from your school can leverage Bonfire to develop their own product fundraisers and foster deeper connections to your institution in the process.
• Built-in donor recognition: Donor appreciation is a critical component of any fundraising strategy, helping you to grow your donor network and create lifelong partnerships. With Bonfire, you can send thank-you emails in just moments from their intuitive Campaign Dashboard.

Once donors purchase tees from your product fundraiser, you’ll be able to download their contact information in a .CSV format. This way, you can connect with them for future fundraising campaigns and keep donors engaged year-round.

Price

The Bonfire platform is free for schools to use, but you will have to fund the base cost for your t-shirt manufacturing, sourcing, and printing expenses. Simply use the Bonfire t-shirt pricing calculator to estimate the cost of your t-shirt order. Bonfire also charges an 8% processing fee to cover credit card transaction fees and other administrative expenses, but if your school qualifies as a nonprofit, this fee is reduced to 3.5% once you’re verified. Check out the Bonfire pricing & fees page for more information.

7. Snap! Raise: Best School Fundraising Platform for Student Organizations

Snap! Raise is a group-based fundraising platform that has helped over 100,000 school groups and teams collectively raise millions of dollars. Just like its name suggests, Snap! Raise helps student-led organizations raise money quickly and get the necessary support they need to push forward their goals, like funding a new digital scoreboard for the football field or covering travel costs for the dance team.

Designed by school fundraising experts, this platform seeks to streamline the process from front to end so anyone—from your faculty to your high school freshmen—can lead a successful campaign. Snap! Raise helps school groups develop inspiring online fundraising pages and donation forms, send personalized messages to encourage more giving, and track results in real time so you always have a birds-eye view of how your fundraiser is progressing.

Top Features

Snap! Raise offers the following features to make club and team fundraising a smooth experience:

• Customizable web page: Create a beautiful fundraising page that communicates your purpose, highlights your fundraising goal with a progress bar, and allows you to add any videos and photos to drive emotional impact. Plus, Snap! Raise allows donors to submit and display messages right on your fundraising page, which can be powerful social proof to fuel even more giving.
• Early access to funds: If you need revenue fast and want to avoid out-of-pocket spending, Snap! Raise offers a unique Early Access tool so you can earn a portion of your projected total revenue raised for the year. This is a great option for clubs and teams in their off-season who have miscellaneous expenses and want a solid financial foundation before their season kicks off.
• Secure payment processing: Snap! Raise meets federal security compliance requirements, ensuring all of your data stays secure and you safely receive your well-deserved funds.

With Snap! Raise, you can invite school community members or family and friends living hundreds to thousands of miles away to participate in your fundraising. The possibilities for your group-based fundraising are endless!

Price

Snap! Raise has zero upfront costs for using their platform, but they will keep 20% of all funds you earn. Visit their pricing page to learn more.

8. PledgeCents: Best Community-Based Fundraising Platform for Schools

There is nothing stronger than the power of your school’s community, and PledgeCents designed its crowdfunding platform with this in mind. PledgeCents equips anyone, from PTA members to faculty, to lead a well-designed online fundraising campaign, with all the funds going back to your school. By enabling any community member to host a campaign for your institution, you can save your educators valuable time and raise critical funds for your classrooms, clubs, teams, and more.

Top Features

PledgeCents rallies your community around fundraising with these features:

• Free publicity: PledgeCents shares all of its fundraising campaigns on its website for the world to see, helping you reach people near and far who are passionate about education and likely to give. Plus, when donors find your campaign, they can complete the donation process in just moments through PledgeCents’s streamlined giving form.
• Social integrations: On top of leveraging PledgeCents’s network of education advocates, you can also use built-in social media integrations to Facebook and Twitter to easily share your campaign online. PledgeCents also allows supporters to email a link to your campaign page to friends and family to grow your donor pool.
• Dedicated customer service: Once you’ve published your campaign to the PledgeCents platform, a member of their team will reach out to set up a one-on-one call to go over fundraising best practices. If questions come up at any time, the PledgeCents team is available around the clock to help answer your technical questions or simply provide guidance to maximize your fundraising success.

Even if your fundraiser is hosted by a parent or community member, PledgeCents guarantees that your school will be the one receiving the funds. PledgeCents will make out the check to your school’s name and send it directly to your mailing address when your fundraiser concludes.

Price

Following the philosophy that “Every Cent Counts,” PledgeCents has no platform fees so you can extract as much value from your fundraiser as possible. Three percent of all earnings will go towards PledgeCents’s payment partner, Stripe, to cover credit card transaction fees. Learn more about PledgeCents’s community-based approach.

9. DonorsChoose: Best School Fundraising Platform for Classroom Fundraisers

DonorsChoose empowers teachers to create classroom project fundraisers to fund the cost of resources like art supplies, books, and more. Instead of sending a check and making faculty go through the often time-consuming process of ordering resources on their own, DonorsChoose orders everything on your teachers’ wishlists with the funds raised and sends it their way.

Through their network of passionate corporate partners, foundations, and donors worldwide, DonorsChoose has helped fund over 2 million classroom projects and empower nearly 1 million faculty members to get the resources they need for another successful academic year.

Top Features

DonorsChoose supports your school’s faculty with the following key features:

• Fast sign-up time: Teachers can set up their classroom projects in just about 20 minutes. DonorsChoose will review and screen these projects, and then post them online in about 3 days. Your project can stay posted on the DonorsChoose site for up to 4 months, though many of their projects get fully funded within hours of them going live.
• Gift matching for first-time fundraisers: When teachers host their first classroom fundraiser, they’ll be eligible for a one-time-use Teacher Friends & Family Code. With this code, donors’ gifts up to $50 will be matched dollar-for-dollar for one week after your project goes live. This will bring your teachers closer to hitting their fundraising goals.
• Item delivery: DonorsChoose maintains 12 distribution centers across the US so your teachers can receive their requested resources in two weeks or less. Plus, teachers can sign into their DonorsChoose account and track the status of their materials at any time.

Whether your teachers need butterfly cocoons to teach about metamorphosis or are seeking ukuleles to upgrade their music education, DonorsChoose can help secure these supplies. Note that DonorsChoose is only available for teachers working at public schools. Learn more about their eligibility requirements here.

Price

Eligible teachers can sign up to create a classroom project fundraiser for free. Ninety-five percent of the funds raised will go towards program services, including item purchases and teacher outreach. The other 5% of funds go toward administrative costs. For more information about DonorsChoose and their mission to connect the public to public schools, check out their About Us page.

10. DonorSearch: Prospect Research Fundraising Platform for Schools

DonorSearch is a prospect research database that helps independent and higher education institutions discover, qualify, and prioritize top prospects. Rather than wasting time connecting with donors who might not have the capacity or willingness to give to your school, DonorSearch lets you pinpoint your most promising prospects and optimize your donor engagement strategy through advanced machine learning.

Specifically, by pulling from robust databases, DonorSearch helps schools learn more about their community members’ giving histories and philanthropic interests. Backed by these powerful insights, you can craft personalized donor stewardship plans and inspire giving at a large scale.

Top Features

DonorSearch makes it easy to find out who your top prospects are right away with these key tools:

• Wealth and philanthropic screening: Wealth and philanthropic indicators help you identify donors who are not only capable of giving in large amounts but also would be interested in supporting your school. DonorSearch compares your donor database to their wealth database and the world’s largest philanthropic dataset to identify top prospects.
• AI capabilities: DonorSearch uses advanced machine learning to recognize giving patterns and better understand your donors’ behaviors. Plus, through the power of predictive modeling, DonorSearch will provide you with fundraising predictions and recommendations about specific individuals to guide your stewardship efforts.
• Data visualization: DonorSearch provides a complete picture of donor and prospect data with its suite of visual data representations. This helps your school’s fundraising team understand your donor base’s giving potential and ways to upgrade their giving.

Unlike many other algorithm-powered prospect research platforms, DonorSearch’s screening has a 90-100% accuracy rate. This ensures your school will always have the freshest and most up-to-date insights on your donors.

Price

DonorSearch offers customized plans for schools depending on their size and fundraising needs. Request a demo to see their product in action and a team member will reach out to you within 24 hours to discuss plans and pricing options.

11. Funds2Orgs: Best Shoe Drive Fundraising Platform for Schools

Funds2Orgs is a social enterprise that partners with schools and other organizations to lead shoe drive fundraisers. Rather than asking members of your community to donate money, you can simply ask them to donate their used shoes instead! This way, community members of all ages can easily get involved in helping your school reach its goals.

After your shoe drive, Funds2Orgs will collect the shoes, weigh them, and deliver a check to your school. Then, the shoes will be sent to micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries, increasing your social impact. It’s a win-win for your school, the environment, and communities worldwide.

Top Features

Running a shoe drive can feel complicated, but luckily, Funds2Orgs streamlines the entire event experience through these features:

• Shoe drive starter kit: To get the ball rolling on your shoe drive, Funds2Orgs will ship you 33-gallon clear bags to collect the shoes and rubber bands to secure the bags. Plus, Funds2Orgs provides marketing material templates to help promote your drive and rally your community around this unique fundraiser.
• Coaching team: An experienced fundraising coach will be available throughout your shoe drive to give advice and answer any questions you may have. Once you’re ready to conclude your shoe drive, you’ll simply notify your coach and they’ll arrange the pick-up for your collected sneakers.
• Fast pay-out: After your shoes are collected by the Funds2Orgs team, they’ll send a check within just two days of receipt. This way, you can turn shoes into cash quickly and get started on improving your school in no time.

Your students and their families likely have plenty of old shoes lying around the house collecting dust. With Funds2Orgs, you can turn this into a prime fundraising and community engagement opportunity at any time of the year. Host multiple shoe drives each school year, or make it an annual back-to-school tradition!

Price

Funds2Orgs has no upfront costs and will provide your school with everything you need to run your shoe drive fundraiser for free. For more information about how Funds2Orgs works to help your school and benefit communities in developing countries, explore their FAQ page.

12. Booster: Best School Fundraising Platform for Flexible Event and Campaign Planning

Booster is a classic online fundraising platform that can meet the needs of any K-12 school or college. Specializing in student-favorite events like fun runs and product fundraisers like popcorn and merch sales, Booster has the experience and resources you need to power engaging experiences for your entire school community. In fact, Booster has raised over $600 million for schools across the country.

Top Features

With Booster, your school will gain access to a variety of user-friendly fundraising tools and features, including:

• Versatile event planning: Booster will help you put together in-person, virtual, or hybrid-style events that are tailored to your school’s unique community. Whether you want to choose from one of their event offerings or take a DIY approach and innovate your own fundraiser, Booster will be there to support you from beginning to end.
• Progress updates: Using Booster’s fundraising platform, you’ll be able to assess your fundraising progress in real time, including the total funds you’ve raised and how many donors have participated in your campaign. Plus, you can easily share these progress updates with your school community to inspire more giving.
• In-house merchandise design: Thinking of hosting a standalone product fundraiser or pairing a merchandise sale with your upcoming event? Booster will help you create beautiful shirt designs that your entire community will love to wear. Plus, they’ll only ship the number of shirts you actually sell online (and at no extra cost to you!).

If you run into any fundraising obstacles or technical roadblocks, Booster’s dedicated Help Desk is available to answer your questions and put you back on track to fundraising success.

Price

Booster is free to use with zero set-up costs. However, Booster will take a certain percentage of the funds you raise based on how you use their platform. For example, Booster takes a starting percentage of 5% for schools that host a DIY fundraiser and simply need fundraising software to manage their campaign. This percentage increases based on the different services and fundraising resources you might use. Talk to a Booster representative to learn more.

13. JotForm: Best School Fundraising Platform for Building Powerful Donations Forms

JotForm is a school fundraising platform that takes the guesswork out of designing engaging, user-friendly donation forms for your online campaigns. With JotForm, there’s no need to build a form from scratch and wonder if it provides your donors with a positive user experience! Instead, JotForm saves your school time with its ready-to-go templates and built-in fundraising management and reporting tools so you’re always tapped into how your campaign is progressing.

Top Features

JotForm helps you smoothly lead fundraising campaigns and automate workflows through the following core features:

• Fundraising form templates: JotForm offers over 10,000 free online templates so you can create your necessary campaign forms with ease. Simply select the form that best aligns with your campaign and your goal, customize it to match your school’s branding, and share it widely with your community.
• Automated emails: When donors submit a gift using one of JotForm’s generated forms, you’ll be able to automatically power off thank-you emails that emphasize the impact of their contributions. This will help you boost your donor retention rate and build a stronger school community.
• CRM integrations: JotForm integrates with many of the most popular CRMs, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and more. This way, you won’t have to worry about manually entering new donors’ contact information into your CRM. Simply leave it up to JotForm to automatically sync this information into your database for future reference.

Once your forms have been created, JotForm provides an embed code to display the forms right on your website. As a result, your supporters will be able to easily complete their next steps—from registering to donating to your fundraiser—without having to navigate to an external resource.

Price

JotForm offers a variety of pricing plans for schools depending on the number of forms you want to create, the number of monthly submissions you expect to receive, and other factors. Their Starter plan is free, but might not be the best choice if your school is expecting to run multiple fundraising campaigns a year and needs several forms. You therefore might opt for their Bronze, Silver, or Gold packages depending on the extent of the features you need.

JotForm also gives educational institutions a 50% discount for all of their payment plans, helping you to save resources and drive more bang for your buck. For more information about JotForm’s pricing packages and benefits for schools, check out their pricing page.

Fundraising Platforms for Schools: FAQs

What fundraising events can I host with school fundraising software?

This depends on the type of fundraising platform your school uses. As you saw in the list above, each school fundraising solution has areas in which it excels, such as event management or crowdfunding. If you don’t have a specific fundraiser in mind and are looking for a comprehensive solution to handle any event you wish to host, consider investing in an all-in-one fundraising platform for schools, like OneCause.

What are the essential features of fundraising platforms for schools?

The features you need from a school fundraising platform depend on your organization’s specific needs. However, here are a few essential features to look for in any fundraising solution:

• User-friendliness: Evaluate platforms for user-friendliness by booking demos, reading testimonials, and checking out reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra. Look at both positive and negative reviews for a holistic view of the platform’s user experience.
• Customizability: Ideal fundraising platforms for schools make it easy to customize your organization’s unique workflows and needs. During your demo, ask the representative to show off the extent of the solution’s customizability.
• Integrations: Your school may already use software for tasks other than fundraising, like managing your finances or organizing schedules. A school fundraising platform should be able to integrate with your existing tools to ensure your data and information flow seamlessly between solutions.
• Scalability: It takes a lot of time and effort to shop for a platform and implement it, so you don’t want to do it multiple times. Look for a solution that can scale with your school so you only need to implement the necessary software once.
• Customer support: Software implementation can be time-intensive without the right resources. Look for a solution that offers robust customer support to assist you with this process and any issues that come up in the future.

Whether you’re looking for comprehensive fundraising software or a tool that just manages matching gifts, these features ensure that you’ll invest in a solution you can use for years to come.

How do you choose the right fundraising platform for your school?

Ultimately, choosing the right fundraising platform for your school is a decision only you can make. Every organization has different needs, capacities, and budgets, making it difficult to answer this question.

When in doubt, boil down your need for a school fundraising platform to its foundation. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What challenges is my school currently facing?
• What needs does my school have that are unmet?
• What does my school’s fundraising process look like now?
• Where do my staff members need the most help?
• What’s our most successful fundraising activity?
• What are our recurring fundraising events or activities?
• What fundraising activities do we want to host in the future?
• What fundraisers have the community expressed interest in?

Use the answers to these questions to determine the characteristics and features you need from your software. For example, if you want to empower community members to lead peer-to-peer campaigns on your behalf, consider working with OneCause.

If you have the budget, don’t settle for a solution that just meets your current needs. Consider fundraising platforms for schools that offer additional capabilities that grow with you and facilitate organizational growth. This might mean solutions with features that help you branch out into new fundraising opportunities or improve your capacity to accept donations, such as through inspiring online giving pages.

Invest in a Comprehensive Fundraising Platform for Schools

A robust fundraising platform gives your school the support, tools, and direction it needs to lead and manage any campaign with ease. Consider your school’s goals and choose a flexible solution that will not only help you find fundraising success now but will also provide value to your institution year after year.

If you’re interested in learning more about fundraising software providers, check out these additional resources:

• 10 Nonprofit Fundraising Platforms to Inspire More Giving. Explore top nonprofit fundraising platforms that can help your organization boost revenue and engagement for its cause.
• 15 Premier Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Platforms for Nonprofits. Peer-to-peer fundraising allows you to leverage the power of your community to maximize donations. Discover top platforms that facilitate this process for your school.
• 20 Premier Silent Auction Software Solutions to Grow Revenue. Interested in hosting a silent auction? Invest in software that makes auction events a breeze.