Every once in a while, a new service comes along that makes it easier to donate money to charities and non-profits. That time has come again. iGiveFirst is a fundraising platform for charities that manages all the administrative nightmares that go along with raising and collecting money. All charities are verified, ensuring that user’s donations are both tax-deductible and used in meaningful ways.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably have some connection with a non-profit. Perhaps it’s a church or para-church organization, or perhaps you have ties to a governmental or civic non-profit. Maybe it’s time to consider looking at how iGiveFirst can help them out.
Keep reading after the jump to see how it works, what the benefits are, and what downsides exist to a service like this!
How it Works
iGiveFirst makes donating money really easy. First, click on the “give” button:
After clicking on the button, you’ll be asked to select a non-profit from the list of organizations that have signed up. Then you say how much money you want to give, and submit your payment info. It’s that easy. For the non-profits themselves, they offer a free, plug-in-play system to get you up and running.
Benefits
The benefits are numerous for non-profits. They advertise “easy-to-use fundraising”. Here’s a list of some of the things they offer:
- no setup fees
- No monthly minimums
- No hidden costs
- No technical setup required
- Accepts Visa, Mastercard and Paypal
- Free media exposure
- And more!
Costs and Downsides
So, what does it cost? Well, as stated above, there are no setup fees and no flat monthly fees on top of processing fees. Instead, iGiveFirst charges a flat fee per transaction. That’s the good news. The bad news is the rate they charge: 8.5%. That covers 3.5% for the payment processors (Visa, Mastercard or Paypal), plus 5% for their own administration costs. To compare, if you were to use PayPal directly, as a non-profit you could get a rate of 2.2% + 30 cents for each transaction. Much lower. But, using a service like PayPal (or signing up with credit card processors directly) involves more technical skillsets such as html coding and probably some good php programming depending on your setup.
So should you use iGiveFirst?
That all depends on who you are and what your needs are. If you are a small non-profit that doesn’t have IT professionals on staff, iGiveFirst is an easy way to offer online payments. On the other hand, 8.5% can be a steep charge for churches and may make this too costly a decision.
Learn more on the iGiveFirst website.
Greg says
Personally, I would rather stick with PayPal as a solution. PayPal has really streamlined the process to the point where you can simply create a link for donations if you want. Plus, they have some really easy to use embeddable code. The non-profit rate is well worth using a service that ensures your non-profit doesn’t have to worry about securing or handling credit card or other banking information (as recent security breaches have shown).
Carl Thomas says
How much tech expertise could they possibly be saving you for a 5% cut? Good Lord.
Sharif Youssef says
Chris,
Thank you for blogging about iGivefirst, we appreciate the coverage and your perspective. Our goal is to empower people, not just current donors, to easily give, to trustworthy nonprofits on a secure platform all year long. We are accomplishing this by providing digital media publishers with a Give button that makes charitable giving as easy as “Liking” and “Tweeting”. We bring charities new sources of revenue that a PayPal button on their own website could never achieve.
As iGivefirst continues to grow, we will provide additional value added tools for charities to reach and engage new donors; all at no up front cost. We have and will continue to transition all certified charities from costly direct marketing tools and vendors to the new digital techniques leveraging the power of social networks and mass media.
If you have the time, I would enjoy talking with you more about what we do and involving you in future focus groups as we continue to build the world’s first online giving services and brand.
Cheers,
Sharif