How online fundraising actually works, and where the money sits

Online fundraising looks like one thing from the outside: you publish a page, people donate, you get the money. What differs between platforms is the two steps in the middle, and they are the two you find out about last. Where the money sits, and who pays for the service.

The four places a fundraiser can cost money

There are only four. Every offer on the market is a combination of them.

1. The platform fee: a percentage of what you raise.
2. Payment processing: what the card network and the processor charge. This exists everywhere and nobody makes it vanish; the only question is who absorbs it.
3. Withdrawal: moving the money to your account.
4. The donor tip: an amount asked of the person donating, on top of their donation.

A platform advertising “no fees” is almost always free on the first one. The other three are where you have to look.

The donor tip, and why so many platforms can say 0%

This is the model that took over. The platform charges you nothing and asks your donors for a contribution at checkout, often with an amount already filled in.

A service funded by voluntary contributions is a legitimate model, and most platforms using it say so openly. What’s worth knowing is that a voluntary contribution that is pre-selected gets paid by default, and that it comes out of the same budget your donors had set aside for you. Someone who meant to give $50 gives $57 and finds out on their statement.

If you use one of these platforms, tell your donors the tip is optional and where to change it. Most people have no idea it’s there.

Where the money sits, and why it matters more than the fee

On most platforms, donations arrive in an account belonging to the platform. They stay there until you request a withdrawal.

While the money is there, the platform decides when it leaves. If it pauses your campaign, because someone reported it, because a verification is pending, because an automated check fired, the money pauses with it. It is a common complaint about fundraising platforms, and it has nothing to do with fees.

There are platforms where donations go directly to the account or wallet of whoever created the campaign. There is no balance to check, because there is no balance, and no withdrawal to request: the only delay is the one the payment method itself imposes.

They are different products, and one of them is much better suited to a bill that arrives next week.

The questions that settle it

Ask these anywhere, including here:

1. Do you take a percentage of what I raise?
2. Is a transfer to my own bank account charged?
3. Is a tip shown to my donors, and is it pre-selected?
4. Do I keep what’s raised if I don’t hit the goal?
5. How many days until the money is actually available to me?

Any of those you cannot answer from the site itself, without emailing anyone, is worth asking in writing before you publish.

What makes a fundraiser work, once the mechanics are sorted

None of the above raises a dollar. Three things do, and they’re the same everywhere:

People recognise you. Name, face, your connection to the situation. An anonymous page is a page without donors, however real the need.

They understand where the money goes. Line by line, with amounts. Vague is read as suspicious, and a round number is read as a guess.

They see other people are already in. Donations trigger donations. This is why the first ten matter more than the rest combined, and why they should come from private messages to people who know you rather than a post in a large group.

Where Causfy sits

Creating a cause is free and we take no percentage. There is no donor tip, because the mechanism doesn’t exist in the product. Donations go straight to the account or wallet of whoever created the cause, so there’s no balance with us and nothing to withdraw.

In the US and the UK today, a cause receives by card and by stablecoins. Bank transfer is in preparation, not live; the coverage page lists what is open country by country.

The part of the record nobody compares

When the campaign is over, what do you have?

On most platforms: a dashboard, and an export of rows. That is enough for your own bookkeeping and it is not enough for someone who asks you to account for the money, such as a family member, an employer who matched donations, or an auditor at a small charity.

Worth checking before you start:

• Can you export the full list of contributions, with dates?
• Does each contribution have something verifiable attached, or just a row?
• If the platform closed tomorrow, what would you still have?

A record that lives only inside a service you do not control is a record you may not be able to produce later.

And if your cause also needs support, not just money

Some situations need both: money for the immediate cost and signatures for the decision behind it. Keeping them on one link means one audience instead of two.

See how a cause works on Causfy, or read what to compare in a GoFundMe alternative if you’re still choosing.