Best Nonprofit Fundraising Software
Two platforms now charge nonprofits nothing and cover card fees from optional donor tips. That changes the maths for small organizations more than any feature on a comparison grid, and this page explains what the trade actually is.
Fundraising software used to cost a platform fee plus card processing, and the combined bite was commonly five to eight per cent of everything raised. For a small organization that is a staff day a month, in money. Our donation fee calculator works out what your own number is across the common routes.
That has genuinely changed, and the change is not a marketing claim. Two platforms now charge nonprofits nothing at all and cover card processing from optional donor tips. Whether that suits you is a real question, and it is the first one to answer.
The three pricing models
| Model | What you pay | The trade |
|---|---|---|
| Tip funded | Nothing | Your donors see a prompt to tip the platform at checkout |
| Percentage of donations | A platform fee plus processing | Scales with success, which gets expensive as you grow |
| Subscription | A monthly fee, usually tiered by contacts | Fixed and predictable, poor value at low volume |
The tip funded model is the significant development. Zeffy charges nonprofits no platform fee and no transaction fee, and covers processing itself, funded by optional contributions donors are prompted to add. Givebutter works similarly: free when tips are enabled, with donors offered the chance to cover processing, and a flat 3% platform fee if you turn tips off, plus standard processing rates.
The honest objection is that the prompt sits in your donation flow and asks your supporters for money that does not reach you. Some organizations find that unacceptable and would rather pay. That is a legitimate position, and it is the actual trade rather than a hidden catch.
The shortlist
| Platform | Model | Best for | Wrong for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zeffy | Tip funded, nothing to the nonprofit | Small organizations where fees genuinely hurt | Anyone unwilling to show donors a tip prompt |
| Givebutter | Tip funded, or 3% flat with tips off | Campaigns, events and peer to peer, with a lighter CRM built in | Complex donor segmentation |
| Donorbox | Percentage of donations | Straightforward recurring giving on your own site | Events and peer to peer at scale |
| Classy | Subscription plus percentage | Larger organizations running sophisticated campaigns | Small budgets, by a wide margin |
| Bloomerang | Subscription | Organizations wanting donor management and giving in one | Anyone who only needs a donate button |
| GiveWP | Plugin, free core plus paid add-ons | WordPress sites wanting to own the whole stack | Organizations with nobody to maintain a site |
What actually matters, in order
Most comparison grids rank features by how easy they are to list. Here is the order that matters in practice.
Recurring giving that works. Monthly donors are the most valuable supporters a small organization has, and the thing that loses them is a card expiring silently. Ask specifically whether the platform retries failed payments, whether it emails the donor to update the card, and whether it tells you. Many do the first and not the third.
What the donation page looks like on a phone. Most giving is mobile now. Load a competitor’s page on your own phone and count the taps to complete a gift. That number is your conversion rate in disguise.
Where the data goes. A platform that holds donor records you cannot export cleanly has taken something more valuable than a fee. Test the export before you commit, not after.
Receipting that satisfies the rules. Gifts of $250 or more require a contemporaneous written acknowledgement including a statement about goods and services received. If your platform does not produce compliant receipts automatically, someone is writing them by hand.
Events and ticketing
Most small organizations run at least one ticketed event a year, and it is the point where fundraising platforms differ most.
What you want is ticket types at different prices, a way to record the deductible portion separately from the value of what the attendee received, table or group bookings, and a check-in list that works on a phone at the door. The last one sounds trivial and is what goes wrong on the night.
The tax point matters and is routinely handled badly. If someone pays $150 for a dinner worth $60, only $90 is a charitable contribution and your acknowledgement must say so. A platform that treats the whole $150 as a donation produces receipts that are wrong, and the error is yours rather than theirs.
Read the contract for two things
Whatever you choose, check both of these before signing, because neither is easy to fix afterwards.
Who owns the donor data, and how you get it out. Ask for an export during evaluation, not a promise of one later. You want contact records, full gift history and recurring donor details in a documented format.
How rates change. Introductory nonprofit pricing and renewal pricing are frequently different, and platform fees have moved more than once across this market. Ask what notice you get of a change, and whether you can leave without penalty when one happens.
What no platform will do for you
Software raises nothing. It reduces the friction between someone deciding to give and the money arriving, which is real and is not the same thing.
The sector-wide numbers make the point. Donor counts fell an estimated 3.6% in 2025 and overall retention sat at 43.3%. Total giving rose anyway, because a smaller group gave more. No platform reverses that for you.
What moves retention is unglamorous and mostly happens outside the software: acknowledging quickly and specifically, telling people what their money did, and asking again at a sensible interval. Choose a platform that makes those three things easy and you have chosen well.
Work out your own number first
Before comparing anything, take last year’s online income and apply each platform’s full rate to it, including card processing, not the headline platform fee alone. Then compare annual totals in dollars.
Headline rates are designed to be compared in isolation and mislead when they are. A platform advertising a lower percentage but charging separately for processing, monthly access and text-to-give can cost more at your volume than one advertising a higher single rate. The only comparison that means anything is what leaves your account over a year.
Do not miss the free advertising
Separate from any platform, Google Ad Grants provides qualifying nonprofits up to $10,000 a month in search advertising on Google.com. It is a genuine grant rather than a discount, and it is the single largest free resource available to most small nonprofits.
It comes with rules about account structure, keyword quality and click-through rates, and accounts that are set up and abandoned tend to lapse. Budget a few hours a month for someone to maintain it, and it outperforms almost anything you could buy.
How this list was made
Products were selected on whether a US nonprofit under roughly $5m would plausibly choose them, rather than on how well known they are, and every entry names who it is wrong for as well as who it suits. That second half is the part a marketing page leaves out.
Prices are stated only where they were confirmed against the vendor’s own page or its donation partner, and they were checked on the review date shown on this page. Software pricing changes constantly and often without announcement. Treat every figure here as a starting point and confirm it before you budget.
Questions people ask
What is the best free fundraising platform for nonprofits?
Zeffy charges nonprofits nothing: no platform fee, no transaction fee, and it covers card processing, funded by optional contributions donors are prompted to add at checkout. Givebutter is free on the same basis when tips are enabled, and charges a flat 3% platform fee plus processing if you turn tips off.
The trade is real and worth deciding deliberately. Your donors see a prompt asking them to contribute to the platform, and some organizations do not want that in their donation flow.
If you would rather pay than show the prompt, you are comparing percentage and subscription platforms instead, and should compare total cost at your actual annual volume rather than headline rates.
How much do nonprofits pay in fundraising platform fees?
Historically a platform fee of two to five per cent on top of card processing at roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents, so five to eight per cent all in.
On $100,000 raised online that is $5,000 to $8,000 a year, which for a small organization is a meaningful share of a salary. It is the reason the tip funded model has taken hold.
Work out your own number before comparing anything. Take last year's online income, apply each platform's total rate including processing, and compare the annual figures. Headline rates are designed to be compared in isolation and mislead when they are.
Is Zeffy really free?
Free to the nonprofit, yes. Zeffy states that it charges no platform fee and no transaction fee and covers processing costs itself, so the organization receives the full amount.
It is funded by optional contributions from donors, who are prompted at checkout to add a tip supporting the platform. Enough do to cover the costs across all the organizations using it.
So the money comes from your donors rather than from you. Whether that is acceptable is an editorial decision about your donation experience, not a question of whether the pricing claim is true. Look at the checkout flow yourself before deciding.
What is the difference between fundraising software and a donor CRM?
Fundraising software takes money. A donor CRM manages relationships. The overlap is growing and the distinction still matters when you choose.
A donation platform gives you pages, recurring gifts, receipts and campaign tools. A CRM gives you donor histories, segmentation, pledges, soft credits, moves management and reporting on who is lapsing.
Several products now do both adequately, which is the right answer for most small organizations because running two systems means reconciling two systems. Buy separate specialised tools only when you can name the specific capability the combined product lacks.
Do we need peer to peer fundraising?
Only if you have supporters who will actually ask their own networks. The software is never the constraint.
Peer to peer works when there is a natural occasion, a run, a birthday, a memorial, and a group of people with a personal stake. It fails when an organization launches a campaign and hopes supporters will adopt it, which is the common pattern.
Before buying anything for it, name ten people who would run a page. If you cannot, the feature will sit unused, and it should not influence your platform choice at all.
How do we accept recurring donations?
Every platform on this page supports them, so the question is not whether but how well they are maintained.
The thing that kills monthly giving is card expiry. Ask three specific questions of any platform: does it retry a failed payment, does it email the donor asking them to update the card, and does it tell you when a recurring gift lapses. Many do the first two and not the third, so lapses go unnoticed for months.
Then do the human part. Monthly donors are the most valuable supporters a small organization has and are frequently the least thanked, because their gifts arrive silently. An annual note telling them what a year of their giving did is the highest return communication most organizations never send.
Can we use PayPal or Stripe directly instead?
You can, and for a very small organization taking occasional gifts it is a reasonable start.
What you give up is everything around the transaction: donation pages designed to convert, automatic receipts that satisfy the substantiation rules, recurring giving management, campaign tracking, and a donor record. You will rebuild those by hand or go without them.
Both offer nonprofit processing rates that are worth applying for regardless, since most platforms sit on top of one processor or another.
The realistic upgrade point is when someone is manually writing acknowledgement letters, or when you cannot answer who gave last year without opening a spreadsheet.
What does Google Ad Grants give nonprofits?
Up to $10,000 a month in search advertising on Google.com for qualifying nonprofits. It is a grant of advertising rather than a discount, and it is the largest free resource available to most small organizations.
It applies to search ads specifically. Additional or different advertising requires a separate paid account.
The programme carries requirements about account structure, keyword quality and click-through performance, and accounts that are created and then ignored tend to lapse. Budget a few hours a month for maintenance. Organizations that do this well drive more traffic from it than from anything they pay for.