Are "free" CRMs really free?

Who pays for your donation software?

Every platform has servers, payment fees, engineers and support to pay for. If your organization pays nothing, someone else does. On "free" donation platforms, that someone is your donor.

What did your donor see at checkout?

On one popular "free" platform, a donor joining a $20 monthly membership reached the pay button and found a contribution to the platform already selected at 17%. The other choices listed were 20% and 22%. To give nothing extra, they had to open Other and type 0.

Would you have noticed it? Would your oldest member?

Where did the extra go?

None of it went to you. A donor who keeps the 17% on a $100 gift pays $117: you get $100 and the platform gets $17. That's 14.5 cents of every dollar your donor paid. At 22%, it's 18 cents.

And the donor who planned to give exactly $100? Some won't pay $117. They lower the gift until the total is back to $100. Then you get $85.47 and the platform still gets $14.53. Your donor gave $100, and $14.53 of it never reached your cause.

• At 17%: you get $85.47, the platform gets $14.53.
• At 20%: you get $83.33, the platform gets $16.67.
• At 22%: you get $81.97, the platform gets $18.03.

Either way, the platform takes the same share of every dollar the donor pays. The only difference is whether it's added on top of your gift or taken out of it.

Would your donors have chosen that?

1. If the box had been empty, would your donors have typed 17% into it?
2. Why is $0 hidden behind "Other" instead of being one of the choices?
3. Did your monthly members agree to pay the platform every single month?
4. Can your platform tell you how many donors trimmed their gift or walked away? If not, why not?
5. When you need your money, do you fill out a form, wait for the platform to release it, and follow up until it does?

Who hears about it when they find out?

• You do. On one platform's own feedback board, nonprofits write that the default 17% "has been noted as exorbitant by our donors," that donors email asking "why they were charged more than expected," and that some felt "scammed" and asked for refunds.
• Regulators do. The New Jersey Attorney General cited public reporting that a large crowdfunding site applied a default tip of about 16.5% that went to the site, not the charity.

Donors understand that processing a payment costs a few percent. A pre-selected tip several times that size, going to a company they never chose, is a business model that works best when donors don't look closely. Your donors trust you, not the platform.

What does a gift cost on Donorly?

• No pre-selected tip. Nothing is ticked for your donors: no tip, no slider, no "Other" to find.
• Processing costs a few percent, charged by Stripe on every card payment. Donors can choose to cover it, with a box that is never ticked for them.
• The money goes straight into your own Stripe account. Payouts arrive on the schedule you set with Stripe, as often as every day.
• Every donor gets a receipt that shows exactly what they gave you.

That's how Donorly works.