Whether you're looking for sponsorship, money for a good cause, or even for a business venture or new project, there's many ways to get your fundraiser off the ground with the help of these platforms.
Today we're looking at 9 of the best fundraising platforms that are tailored towards Australians. There's many more out there, but these are local sites we've tried and tested.
The power of these platforms is incredible, thanks to social media sharing your campaign could go viral within hours of your first few sponsors.
Checkout the best fundraising platforms:
1. My Cause
My Cause is an Australian based online crowdfunding and fundraising platform that helps people raise money for a person, cause or charity. So far over $100 million has been raised for almost 70,000 causes through the platform.
It takes just three steps to raise money on the platform. First you create a campaign for your cause. Once it’s created, My Cause provide a number of sharing tools to help spread the campaign across social media with any funds collected going directly into your account.
To donate money, people pick the campaign they would like to support before picking a donation amount and filling out their card details. Donators can also leave a personal message with their donations.
Individual donations and message then appear in the campaign page. My Cause charges no transaction fees other than credit card fees and no platform fees.
Pros
•No platform fees and zero commission
•Can be used for individual and community causes, sports clubs, schools, corporates and registered charities
•100 % Australian Owned
•24/7 email and phone support
•Provides PR & Media support
•Fundraising for multiple campaigns
•Allows for portfolio giving, where multiple charities can be donated to in one transaction
•Donation gift cards available
•Users can pledge their birthday
2. Go Fund Me
Go Fund Me is Australia’s largest crowdfunding platform that helps individuals, groups and organisations to raise funds for a range of causes and charitable endeavours.
Campaigns range from personal fundraising to help with illness or accidents, funerals and memorials, emergency event fundraising, education fees and volunteer programs. Go Fund Me Australia has raised over A$5 billion from 70 million donations so far.
For individual campaigns in Australia, Go Fund Me does not charge any platform fees. They charge a small transaction fee of 2.2% plus A$0.30 for credit card processing. Donors can instead choose to leave a tip when making a donation allowing Go Fund Me to maintain the platform.
Current fundraising campaigns on the platform include donations for the maintenance of a community ice rink, funds to help a family recover from a house fire and donations towards brain tumor surgery as well as fundraising to help those affected by Covid-19.
Pros
•Donor protection guarantee
•Simple set up, fundraisers can set up a campaign page in minutes
•GoFundMe mobile allowing fundraising on the go
•24/7 email support
•0% platform fee
•Funds received in 2-5 working days
•No time limits or fundraising deadlines
•All donations received are kept, regardless if the target is met
3. Chuffed
Chuffed is a crowdfunding platform for socially conscious projects. It supports individuals, not for profits, social enterprises and community groups to run fundraising campaigns.
Chuffed is a social enterprise with a mission to build a transparent, inspiring and personalised way to help people make change in their communities. Chuffed only support campaigns that align with their values, with each campaign being screened to make sure it fits with its social purpose.
Chuffed is 100% free for campaigners with no admin or set up fees, regardless of the size of the campaign. Campaigners keep everything that they raise even if they do not meet their fundraising target.
For donors, there is a standard card processing fee of 2% plus $0.30. Donors can also choose to make a voluntary donation to Chuffed to help them run the platform.
Pros
•Social enterprise itself funded through crowdfunding
•0% platform fees and low processing fees
•Accepts worldwide donations from 150 countries and 11 currencies
•Accept payments through Apple Pay and other mobile device payments
•Donor management tools such as real time analytics and supporter messaging features
•Integration with third party tools and CRMs such as Salesforce
•Online crowdfunding academy and in person training events
4. GoFundraise
Go Fundraise is a fundraising platform helping individuals, teams and charities easily and cost effectively raise money for causes and events.
Users can pick a charity or an event to fundraise for such as a marathon or sponsored cycle, or create their own, whilst charities can manage large fundraising initiatives through the platform.
Go Fundraise offers two types of fundraising platforms – Basic and Select. Basic is completely free and aimed at individuals and teams. Users can create a branded portal with unlimited team and individual fundraising pages and accept unlimited donations.
The Select platform is Go Fundraise’s paid option for charities and organisations to create fundraising microsites.
This comes with a range of features to manage fundraising initiatives such as customisable templates, a complete content management system, real time data reporting, registration and ticketing tools as well as options to sell merchandise.
Pros
•Ability to integrate with the two leading fitness trackers – Fitbit and Starva. Allows for live progress updates in physical challenges such as marathons
•Mobile first design
•Share via SMS feature
•Blog and activity feed
•Supporters can comment, like and share directly to Facebook
•Visually appealing with prominent cause logos and share and donate buttons
5. Everydayhero
Everyday Hero allows people to create fundraising pages for their chosen charities and raise money through sponsored activities like bike rides, running, baking, dancing and special events.
Everyday Hero was founded in 2007 and since then more than 4 million people have supported causes helping almost 6000 charities.
Once users have chosen their charity and set a fundraising target, they can create their own page adding photos and a personal story before sharing it with friends, family and colleagues.
Users can post videos, photos and status updates as well as training progress from fitness trackers like Fitbit and Strava. Individual donors, either named or anonymous, appear on the page with a leader-board of top supporters.
Uses can hold their own event or activity and raise money for a nominated charity, or alternatively link to an existing event such as a marathon. Any donations raised are transferred directly to the nominated charities.
Everyday Hero charge a 1.4% donation fee with an option for donors to cover it themselves.
Pros
•Easy to use and quick page set up
•Ability to add status updates and progress reports straight to the page’s activity feed
•Integration with fitness trackers and social media accounts with automatic updates
•Team fundraising functionality
•Option to write messages to individual donors through page
6. Raisely
Raisley is an all in one fundraising platform to help registered charities, non-profits and community organisations raise money online. Raisley can be used for peer to peer fundraising, events, appeals and donations with a number of features to support each.
Each charity can create their own standalone, branded website using a range of pre-built templates that are fully customisable using the built in page builder or CSS.
Some features of the site include optimised 3 step donation forms, one click donate and the ability to accept regular donations, automatic receipts, donor onboarding tools, campaign analytics, built in CRM tools, integrations with many popular web libraries and marketing tools as well as a full suite of developer options.
Pros
•Substantial features and tools to support any campaign and suitable for professional charities and organisations
•Used by prominent organisations such as Oxfam, Greenpeace and Starlight
•Fully customisable and white label, Raisley name only appears in footer
•Can accept donations with Amex, Visa and Mastercard in 130 currencies
•Integrates with Stripe and PayPal allowing direct payment to bank
•No set up or hosting fees for campaigns raising under $500,000 yearly
•Free CRM for up to 2000 records
•Free custom domain
•Optional adds on such as messaging tools
7. GoGetFunding
GoGetFunding is a personal fundraising website allowing people to raise money for personal causes and loved ones, as well as events, causes and charities that matter to them.
The site has been used to raise funds for medical bills, funerals and memorials, volunteer trips, legal costs, random acts of kindness, weddings, honeymoons and education costs.
Each fundraiser gets an individual web-page which they can customise and add photos, videos and a personal message telling their story and explaining their fundraising goals. Pages can be public or private, have a set deadline or be ongoing and the type of donation can be specified.
Go Get Funding can accept donations in 23 different currencies and pages can be in multiple languages, allowing campaigns to travel around the globe. Donations can be made by debit or credit card, Stripe and PayPal and be accessed as soon as they have cleared.
Go Get Funding does not charge any set up fees but charges a 6.9% fee on the total amount of funds raised, as well as a processing fee for donors.
Pros
•Easy and quick set up
•Range of currencies accepted
•Designed for personal causes
•Dedicated fundraising coach
•Ongoing access to funds
8. GiveNow
Givenow is a technology platform that facilitates payments for not for profit organisations.
Givenow operates four main services. The first is donations through the Givenow website.
Organisations can set up their own page on the Givenow platform and accept commission free donations. The second service is the ability to embed Givenow’s payment technology, allowing organisations to accept donations through their own websites.
The third is a social fundraising feature called Crowdraiser. This enables donors to create their own personal web page connected to a specific cause that allows them to fundraise on a particular organisation’s behalf.
Typically, a CrowdRaiser is used to raise funds in conjunction with an event like a birthday, wedding, fun-run, triathlon, hair shave or any other situation where someone might want to raise money for an organisation.
The fourth service is the Other Ways To Give, an interactive platform that connects organisations looking to receive donations of items with donors looking to give their items to worthwhile causes. Listings can include items such as bikes, blankets, food and furniture.
Pros
•Free platform for organisations looking to raise less than $10,000
•No set up or ongoing fees
•Organisations can receive in kind donations as well as financial support
•Fundraisers can select up to three different causes to support
9. FareShare
FareShare is a not for profit food rescue operation which rescues surplus, quality food from supermarkets, wholesalers, farmers and other businesses and cooks it into free nutritious meals for people in need.
FareShare cooks more than 6,000 free meals a day for charities such as soup vans, homeless shelters, women’s refuges and community food banks. Fareshare run production kitchens in Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as three kitchen gardens and a distribution warehouse.
There are several ways in which individuals can support Fareshare. They can donate funds. With one meal costing just 75 cents, a $15 dollars donation can provide 20 meals. People can hold fundraising events and do activities such as walk, run or swim for meals.
People can run a food drive and collect kitchen staples such as pasta and rice to help keep the kitchens stocked. They can volunteer their time to cook, grow and deliver food, or to help in the warehouse, office or on special projects.
Fareshare rely on donations of surplus food from supermarkets, wholesalers, farmers, manufacturers, importers and other food businesses.
They also run corporate team building activities where employees can come and volunteer in the kitchens, allowing other non food businesses to get involved.
10. Living Fundraisers
Website now closed (July 2020)
Living Fundraisers is an eco-friendly activity based fundraising initiative to help schools, groups and organisations raise funds through healthy, family friendly fundraising in a socially responsible and ethical way.
Living Fundraisers supply a range of products to organisations at a 40% discount to the recommended retail price which are then sold for full price, with the organisation keeping the difference. Fundraisers can choose from several different models of fundraiser.
For example they can set up a customised web shop, organise a take home drive where participants take home a set of products and pay for by themselves, a stall or other display where the products are sold, or an order form where people can place orders which are then fulfilled by Living Fundraisers.
Living Fundraisers supply a range of garden and lifestyle products to use in fundraising initiatives. These include soy candles, birthday and greetings cards, flower and vegetable growing kits, herb kits, flowering bulbs and seeds and snack packets.
Pros
•People get something in return for donating
•A range of fundraising options and products
•No advanced payment for approved organisations and a 30 day invoice
•A range of support materials are provided
•Free sample sets
•Free shipping
•60% profits for the fundraiser
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