GiveSignup is a free platform for nonprofits, with no monthly or subscription fees. We only make money from processing fees that you can absorb or pass on to your supporters so that your nonprofit can get free websites, free domains, free CRM, free email marketing, free Facebook Fundraising integration, and free DIY fundraising. 

When you create a ticket event, donation website, or fundraising run/walk/ride powered by RunSignup, you can choose to absorb the processing fee, pass it to your supporter, or split the processing fee 50/50. GiveSignup charges a low 4% processing fee on all donations (yes, that includes credit card fees). Processing fees on tickets and registrations vary based on the total checkout amount, and there is no per ticket/registration fee, which saves families money when they sign up together. 

Nonprofits can lower that processing fee even more with donor covered fees. Many nonprofits that use our platform pay significantly less than 4% because they give donors the option to pay the processing fee on their transactions. 

American Association for Cancer Research, the Philadelphia Marathon’s charity partner, lowered their donation processing fee to just 1.9% by giving donors the option to cover the processing fee. This means that donors voluntarily covered more than half of the total processing fee for AACR’s donations. 

Semper Fi Fund decreased their donation processing fee to just 0.4% with the combination of donor covered fees and RunSignup’s free Facebook Fundraiser Integration. RunSignup’s Facebook Fundraisers integration allows run/walk/ride fundraisers to auto-create Facebook fundraisers from RunSignup. The amounts raised on RunSignup and Facebook are automatically synced, enabling your participants (and your nonprofit) to raise more and reach fundraising goals faster. Facebook covers the processing fees for all donations made on Facebook, making it free for nonprofits to accept donations on Facebook. Semper Fi Fund’s donations are already 13.5% ahead of last year’s donations, and the combination of free donations on Facebook and donor covered fees has reduced Semper Fi Fund’s overall donation processing fee to just 0.4%. 

If your donors and registrants cover processing fees, then your nonprofit is effectively using our platform for free! That means you get free and unlimited websites, Facebook fundraising integration, CRM, store, photo platform, analytics, reports, domain and subdomain support, text messaging, volunteer management, email marketing, sponsor management, viral social marketing tools, DIY fundraising, and much more. 

It is simple to enable donor covered fees for your nonprofit’s ticket events, donation websites, and run/walk/rides.

Ticket Events and Donation Websites

To set up donor covered fees on donations to ticket events and donation websites, you’ll need to set your preferences in the Step 4 of the Ticket Event Wizard or Step 2 of the Donation Website Wizard. If you want your donors to always pay the processing fee for their donations, then check Processing fee paid by donor. If you plan on giving them an option, though, check Processing fee comes out of the charge.

If you check Processing fee comes out of the charge, donors will automatically get a prompt to cover the processing fee. It will use the default text unless you customize it. 

To customize the prompt, go to Event Dashboard >> Donations >> Donations Setup. Scroll down and click on Display Settings. Under Absorb Processing Fee Text, add your custom message:

In the future, we will offer the ability for your supporters to cover the processing fee on tickets. 

Runs/Walks/Rides

To set up Donor Covered Fees for your fundraising run/walk/ride, go to Race Dashboard >> Financial >> Pricing >> Processing Fee Type.

The first step is to choose how you want the processing fees to be handled by default. If you want all donors and registrants to be forced to pay the fees automatically, select Processing fee paid by donor. But if you want to give donors the option to cover the fees, select Processing fee comes out of the charge. This means your nonprofit will absorb the processing fee unless the donor chooses to pay it instead. 

Next, you can enter a custom prompt like the Komen example above. (These options won’t apply if you have already set that registrants and donors always pay the fee.)

Benefits of Donor Covered Fees

Besides the obvious financial benefit to your nonprofit, donor covered fees can make your donors feel like they are going the extra mile by covering the processing fee. Donors also like knowing that 100% of their donation is going to your nonprofit. 

GiveSignup and RunSignup make it easy to pass processing fees to donors–and the difference between our platform and other fundraising platforms is that donor covered fees give your nonprofit a free platform for revenue generation and supporter engagement so that all donations go towards your mission. Courtney Slack of 9/11 Memorial & Museum said, “It’s worth noting that having access to such an amazing platform for free is really beneficial. We’re able to work with a user-friendly site our supporters love and keep our costs lower, which allows us to say that all funds raised from this event help support the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.”