17 best online fundraising platforms to boost your revenue

Online fundraising is an essential part of every nonprofit organization’s overall fundraising strategy. Leveraging online fundraising platforms allows organizations to reach a wider audience, increase donor engagement, and raise more funds to support their critical missions. 

From tools that aid virtual fundraising to in-person event planning and ticket sales, the applications that follow are some of the best online fundraising tools we’ve found to help your organization boost its revenue.

What are online fundraising platforms?

Online fundraising platforms are software solutions that enable organizations to collect donations online and improve the effectiveness of their operations. 

These tools provide a secure and convenient way for donors to contribute while allowing organizations to manage fundraising efforts on the back end. 

A few types of platforms include: 

• Crowdfunding: These platforms allow individuals or organizations to raise funds for specific projects or causes. They often utilize social media sharing to amplify their reach. 
• Text-to-give: Donors can use these platforms to make quick and easy donations via text message. Short codes and keywords are often used to streamline the process.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising: This type of tool empowers individuals to fundraise on behalf of a nonprofit. They often provide tools for creating personal fundraising pages, tracking progress, and sharing updates. 
• Events: Used to host virtual, hybrid, or in-person fundraising events, this platform can be helpful for nonprofits focusing on ticket sales and event management for online auctions, webinars, galas, and more.
• Merchandise: These tools help organizations create and sell merchandise as an additional revenue stream.

17 best online fundraising platforms

These 17 tools are proven to make it easier for supporters to engage with your organization and to make your staff more efficient in their work. For each tool, we’ll describe the main features, why we recommend it, and some information about how you can access the platform or app.

1. Bonterra Fundraising and Engagement 

Best for: All-in-one fundraising platform

Bonterra Fundraising and Engagement (formerly EveryAction) is the perfect option for managing donations and optimizing your fundraising strategies. 

Using advanced segmentation capabilities, Bonterra Fundraising and Engagement helps you target the right donors for successful fundraising and target them through their preferred methods. Personalization, marketing, and data analysis features combine to help you build a sustainable donor base and keep supporters invested in your organization.

It even helps you convert prospects into loyal donors with professional and mobile-friendly subscription and donation forms. With Bonterra Fundraising, there’s nothing your organization can’t do online.

Price: Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise Levels

Features:

• Optimized multi-channel engagement: Customize mobile-optimized donation forms that allow supporters to donate with one click, as well as personalized emails, text messages, and more.
• Drag-and-drop builder: Effortlessly launch donation forms and embed them into any site. Plus, you can clone past campaigns to recreate past results and save time. 
• Data-informed supporter profiles: As one of the best donor management tools, you can gain insights into your supporters with a comprehensive data model. Build supporter profiles that offer a 360-degree view of their engagement, which you can leverage to personalize fundraising asks.

2. Mobilize 

Best for: Volunteer events

Bonterra’s Mobilize solution is an online event platform that allows users to create community-based events and manage volunteers. It works extremely well for nonprofits, advocacy groups, and anyone wanting to mobilize supporters toward a common cause.

With this volunteer management software, you can post your first event in minutes and start taking registrations and RSVPs immediately. You can also mobilize supporters to create and host their own events in support of your organization. They can share custom links with their networks of friends, family, and colleagues to increase participation and help you gain new supporters.

Price: Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise Levels

Features:

• Event management: Easily create single-shift, recurring, and multiple-shift events for in-person, hybrid, or virtual events. 
• Automated communication: Increase event attendance with automated confirmations, attendee follow-ups, post-event feedback surveys, and action items.
• Searchable interface: Showcase your organization’s events across categories, dates, and even locations.

3. Bonterra Giving Days 

Best for: Individual giving days

Bonterra Giving Days (formerly GiveGab) is a fundraising solution that helps nonprofits organize and collect money during individual days of giving. It’s a great tool for nonprofit networks to host affiliate events like 24-hour giving days, in addition to raising awareness and funds through embedded social media engagement and peer-to-peer campaign features.

Giving Days donation forms can also be shared by your supporters and hosted on external websites, turning nearly any advocate into a fundraiser for your organization.

Price: Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise Levels

Features:

• Built-in marketing tools: Everything you need is at your fingertips, from custom logo design and downloadable marketing materials to social media integrations and integrated search engine optimization. 
• Real-time dashboards: Built-in analytics like thermometers and heat maps give insights into current performance and donor activity so you can adjust campaigns dynamically. 
• Gamification tools: With features like leaderboards, prize pickers, and matching, you can keep excitement high and encourage more participation.

4. Canva 

Best for: Fundraising graphics

Canva is a graphic tool that helps you create online and print graphics for nearly any application — no graphic design experience required. Using a drag-and-drop builder and thousands of pre-built templates, you can start easily designing graphics for your nonprofit in a matter of minutes.

You can create animated videos and GIFs and even send your creations out for printing and mailing. Plus, any graphic you create can be exported into multiple formats. Canva also integrates with dozens of apps and social media networks.

Price: Free premium plan for registered nonprofits

Features:

• Brand kit: Upload your nonprofit’s logo and create a color palette of your brand colors to easily align every graphic with your branding.
• Template library: Canva offers a massive library of pre-designed, customizable templates for various needs, like social media posts, posters, presentations, infographics, and emails.
• Collaboration tools: Multiple users can work on the same design simultaneously, making it easier to create and share content as a team. 

5. RoundUp App 

Best for: Small donations

RoundUp is an app that rounds up users’ normal spending to the nearest dollar and donates the extra charge to your nonprofit. If a donor uses a credit card that they connected to their RoundUp app to buy a latte for $4.85, for example, the app rounds that up to $5.00 and sends your nonprofit the extra $0.15. 

It might not seem like much at first, but RoundUp boasts that the average app user donates between $15 and $20 per month from all of their purchase roundups.

Price: $15/mo, Custom pricing for enterprise-level

Features:

• Real-time reports: Integrations with various payment platforms allow you to automatically track donor and donation reports.
• Automated receipts: Donors receive automatic donation receipts monthly for one less micro-task you have to worry about. 
• Integrate data: Seamlessly export and integrate donor data with your existing tech stack.

6. Bonterra Case Management

Best for: Showcasing impact

Bonterra Case Management solution (formerly Social Solutions) helps your nonprofit track your community impact from the first touchpoint through to the final realized impact. 

It then makes your data available with beautiful reports and analytics, which you can share with donors and potential donors to increase fundraising engagement. Demonstrating your organization’s impact is faster and easier with this online fundraising solution. 

Price: Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise Levels

Features:

• Dynamic custom dashboards: Create internal processes and impact reporting that can be shared with your team, board members, grantmakers, and members of the public.
• Community network: Connect to other organizations like yours so you can capitalize on best practices implemented by thousands of organizations solving social issues worldwide.
• Standardized data entry: Collect data efficiently with a template library of customizable forms, including the most common and best practice-based forms and assessments. 

7. Bonfire 

Best for: T-shirt fundraising

T-shirt and apparel fundraising is an increasingly popular way to raise money for your nonprofit. Bonfire makes it easy to create, print, and sell custom apparel for your next fundraising event or advocacy campaign.

Bonfire allows you to create a campaign quickly with point-and-click simplicity. Using Bonfire’s creation and fundraising tools, you can raise funds, increase brand awareness, and let supporters share their love for your organization publicly. When your campaign ends, Bonfire ships sold products directly to your buyer.

Price: Free for verified nonprofits

Features:

• Print quality focus: Bonfire’s design tools are optimized for high-quality printing, ensuring your designs look best on apparel. 
• Integration capabilities: Export supporter contact information and integrate your Bonfire campaigns with your other fundraising tools and platforms for streamlined workflows. 
• Peer-to-peer fundraisers: Empower your supporters to host their own t-shirt fundraising campaigns to amplify your impact. 

8. eCardWidget 

Best for: eCards

eCardWidget is a unique fundraising solution that allows you to create and share custom eCards with donors. Create branded eCards, embed the widget into your website or campaign page, and let donors send an eCard to a friend by donating. 

These features make it easy for donors to make a gift in honor of someone and to spread the word about your organization to their friends and family.

Price: $30/mo for Starter Plan, $60 for Premium Plan, $120/mo for Enterprise Plan

Features:

• Translation: Choose from a variety of languages, including Spanish, German, French, and Hebrew, to translate your eCards. You can also upload your own translation. 
• Advanced settings: Schedule send times; turn on read receipts to be notified when recipients have opened their eCard; and include checkboxes for newsletter opt-ins, terms agreements, or follow-ups. 
• Website integration: Embed eCard widgets with any website builder, making it simple for visitors to send greetings. 

9. Double the Donation

Best for: Matching gifts

Double the Donation’s online fundraising tool is a necessity for matching gifts. Double the Donation stresses the idea that staying in sight means staying in mind because they know that $6-$10 billion worth of matched donations goes unclaimed every year. 

With an extensive database of companies that provide matching gift programs, Double the Donation prides itself on helping your donors speedily access their matching gift programs to get the process started. They believe that the promotion and automation of matching gift requests can boost the initial donation amount, too.

Double the Donation handles all of the paperwork for the employee and the employer, making record-keeping and donation processing much easier for your organization.

Price: $999/yr for Small Nonprofit Plan, $2,500/yr for Standard Plan, Custom Pricing for Enterprise Plan

Features:

• Embeddable widget: Add a widget to your donation forms to help donors determine their eligibility status in just a few moments.
• Automation: The platform can manage automated follow-ups, message customization, and aggregate statistics for matching gift strategy.
• Integrations: Combine nonprofit donation tools and CRMs to keep all your data easily accessible.

10. Mailchimp

Best for: Email marketing

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform offering a robust set of tools for organizations to leverage for online fundraising. Its user-friendly interface and intuitive design make it accessible to nonprofits of all sizes.

Beyond nonprofit email marketing, it offers fundraising-specific features like donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising tools, and event fundraising to streamline efforts and build stronger supporter relationships.

Price: $0/mo for Free Plan, $13/mo for Essentials Plan, $20 for Standard Plan, $350/mo for Premium Plan

Features:

• Audience segmentation: Personalize your fundraising appeals by targeting your audience based on demographics, interests, and giving history.
• A/B testing: Test different subject lines, email content, and calls to action to optimize campaign performance.
• Email marketing automation: Create automated email campaigns for fundraising appeals, donor thank-you messages, and event reminders. 

11. Qgiv 

Best for: Auctions

Designed specifically for nonprofits, Qgiv is a unified fundraising platform with a wide range of tools, like text fundraising, peer-to-peer capabilities, and auction features. 

Their auction platform supports various formats including silent, live, and online — with mobile and web-based bidding options. Complete with event management and built-in checkout capabilities so you can focus on the details.

Price: $25/mo for Giving Essentials Plan, +$159/mo for Text Fundraising, +$259/mo for Peer-to-Peer, +$259/mo for Auctions

Features:

• VIP bidding: Take advantage of the Virtual Terminal app to give your major donors a premium experience.
• Custom mappings: Automatically identify and leverage supporters’ interests and skills to match them with fundraising initiatives that align with their passions.
• Recurring options: Convert one-time donors into recurring supporters with automated recurring donation prompts. 

12. Donately 

Best for: Integrations

This cloud-based fundraising platform was designed for nonprofits of all sizes. While its interface is simple to use, it has robust capabilities and vast integration options—perfect for groups wanting to connect additional tools. 

In addition to monthly and annual billing options, Donately offers one-time licensing options that eliminate additional donation fees often associated with fundraising platforms. The company states that accounts can save over $40,000 for every $1 million raised with this option. 

Price: $0/mo for Core Plan, $19/mo for Starter Plan, $69 for Team Plan

Features:

• Advanced integrations: Donately offers a native integration library, automated workflows, and thousands of integrations through Zapier. Still don’t have what you need? You can request a custom integration for your specific needs.
• “Donor pays fee” option: You can give donors the option to cover transaction fees along with their donation. 
• Retention analysis: As part of their advanced reporting, Donately can help you identify trends in donor retention.

13. Eventbrite 

Best for: Event planning

Eventbrite is a ticketing platform that can be used for fundraising event management, capitalizing on event attendance to generate additional revenue, and cultivating donor relationships. You can easily create and manage event pages with customizable ticket options and integrated donation features. 

By listing events on Eventbrite, nonprofits can gain visibility to a large pool of potential attendees and donors actively searching for events in their area. The platform is free to use — attendees just pay fees on tickets. There are no fees for free events. 

Price: Free + ticket fees

Features:

• Ticket sales: Sell tickets online for in-person or virtual events, manage guest lists, and track ticket sales in real time. 
• Virtual event hosting: Eventbrite offers robust tools and integrations for hosting and managing virtual events, like webinars, online conferences, and live streams. 
• Customizable event pages: Create more than a basic event listing with the ability to upload your logo, brand colors, and images to your event page. 

14. Snowball Fundraising  

Best for: Text-to-give campaigns

Snowball Fundraising is an all-in-one fundraising tool with auctions, text-to-give, event ticketing, supporter management, peer-to-peer fundraising, and outreach tools. It’s a great platform for nonprofits that need user-friendly text fundraising campaigns.

Price: $0/yr for Essential Plan, $549/yr for Premium Plan, $849 for Professional Plan, $99+/mo for Enterprise Plan

Features:

• Phone number options: Choose from a local, toll-free, or short-code number depending on your use case. Toll-free and short-code numbers are only available with an Enterprise plan but may be worth it for those needing national reach.
• Trigger words: Assign unlimited trigger words supporters can easily text to donate to campaigns, bid on auction items, or buy event tickets. 
• Unlimited inbound messages: Snowball doesn’t limit how many inbound messages you can receive or cap the donation amount supporters can give over text.

15. ThankView 

Best for: Video campaigns

ThankView leverages the power of personalized video to enhance donor engagement and cultivate deeper relationships. Create videos to express gratitude, acknowledge contributions, and share compelling stories and updates with supporters.

Price: Contact for pricing

Features:

• Built-in storage: Store all your ThankView videos directly in the platform at no extra cost. Their video library also has folders and tags for easy organization. 
• Video request: Request videos directly from an individual or post a link for greater participation. You can provide instructions and an in-line script for people to reference. Their videos will automatically upload into your library video.
• Personalization: Create branded landing pages, video overlays, and digital envelopes for a customized user experience at every touchpoint. Plus, some subscriptions include custom assets created by ThankView’s in-house design team. 

16. GoFundMe

Best for: Crowdfunding

As a widely recognized crowdfunding tool, GoFundMe has become synonymous with online fundraising. It’s known for its ease of use, making it accessible to individuals and organizations of all sizes. 

GoFundMe’s strength lies in its ability to support various fundraising needs, from personal emergencies and medical expenses to charitable causes and community projects.

Price: Free + transaction fees

Features:

• Social sharing: GoFundMe will automatically generate custom captions, images, and videos ready to share for individual social platforms.
• Beneficiary designation: If you’re raising money for someone else, you can set them as a beneficiary so any money generated will go directly to them from GoFundMe. You can also choose a charity for GoFundMe to send money to. 
• Secure payments: GoFundMe uses payment encryption technology to keep donor’s payments safe and money securely stored until it’s withdrawn.

17. Donorbox

Best for: AI assistance

Donorbox is a versatile fundraising platform that integrates with any website. Simply add a donation button, a custom form, or a page link to your existing site, and you’re ready to start accepting donations. 

The software aims to provide donors with a speedy checkout and even has an app, Donorbox Live™ Kiosk, that allows you to turn any tablet into an on-the-go giving kiosk for cashless donations.

Price: $0/mo for Standard Plan, $139 for Pro Plan, Custom pricing for Premium Plan

Features:

• Jay AI: Jay AI is included with Premium plans and includes an AI assistant and writer to help you create personalized fundraising messages, find patterns, and gain insights more efficiently.
• Membership programs: Create monthly and annual memberships for supporters with different tiers and benefits. 
• Crypto and stock donations: Offer donors greater flexibility by accepting cryptocurrency and stock donations alongside traditional payment methods.

Key features of online fundraising platforms

Online fundraising platforms offer a wealth of features to streamline your efforts and boost donor engagement. Here are some key features to look for: 

• Custom donation pages: Create branded pages with compelling visuals, impact stories, and clear donation options. This allows you to personalize the donor experience and showcase your impact effectively.
• Recurring giving: Encourage ongoing support with recurring donation options on a variety of schedules and automated reminders. This provides a predictable income stream and allows donors to budget their contributions more easily.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising tools: Empower supporters to create their own fundraising pages and events. This expands your reach and leverages the power of social connections.
• Secure payment processing: Ensure safe and convenient payment options by integrating reputable and encrypted payment processors. This builds trust and encourages smooth transactions.
• Donor management tools: Manage your donor data efficiently with tools to track donations, segment your audience, and send personalized communications. 
• Reporting: Gain valuable insights into your fundraising performance with comprehensive tools that let you track key metrics, analyze trends, and ultimately make data-driven decisions.

Benefits of online fundraising platforms

Online fundraising tools can revolutionize your organization’s efforts. Here’s how they can empower your fundraising: 

• Increased reach: Break down geographical barriers and connect with potential donors worldwide. Online platforms allow you to tap into a diverse donor pool that may not be accessible otherwise.
• Enhanced convenience: Donors can contribute anytime, anywhere, with just a few clicks. Platforms also automate tasks and streamline donation processing to save valuable time and resources within your organization.
• Improved donor engagement: Foster deeper connections with your supporters, from tools that personalize communication to gamification tools that deepen participation.
• Data-driven decision-making: Gain valuable insights into your campaign’s reach and effectiveness with real-time reporting. This will allow you to adjust your strategy on the fly for maximum impact.

Finding the best online fundraising platform for you

Now that you have a baseline for the best online fundraising platforms, consult your budget and goals to determine which fundraising solutions would be best for your organization. Remember to keep reevaluating to make the most out of your online tools.

FAQ

What is the best online fundraising platform? 

The best online fundraising platform depends on your specific needs and goals. Factors to consider include your budget, the type of fundraising you plan to do, desired features, and the size and complexity of your organization. For an all-in-one solution that streamlines fundraising, donor management, and event planning, consider Bonterra.

How do you choose the right online fundraising platform? 

Choose a platform that aligns with your fundraising goals and the type of fundraising you need the most support with. That may be peer-to-peer fundraising or personalized marketing efforts and segmentation. Consider your needs and then research accordingly. 

What are online fundraising platform fees? 

Platforms typically charge transaction fees or payment processing fees. These can either be passed onto the donor or come from your total donation funds. Review fee structures carefully before selecting a platform. Some may offer fee incentives based on your membership tier or even licensing that helps alleviate fees.