13 Best Nonprofit Fundraising Platforms and How to Choose the Right One
Money. Your organization needs it, and online fundraising has become the standard way nonprofits collect it. In 2025, one in five nonprofits got more than half their donations online, and those numbers show no signs of stopping.
But with so many different donation platforms for nonprofits available, it can be tricky to figure out which one is best for your organization.
Big Sea’s here to help. We’ve been helping nonprofits leverage online fundraising for over 20 years. We know what steps to take (and avoid) when choosing a nonprofit CRM; how to monitor online fundraising campaigns (think: a Facebook and programmatic advertising campaign driving people to your website’s donation page); and how to pick the right fundraising solutions to grow your impact.
There’s no shortage of fundraising platforms for nonprofits that help streamline the online giving process and keep you connected with donors. Whether you’re a small community organization or a national brand, whether you’re gearing up for Giving Tuesday or running recurring giving programs year-round, here are some of the most effective fundraising platforms our nonprofit clients are using.
1. Fundraise Up
Pricing Model: Transaction fees + no monthly subscription
Transaction Fee: Up to 4% (plus Stripe or PayPal processing fees)
Special Feature: AI-powered conversion optimization
Fundraise Up is a great platform for nonprofit fundraising. With outstanding campaign pages, top-notch security features, great customer support, and easy integration with several other platforms, Fundraise Up simplifies and centralizes processes across a range of fundraising activities. This includes any online fundraising on your website, over the phone, through telethons, or during fundraising events. Plus, Fundraise Up uses powerful AI technology to optimize your fundraising efforts.
Bonus: Integrate with HubSpot
We recommend HubSpot as a powerful CRM for our nonprofit clients, and integrating Fundraise Up with HubSpot can help supercharge your campaigns. HubSpot allows you to collect and understand data about your community, create targeted marketing materials, automate your marketing efforts, and produce powerful web pages that convert. Fundraise Up is available in the HubSpot app store.
2. Classy (GoFundMe Pro)
Pricing Model: Annual subscription + platform fee + transaction fee for credit cards
Annual Subscription: Custom pricing (typically $300+/month)
Special Feature: Peer-to-peer fundraising and crowdfunding campaigns
Classy (now fully rebranded as GoFundMe Pro) is a powerful fundraising platform that maximizes your impact with tools that make it easier for donors to give generously. The platform modernizes the donor experience and accelerates social impact for worthy causes through engaging, intuitive UX that fosters loyalty and ongoing support.
While GoFundMe Pro lets you create a variety of fundraising campaigns, its peer-to-peer fundraising and crowdfunding campaign options are ideal for walks, runs, and large-scale P2P fundraising events. Backed by GoFundMe’s community of 190 million donors, GoFundMe Pro gives enrolled nonprofits access to expanded discovery that no other platform can match. These giving options are especially popular with younger donors and Gen Z.
3. Givebutter
Pricing: Free to use (optional tip model) + standard processing fees
Annual Subscription: Givebutter Plus plan, contact-based pricing starting at ~$29/month
Special Feature: Truly all-in-one features
Givebutter is a free fundraising platform that offers a remarkable array of tools, from donation forms and livestream fundraising events to auctions and mobile giving. You can easily manage event ticketing, launch text message blasts, and use their text-to-give features to capture real-time excitement at an in-person fundraising event. Givebutter also added leaderboard features for peer-to-peer campaigns, letting supporters compete to drive the most donations.
Givebutter earns revenue through optional donor tips at checkout. If you turn off tips, a flat 3% platform fee applies. Most donors (over 95%, according to Givebutter) choose to cover fees when asked, which can bring your effective cost close to zero.
4. Donorbox
Pricing Model: Tiered plans with free Standard option and paid Pro tier
Pricing: Standard plan is free to start (2.95% platform fee per transaction); Pro plan is $150/month with a 1.75% platform fee
Special Feature: Crypto and stock donations
Donorbox offers unique, user-friendly options for connecting with your recurring donors. Features like text-to-give, which allow community members to donate easily via smartphone, and crypto/stock donations provide donors with a wide variety of ways to support your cause. They also help you set up a donor portal so supporters can manage recurring donations and view their giving history.
Donorbox also offers a large catalog of resources to help nonprofits learn more about fundraising and the tools associated with it. The free Standard plan is a solid starting point for smaller organizations; the Pro plan makes financial sense once you’re processing around $12,500 or more per month, at which point the lower platform fee offsets the monthly subscription cost.
5. Blackbaud (Raiser’s Edge NXT)
Pricing Model: Annual subscription
Price: Custom subscription (typically $10,000–$15,000/year for smaller organizations; larger nonprofits commonly pay $20,000–$50,000+)
Special Feature: Full nonprofit CRM and website builder
With multiple giving programs, flexible online donation forms, and a variety of payment options, BlackBaud’s Raiser’s Edge NXT platform is a comprehensive nonprofit CRM that helps you manage complex donor data, constituent profiles, donor relationships, large-scale volunteer management, and more. BlackBaud boasts end-to-end gift management, AI-driven donation suggestions, custom analytics, and deep donor management capabilities.
Raiser’s Edge NXT is best suited for established nonprofits raising $1M+ annually. The pricing and implementation complexity can be prohibitive for smaller organizations. You’ll need to budget for implementation costs on top of the annual subscription, which can add $5,000–$25,000 in year one.
6. Harness Giving
Pricing: Monthly subscription starting at $220/month with zero transaction fees (a $0 free tier with core tools is also available)
Special Feature: Impact calculator and round-up giving
With over 2,700 clients, Harness Giving touts an easy-to-use platform focused heavily on encouraging recurring donations. Their unique Impact Calculator helps nonprofits connect with stakeholders by showing them exactly how much impact their donation has had on the community.
Harness has expanded significantly since its early days, adding a full CRM, donor insights, communications tools, and events, all under one subscription with no transaction fees on paid plans.
7. HubSpot
Pricing: Tiered (Professional CRM Suite starts at $1,600/month, but nonprofits get a 40% discount)
Special Feature: World-class marketing tools and automation
While not strictly a donation processor, HubSpot is the ultimate nonprofit CRM for tracking donor relationships. With dynamic dashboards, segmentation, and customizable workflows, you can personalize your outreach and drastically improve donor retention. And it’s a real marketing powerhouse when it’s integrated with tools like Classy or Fundraise Up.
For most nonprofits, HubSpot beats Salesforce on ease of use: your whole team can learn it without a dedicated admin. When thinking about the lifetime value of a donor relationship, HubSpot’s automation and reporting capabilities help you understand and act on that data in ways most standalone fundraising platforms simply can’t.
>> Learn more about how to get the most out of HubSpot in our blog “The Complete Guide to HubSpot for Nonprofits.”
8. Facebook
Pricing Model: Free
Special Feature: Social Media Fundraising
Chances are most of your donors are already scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, so why not catch them where they are? For nonprofits already active on Meta’s platforms, Facebook fundraiser is a solid, no-cost tool you can use to streamline your online giving process through social media. Your fundraising options are integrated directly into Facebook, and users can donate through whichever platform they choose, including PayPal, Network for Good, and PayPal Giving Fund (which now serves as the sole donation processor for Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram).
9. FreeFunder
Pricing Model: Free
Special Feature: Crowdfunding
The major advantage is right there in the name: it’s free. (For the fundraiser, at least.) Like with Givebutter above, FreeFunder donors are asked (but not required) to donate to the platform itself at checkout. It’s still a lesser-known platform: FreeFunder is often used for personal causes like medical treatments. But it also works just as well for nonprofits—particularly smaller, community-based organizations.
For small organizations looking for free fundraising options without committing to a full platform, FreeFunder is worth a look. It lacks the donor management depth of dedicated nonprofit fundraising software, but features such as text-to-give, team member management, email distribution, easy onboarding, and embedded fundraising pages make it easier to use than some platforms.
10. Virtuous Raise (Formerly RaiseDonors)
Pricing Model: Part of the Virtuous CRM platform (starting at $199/month); no longer available as a standalone product
Special Feature: Integrated giving pages within a full AI-powered nonprofit CRM
RaiseDonors was acquired by Virtuous and is now fully integrated as “Virtuous Raise” within the Virtuous CRM platform. It’s no longer a standalone fundraising tool. If this was on your radar as a lightweight, independent option for creating donation pages, the landscape has changed significantly.
What Virtuous Raise offers today is a set of online giving and donation page capabilities embedded in Virtuous CRM, which combines donor management, marketing automation, and AI-powered prospect identification in one platform. If you’re evaluating Virtuous Raise, you’re really evaluating Virtuous CRM as a whole. For mid-sized nonprofits ready for a serious donor management investment, that’s a compelling package. If you’re just looking for a simple standalone donation page builder, there are better-fit options on this list.
11. Bloomerang
Pricing Model: Monthly subscription + processing fees
Price: $125/month for the Standard plan
Transaction Fee: Standard payment processing fees apply through Bloomerang Fundraising (formerly Qgiv)
Special Feature: Full nonprofit CRM focused on donor retention
If you’re looking for a full nonprofit CRM that specializes in online fundraising and is especially suited for email marketing and donor retention, look no further than Bloomerang. It offers a full-service CRM that includes donor management databases, powerful analytics tools, custom templates, and strong options for personalized marketing campaigns and donor engagement. Bloomerang’s acquisition of Qgiv (now Bloomerang Fundraising) added peer-to-peer fundraising, event ticketing, and text fundraising directly to the platform, so what used to require a separate integration is now built in.
12. Bonfire
Pricing Model: Free to open a store + processing fees on donations
Price: 8% processing fee for general users; 3.5% for verified nonprofits
Special Feature: Merchandising
Bonfire is a unique platform that lets nonprofits start selling merchandise such as T-shirts, hats, totes, and more. It’s also completely free to start a store, with no monthly fees. Verified nonprofits benefit from a reduced donation processing fee of 3.5%, down from the standard 8%, making it significantly more affordable to add a donation option to your store. They also offer integration with GoFundMe Pro so you can add apparel to your peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns.
13. PayPal Giving Fund
Pricing Model: Transaction fees
Transaction Fee: PayPal covers fees for the giving fund (except off-platform)
Special Feature: Ubiquity
PayPal is a great option for online fundraising because it’s a powerful transaction tool that is universally recognized and trusted. It’s good for crowdfunding campaigns, and it offers features like campaign pages, though it doesn’t have as many options as some other platforms listed here.
The primary drawback for the Giving Fund is that PayPal is the ultimate arbiter of donation distribution. That means your supporters’ donations are technically going to PayPal, which then designates your organization to receive them (typically in about 15 to 45 days). PayPal Giving Fund processed nearly $1 billion in charitable donations globally in 2024 and serves as the sole donation processor for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram fundraising tools, which is worth knowing both because of the scale it offers and because the same distribution policy applies to those donations.
The Giving Fund is a great way for organizations to collect donations, as long as you don’t make it your sole source of income. For organizations looking for alternatives to PayPal for nonprofits, most of the platforms on this list offer more direct control over your funds.
How to Choose the Best Nonprofit Fundraising Platform for You
When considering fundraising software, think about your three audiences: your donors, your internal team, and your community.
1. The Donor
- What makes them care about your mission?
- How can you make the online giving process easy and engaging?
- How can you guarantee loyalty and return visits? Do they use digital wallets like Apple Pay or Venmo? The right platform should meet them where they are.
2. Your Internal Team That Will Use the Tool
Campaign ideas are fun and all, but the fundraising platform you adopt should be easy to set up and connect with the other systems you use to promote and manage the campaign.
3. Your Community
What’s the community you’re serving? Keeping them front and center keeps the “why” in mind for your organization and potential donors. What stories are you telling and to whom, and how can your digital fundraising tools help you share those stories more widely?
Our nonprofit fundraising experts recommend looking for tools that are under iterative improvement cycles. You want to know that the tool you choose is tested and improved regularly. If it’s not working for you, try something that does.
Small updates to user experience and workflow can make a huge difference in your donation totals, so learn each tool’s roadmap and donation page conversion rates before you commit.
There are dozens of amazing fundraising software platforms that all have very specific use cases and strengths, but how do they all work together, and how do you know you’re getting the most out of your tech investment?
Trust a Marketing Agency That Specializes in Nonprofits
At Big Sea, we’ve helped boost online donations for countless nonprofit organizations, and we can do the same for you. From grassroots community programs to cultural organizations to big national brands—we’ve raised hundreds of thousands.
With one look at our results, you’ll see why.
