As the voluntary contribution is our sole source of revenue, and the only way to support us offering free technology for more than 14,000 nonprofits, it is not possible to customize the default suggested contribution. Here's why.
What is the voluntary contribution and how is the suggested percentage determined?
Unlike other fundraising softwares, Zeffy is the only platform that covers all processing fees and doesn’t charge a platform fee. This means you are able to receive 100% of every payment made to your organization. Our mission is and will always be to provide free fundraising technology to nonprofits, so you can put 100% of your funds towards your cause.
As voluntary contributions are our sole source of revenue, they need to cover the costs of:
- Credit card fees for each payment
- Maintaining the platform (performance, speed, security of payments, among others)
- Salaries of our small team of 20 (working to support 14,000 active nonprofits)
- Continued development of features to keep up with your growing fundraising needs
- Not every donor chooses to leave a contribution. For these reasons, we need to suggest contributions that are higher than just processing fees in order to maintain our services.
How is Zeffy working to explain the contribution model to donors?
We understand that our model may not be familiar for most donors, that’s why we mention it twice on our forms. The first - when the donor is beginning to fill it out and the second - at the payment confirmation step. We’ve also added additional opportunities for donors to learn more about our model on our forms, in donor confirmation emails, in the donor dashboard and more.
As for the transparency and accessibility to adjust the contribution, we are working on various design options that we will be rolling out in the coming months. These type of changes affect both donors and nonprofits, therefore we need to do extensive testing to see the impact on donor experience along with the impact on our model.
It's important to us that donors understand and encourage our model, so changes moving forward will be focused on the donor experience.
How can we facilitate donor understanding?
Because we know that our model is newer and donors are curious by nature, we need your help to explain the voluntary contribution to them along with how Zeffy benefits your organization. Our model is about providing you with free technology, but it is also about collaboration. We would be extremely grateful if you encouraged your donors to contribute to Zeffy so that we can continue to provide our tools for free. That is why we put together this comprehensive page of resources to help you talk to your donors about Zeffy, check it out here.
We want to be able to address each concern thoroughly and we understand that each nonprofit may have a specific situation. Please feel free to reach out to our team for support.