I am really not very keen on Just Giving. This is why:-
JG “charges a small transaction fee on every donation made on the Website. The fee is currently 5% of the gross donation, which is the donation plus any Gift Aid reclaimed.”
When you pay via Just Giving, not only does the charity have to fork over 5% to them it has to pay the card charges on top: Credit Card fee @ 1.34% for Visa @ 1.4 % for MasterCard, Debit card fee: 22p for Switch/Maestro/Solo 23p for Visa Delta/Visa Electron. Charities are also charged on “other services too”.
So on a £10 donation by credit card (with gift aid added grossing up to £12.82) £0.89 (almost 7% of the total) is taken off the amount the charity receives. See here
Contrast this with Paypal donations:
As far as I can see the charity would have to be set up to deal with the Gift Aid tax reclaim but… Paypal Charity rates 1.4% + 20p would mean that they would lose only £0.34.
Just Giving is making a fortune out of charity.
7 Comments
That sucks.
You’d think someone like me who questions everything would have known that
I’m so flipping naive I assumed they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts 
What a shame.
Don’t most companies who provide a service to charities make a profit? I can’t believe many services are provided just at cost - why should the model for banking services be different? If the charities don’t think it is cost-effective they can vote with their feet.
Well, all I can say is, I wish I’d thought of it.
Tim missed out the fact that charities pay on a monthly basis as well:
“A monthly hosting fee: £15 a month + VAT rolling annual membership by direct debit (or you can choose our monthly option at £20 a month + VAT). Because we serve more than 1,200 UK charities, this represents a huge volume discount on the costs of setting up, hosting and running a secure donation and fundraising site yourself”
I don’t think it’s the making the profit bit that’s bothering him. It’s the amount of the profit - and the fact that it isn’t clearly stated on the donation pages how much (or little) of what you are donating is actually reaching the charity concerned.
But I daresay he’ll be back with his own opinion later.
and there he was gone…
You’d think they’d be obliged to state in a very up front way exactly where your donation went immediately before you hit the donate button. I agree that does such.
Don’t really know how to judge *too* much profit. There seems to me some benefit in aligning their incentives with the charities - what’s good for the charities is good for them - but perhaps they will start reducing their % as volume increase???