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Just Taking

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by

Tim
in

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.

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Comments

7 responses to “Just Taking”

  1. t-bird avatar
    t-bird

    That sucks.

    Reply
  2. Clare avatar
    Clare

    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.

    Reply
  3. Chris avatar
    Chris

    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.

    Reply
  4. Tim avatar
    Tim

    Well, all I can say is, I wish I’d thought of it.

    Reply
  5. Jax avatar
    Jax

    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.

    Reply
  6. Jax avatar
    Jax

    and there he was gone…

    Reply
  7. Chris avatar
    Chris

    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???

    Reply

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