Greetings all,

Someone sent me a news link this morning that has sparked an idea. If that idea comes to fruition I’ll make a separate post, but whilst enacting that idea, I’d like to raise money for charity. The charity I’d like to help is The Global Fund for Forgotten People (https://www.forgottenpeople.org/). Yes, this entity is directly related to the Order of Malta but they give medical and other aid without any reference to religious belief, and they are arguably the world’s oldest medical aid provider, and I like that. Obviously I’ve looked at GoFundMe, the go to name. I’m a realist and recognise there are costs involved, but obviously prefer that a maximum of money goes to the charity in question. GFM takes 2.9% + €0.25. Is there another platform that takes less but is still widely trusted? To be quite clear, I am not looking for any funds for myself, all to the charity.
Thanks,
Gaidong.

We’ve used a few at Calder Valley Search & Rescue Team. BT My Donate, Wonderful and Just Giving, had the same problem with commissions creeping up. We are now using Givey. You can have a look below:

https://www.givey.com/caldervalleysearchandrescueteam

Many thanks for that Richard. Looking now.

my memory is that facebook is the lowest commision as they pretty much pass it all on but I can tell you as a charity receiving facebook donations its a real pita.  They basically collect it all until you hit a certain threshold (about USD 150) and send it as a block then and then converted to your local currency at a sensible rate but a rate they don’t tell you so from a point of view of sending messages back to supporters thanking them for their donation it’s extremely painful

GFMs rates seem good to me as handling credit cards has a cost and their platform is well trusted so you are more likely to get people putting their credit cards into it rather than a platform they have never heard of.  afaik they are also integrated with gift aid to make it easier.  Assuming you make 1000 quid then 2% is only 20quid and I would happily pay that to get the data to me in a way that doesn’t take an hour to work out

But the best answer is probably to ask https://www.forgottenpeople.org/.   What we did for someone who wanted to run a 20k for us was just fire up another web page on our site with their details and add a link to our donations page but tagged with their ‘project’.  It integrated perfectly with our systems so there was no extra effort in receiving donations and we were able to thank everyone using systems we knew

My wife recently set up a donation collection page with crowdfunder and she seems happy. Originally tried with justgiving but the amount of problems and bureaucracy ended with her just cancelling everything set up with them. The crowdfunder assistance team were great and even pointed her in the direction of partners/schemes/funds that do donation top-ups and the like.

Thanks all. I do agree with just giving a link straight to the charity’s website, then they get all of it. I don’t need to see how much ‘I’ raised. I will contact them when my plans are more firm but the long and the short of it is I’ve been due to see a friend in Greece for almost a year and have had flights cancelled three times. I have to let the worst of winter pass, and maybe let the Covid-hell calm down, but then plan to set off on foot, following the Francigena down to Brindisi for the ferry to Patras. About 2200 km with 50 km of climbing, two months should do it. Oh, and I want to do it in Speedos…