Nonprofits and independent fundraisers have lots of options when it comes to running donation campaigns. You can start your crowdfunding campaign on your website, a third-party platform like GoFundMe, or even social media.
But how do you make a decision about where you should be hosting your digital fundraiser? In this post, I’ll answer this question to help you understand the pros and cons of each approach.
By the end of this post, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about WordPress fundraisers vs third-party platforms.
Quick Overview – Onsite Fundraisers vs Offsite Fundraisers
| Feature | WordPress sites | Third-Party platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Customization | High | Limited |
| Setup Complexity | Moderate to High | Low |
| Transaction Fees | Generally Lower | Often Higher |
| Maintenance Required | Minimal | Minimal |
| Data Ownership | Complete | Shared or Limited |
| Fund Availability | Faster | Slower |
Let’s dive in deeper to compare important differences in self-hosted fundraisers on a WordPress site vs third-party platforms.
Understanding Donation Pages on WordPress vs Third-Party Sites
Before we explore the pros and cons, let’s clarify what we mean by donations hosted on WordPress and third-party donation pages.
A self-hosted donation page is one that you create and manage on your own WordPress website. This typically involves using a plugin like WP Charitable and WPForms, or similar tools to set up a donation form directly on your site.
On the other hand, a third-party donation page is hosted by an external service provider. These could be platforms like GoFundMe and JustGiving. While you can promote and link to these off-site donation pages from your WordPress site, the actual transaction occurs on the third-party platform.
WordPress Fundraisers
Creating a fundraiser directly on your website comes with various important advantages:
- Complete control and customization: When you host your own donation page, you have the freedom to design it exactly how you want. You can match it perfectly with your website’s branding with a lot of flexibility.
- Personal touch: Plugins like WPForms allow you to create personalized thank-you notes for donors, sent directly to their inbox as soon as the donation is complete.
- Reduced costs: Recurring donations often come with extra surcharges on third-party platforms. But with WPForms, you can accept recurring donations without any extra costs.
- Direct data ownership: When you have a custom donation form, you can acquire zero-party data like the email addresses of donors with their consent. This information can be invaluable for future campaigns, something that’s not possible with third-party tools.
- Faster transactions: A donation made through your site immediately ends up in your account with the payment service you’re using (Stripe, PayPal etc.). With third-party tools, your funds are held by the platform first before you can withdraw.
Third-Party Fundraising Sites
While hosting a donation on your own website confers some strong advantages, third-party also offer some notable conveniences:
- Easy setup and maintenance: Building a campaign is usually a breeze with websites like GoFundMe, even if you have no experience. While creating campaigns on your own website is easy with modern plugins, it might not be the ideal option if you don’t already have a website ready.
- Platform trust: If you’re a newer or lesser-known organization, people might not trust you enough to donate directly on your website. Donors are often more comfortable entering their payment information on a familiar platform like GoFundMe, which can boost donations.
Setting Up a Self-Hosted Donation Page on WordPress
There are a few ways you can create a donation page or form on your website. The solution you need depends on your goals and the kind of campaign you’re aiming for.
Let’s talk about some of the best available options.
Donation Forms with WPForms
WPForms is a plugin for creating forms (and that means any kind of form). In many cases, nonprofit websites need more than just a donation form–you might also need one general contact form, a separate volunteer application forms, and so on.
If that sounds like you, then WPForms can be the perfect fit for you even though it’s not a dedicated donation management plugin like some options I’ll share later on.
When it comes to donation forms, WPForms is one of the only plugins that lets you collect donations without necessarily upgrading to the Pro version. WPForms Lite connects with your Stripe account, allowing you to accept donations via your forms with 3% + additional Stripe fees per donation (if you upgrade to Pro, the 3% charge is removed too).
Get Exclusive Nonprofit Discount for WPForms Pro
With Stripe, donors can pay you via their credit cards or even mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Google Pay. And if you want to offer more options, you can easily integrate your forms with PayPal and Square as well with WPForms Pro.
You can create a customized donation form to accept one-time donations by offering different choices to the donors using the easy drag-and-drop form builder. This requires no coding knowledge and is highly intuitive for beginners.
You also have options for adding media and text inside your form to tell the story about your fundraising cause and get more people to donate.
WPForms also lets you collect recurring donations without extra costs that third-party platforms like GoFundMe usually charge. With WPForms Lite, you can accept either one-time donations or recurring donations on a single form.
But if you upgrade to WPForms Pro, you can enable both options on the same form and let the donors make their choice.
The best part is that you can add a newsletter subscription checkbox to the same form and add donors to your email list using built-in integrations for marketing tools like Drip, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and more. This is great for staying in touch with your donors, sending them updates, and letting them know about future causes that they’re interested in supporting.
WPForms also has a neat payment tracking system built into it. You can track your donations with a chart, filter it by date range, and also see details for each donation in a table underneath. This is a supremely helpful tool for managing your donations without having to rely on any external solution for tracking.
So, if you need a donation form and other forms for your nonprofit that you can embed anywhere, WPForms is a fantastic choice. Plus, there’s a special discount for WPForms Pro and Elite exclusive to nonprofit organizations.
But if you’re looking for comprehensive donor management and crowdfunding features similar to what you get on sites like GoFundMe, there’s another great option that you can use on your own website that I’ll talk about next.
💡 Also Read: Giving Tuesday: How Nonprofits Can Promote Their Cause
Fundraising Campaigns with WP Charitable
WP Charitable is a plugin that lets you create full-fledged fundraising campaigns on your site similar to sites like GoFundMe. The difference is, that you have complete customization control and data ownership with the self-hosted campaigns created with WP Charitable.
Like WPForms, WP Charitable has a drag-and-drop campaign builder. You can include every kind of element you’d need for your donation page, from displaying your donation goals, the total amount you’ve raised, as well as fields for media and text.
It also offers ready-made templates for different kinds of fundraisers. You can start with a template and then freely customize it by changing the layout, rearranging the different fields, or adding/removing any elements you need. Here’s an example of a fundraiser I built using a free WP Charitable template:
The free version of WP Charitable integrates with PayPal and Stripe, charging the typical transaction fees associated with these payment gateways. But you can unlock many more payment options and really powerful features that can make your fundraiser a resounding success.
I’m a huge fan of WP Charitable’s donor management and reporting system. You can easily track donations with an easily digestible chart showing only the most important numbers you need to understand how well your fundraisers are performing.
But WP Charitable also goes far beyond that with advanced reports like LYBUNT / SYBUNT to help you spot past contributors who have stopped making donations recently so you can nurture and retain them easily.
On top of that, you have separate reports for donors, which you can filter by donors who have contributed the highest amounts for your fundraisers, recurring donors, and first-time donors.
That’s not all. It also supports integrations with marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, and more, allowing you to nurture your donor list with emails and advanced workflows.
It gets even better when you use Charitable addons like Ambassadors–a feature that enables peer-to-peer fundraising if you have a network of fundraisers. In fact, you can even turn your website into a platform for other fundraisers who can host their campaigns on your website, exactly like GoFundMe.
Basically, WP Charitable turns your website into a complete fundraising platform for your organization and for other organizers as well.
Other WordPress Donation Solutions
With WordPress, you’re never short of options. There’s always a decent range of plugins available for any given task. And fundraising is no different. Apart from WPForms and WP Charitable, you can also use these plugins for online fundraising:
I recommend reading our helpful breakdown of online charity tools to learn more about your options,
Creating Online Fundraisers on a Third-Party Site
As I hinted earlier, creating an online fundraiser is easiest when you’re using third-party websites. That’s because everything is pretty much already locked in and set for you. All you need to do is add your story, set your donation goal, connect the website with your bank account, and publish your fundraiser.
Some of the most popular websites for hosting fundraisers include:
Every platform is different and has its own fees and pricing structure. So, make sure to read the fine print before choosing a website for your fundraiser.
Some websites like GoFundMe only offer basic donor management and share limited data with you. That means you won’t be able to build your email list or maintain a donor CRM based on your GoFundMe contributors. Besides, GoFundMe doesn’t offer any integrations with marketing or email tools.
If these features are important to you, consider alternatives like Donorbox or create custom-designed fundraisers on your own website.
Choosing a Fundraising Solution for Your Organization
Now that we’ve explored both options, you might be wondering which is the best choice for your organization. Your decision should be based on several factors:
- Availability of your own website
- Your budget
- The volume of donations you expect
- Your need for customization
- Your comfort level with handling sensitive data
In my experience, many growing nonprofits find that a self-hosted fundraising solution offers the best balance of control and cost-effectiveness.
However, if you’re just starting out and don’t have access to a website as an organization that people recognize and trust, a third-party solution might be the way to go.
Next, Get Inspired by Donation Page Examples
When you’re struggling for ideas, it’s always helpful to look to other sources for inspiration. Creating a custom donation page in WordPress gives you a lot of room for customization, but if you’re not sure what your page should look like, check out some of these donation page examples to get some ideas flowing!
Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
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