We’re updating our fees

We’re making some changes to our fees. In this blog, we’ll explain what the changes are, why they are happening and how they could affect your charity.

Team Donr

Summary

Since we created our pricing model in 2017 our costs have increased significantly. As a result, we need to make some adjustments to our fees.

These changes were communicated to all registered charity users of our platform by email in October 2024. We have also added notifications to the Donr Dashboard. Our Terms and Conditions are available in full here.

Payment Processing Fee

What’s changing?

Currently we charge a payment processing fee of £5 on any monthly payouts of £10 or more (before fees).

From March 2025, the payment processing fee will continue to be £5 on any monthly payouts of £10 or more (before fees). We will also charge a reduced payment processing fee for payouts below £10 of 50% of the gross payout amount. For example, for a £4 payout (before fees), the payment processing fee will be £2.

How will this affect my charity?

If your charity typically receives payouts of £10 or more (before fees), then you will not experience any change.

If your charity receives payouts of £9 or less (before fees), then you will be charged a payment processing fee of 50% of the payout value before fees.

Why is this change being made?

It costs us much more to process donations now than it did when we created our fee structure in 2017.

For smaller donation payouts, this is causing us a challenge. Currently our only charge for payouts of £9 or less is our 5% fee. This means that we receive between 5p and 45p. Unfortunately, this simply no longer covers the cost of us running our service, meaning we have had to adjust our fees.

VAT

What’s changing?

Currently VAT on our fees is charged at 0% which effectively means that no VAT is charged.

From March 2025, we will be obliged to charge VAT on all of our fees at a rate of 20%.

How will this affect my charity?

All fees your charity is charged for our services will be subject to VAT. For example, on a £10 Text Giving donation, you will be charged 5% plus VAT meaning that the total fee is 50p plus 10p VAT.

If your charity is VAT registered, then you will be able to reclaim this cost from HMRC.

Why is this change being made?

Previously we didn’t have to charge VAT as we acted solely as a payment processor. However, moving forwards, we will be offering additional services to charities to help them to raise funds.

This change has lots of exciting benefits, but a trade-off is that we’re now obliged by HMRC to charge VAT on our fees.

Questions

Why are fees changing?

As we have all experienced over the past few years, the cost of pretty much everything has increased. It costs us much more to process donations now than it did when we created our fee structure in 2017.

For smaller donation payouts, this is causing us a challenge. Currently our only charge for donations of £9 or less are charged is our 5% fee. This means that we receive between 5p and 45p. Unfortunately, this simply doesn’t cover the cost of us running our service, meaning we have had to adjust our fees.

Why have these particular changes been made?

We have tried to adjust our fees in the fairest possible way.

It’s important to us that Donr remains a risk-free fundraising platform for charities of all sizes. Therefore, we didn’t want to introduce any fixed fees, such as subscription fees or keyword fees. Whilst this would be lucrative for us, it’s just not our way.

Increasing our 5% fee we charge on each donation didn’t really address the issue. Our current fee structure is no longer working out at smaller payout amounts and changing our % fee doesn’t address this. Such a change would also significantly impact on charities running larger campaigns, where our existing fee structure currently works.

Adjusting our payment processing fee to be £5 or 50% of gross donations, whichever is lower, was the fairest way to adjust our fees. This ensures that we can cover the cost of smaller payout amounts, without introducing any financial risk to charities.

How do I offset this change?

The payment processing fee has been capped at £5. Therefore, by growing the number of donations your charity receives, the payment processing fee becomes a much smaller proportion of your total payout.

Lots of other charities on our platform are having success growing their donations at the moment, so we’re confident that you can do the same.

You can find some recommendations on growing your Text Giving donations and see examples from other charities here.

What does the future look like for Donr?

By adjusting our fees, we’re safeguarding the future of the platform so that we’re able to continue partnering with charities for years to come. Unfortunately in recent years, we have seen quite a few fundraising platforms forced to close, which has a huge impact on charities.

We’re continuing to innovate and develop new solutions which generate funds for charities – earlier this year we launched our dedicated lottery platform, GiveCircle.

How do I give feedback on this change?

We’re a small team and care passionately about our charity partners, so constructive feedback is always gratefully received and taken on board.

Please always feel free to drop us a line with any feedback you have.