As a nonprofit organization, it can be a challenge finding the online donation platforms in Canada that best suits your needs. All nonprofits are different, but you will always want to look at the pricing, the donor experience, and the possibilities as an admin. As almost half of all donations are made using smartphones, you will also want to keep an eye on the experience on cellphones. To help navigate the different possibilities, here is a description of the best and most popular sites that can streamline donations to your organization, with an analysis for each criteria :
- Pricing
- Donor Experience on all Devices
- Admin possibilities
- Integrations to Database
Zeffy (formerly Simplyk)
Created in Montréal in 2016, Zeffy wants to empower all nonprofits to change the world, thanks to better technology. 4000 organizations across Canada use the platform.
Zeffy's Pricing
Zeffy is the only donation platform in Canada that is entirely free to use. Donors enjoy knowing that when they donate to you, 100% of the donation really goes to your organization. They are funded thanks to a tip based business model, where each donor can add whatever amount they’d like to support the platform.
Donor Experience across Devices
Zeffy strives to provide the best donor experience. The platform optimizes donor conversion, by having the lowest number of clicks out of all the platforms below. Zeffy’s interface is extremely mobile friendly, providing a seamless experience on smartphones and other devices. It is worth noting that Zeffy is one of the only platforms that accept Google Pay and Apple Pay, both of which are used by 500M people. This leads to a conversion rate of 130% better than the industry average. Learn how Simplyk can improve your conversion rate.
Admin possibilities
The administrative dashboard is simple to navigate, yet offers a lot of possibilities. Setting up donation forms, ticketing and peer-to-peer campaigns is super straightforward and requires very little time. You can also easily automate tax receipts, and manage all your donor data.
Integrations to Database
Zeffy has a Zapier app, which allows you to connect it to any popular tool you may use. You can choose to automatically transfer your data to platforms like Salesforce, MailChimp, Airtable, SQL, FileMaker and 1,000 more apps with Zeffy.
CanadaHelps
CanadaHelps is a donation platform looking to serve charities and donors. As a registered charity itself, CanadaHelps has facilitated over $1 billion in giving in over 19 years of operation. They host profiles of all registered Canadian charities, through which individuals can make donations.
CanadaHelps' Pricing
CanadaHelps charges 4-5% per donation depending on the type of donation form. These include customizable donation forms, embedded donation buttons on organization’s websites, peer-peer fundraising and more.
Donor Experience on all Devices
Donating through this platform is rather easy and mobile friendly. However, the donation form requires a page change, more than 14 clicks and few pre-filled fields. It also does not support Apple Pay and Google pay. This may affect the time it takes for donors to fill out the forms.
Admin possibilities
CanadaHelps goal is to reduce the time nonprofits spend on administrating their donations. The administrative dashboard allows for easy set up of donation forms, ticketing and peer-to-peer fundraising. It provides reports that capture data from donors, donation amounts and number of donations. It also provides benchmark reports comparing data from past months and to other Canadian charities. The overall layout of the dashboard is clear but requires some time to understand when you are beginning.
Integrations to Database
CanadaHelps allows organization’s to import their data into popular customer relationship management technologies such as SalesForce and Raser’s Edge, but does not have its own management technology. Download complete reports of donations and donor information in CSV and then import them to other tools.
PayPal
PayPal is popular payment application that aims to simplify everyday online transactions. They are now providing donation options for charities through PayPal Donations and the PayPal Giving Fund.
Pricing
Using PayPal Donations, Canadian charities are charged a rate of 1.6% per donation and $0.30 per transaction. All transaction fees are covered and 100% of donations are transferred to the charity recommended by the donor using the Paypal Giving Fund.
Donor Experience on all Devices
The interface is quick and easy to use on both desktop and mobile devices. However, in 2018, only 9% of donors preferred using PayPal, with most opting to use their credit card (Nonprofit Source).
Admin possibilities
PayPal donation offers very basic administration services. Creating a donation form and capturing donor information will require programming expertise from your organization. It is possible to track the small amount of data acquired through donations using PayPal donations, but not through the PayPal Giving Fund. If you are looking to analyze your data to increase donations, only PayPal donations allows for this. The Giving Fund is best suited for organizations receiving fewer donations or if they do not need to manage their donations to increase their income. PayPal donations does not offer automatic receipt generation .
Integrations to Database
Paypal does integrate to popular data management tools such as Salesforces. However, it provides small amounts of data which may not be beneficial for managing donors.
Je donne en ligne
This online platform works with Prodon to create customizable donation forms for charitable organizations.
Pricing
It requires the purchase of Prodon, a software that manages donors, donations, volunteers and employees.
Donor Experience on all Devices
Je donne en ligne’s has one of the longest forms to fill out as a donor, which may be a disadvantage if you want a high conversion rate. The experience does not seem optimized for cellphone use either, with a large number of clicks and three pages of forms to complete. Their less modern interface may be also be an issue if you are interested in attracting younger donors.
Admin possibilities
Using Prodon, all donation information acquired through Je donne en ligne is integrated into the software which then manages the data. There is no need for an additional management tool when using this service.
Integration to Database
Although it offers a management software, Prodon does not integrate to external tools such as Slack, Mailchimp and other customer relationship management. This could be an issue if you need to use your donor data on platforms for events such as Eventbrite or Simplyk.
Yapla
Yapla’s software offers a transactionnal platform along with a task and customer management tool.
Pricing
The platform presents bundled features varying in price point from $0 to $99 a month. There are added charges of 3.9% and $0.30 per donation.
Donor Experience on all Devices
After a recent rebranding of their platform, the interface is more visual and allows for quicker access to information. The donation process is quite mobile friendly, but is broken down into multiple pages which can increase the time required to complete it.
Admin possibilities
Yapla allows you to create customizable campaigns for different types of fundraising . The service is targeting organizations looking for a management platform as it offers features outside of donations, like communications and invoicing. It can be a good choice to do everything with one platform, but you may find important features missing in the fundraising part of the platform.
Integration to Database
Much like Prodon, Yapla does not integrate with other applications.
