Best Fundraising Sites for UK Charities (2026 Guide)

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Online fundraising is no longer optional for most UK charities. The question is no longer whether to take donations online, but which fundraising site lets you keep the most of what your supporters actually give.

That sounds obvious. It is not. Most small UK charities are stitching together three to five separate tools: JustGiving for donation pages, Ticket Tailor for the summer fete, Crowdfunder for a time-bound campaign, GoCardless for Direct Debit, and a spreadsheet for donor records. Each one charges separately, and every platform calling itself "free" still routes £150 to £500 through Stripe or PayPal on a £10,000 campaign, costs that never appear on the pricing page.

There is a further lever unique to the UK: Gift Aid. With valid declarations, £10,000 from UK taxpayers becomes up to £12,500, with HMRC reclaiming 25p for every £1 donated on your behalf. The platform you choose determines whether you capture that uplift automatically or spend January exporting spreadsheets and filing manually via HMRC Charities Online.

This guide ranks the best fundraising sites for UK charities first, because that is who most readers are: a Head of Fundraising, a trustee, or a volunteer team lead trying to pick a tool a non-technical person can actually run. Then we cover the best fundraising sites for individuals separately, because personal crowdfunding is a different product.

Two numbers decide this for a small or volunteer-led charity. First, how many pounds you keep on £10,000 raised, including Gift Aid. Second, how many logins your treasurer and your event volunteer have to maintain.

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In this article:

• Fundraising site fees at a glance

• How Gift Aid changes the maths

• Best fundraising platforms for UK charities

• If you are not yet a registered charity

• How much do you actually keep?

• What to look for in a fundraising platform

• How to choose the right fundraising site

• Best fundraising sites for individuals in the UK

• The bottom line

• Frequently asked questions

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Fundraising site fees at a glance

Below are the verified fees for every platform in this guide, plus what a £10,000 campaign actually leaves in your bank account. You can also run the keep-rate maths with the fee calculator for your own annual volume.

The fee on the pricing page is not the cost. The cost is what arrives in your bank account after platform fees, card processing, and Gift Aid fees are deducted. On a £10,000 campaign, the difference between Zeffy and the next-best option is often £200 to £600 that belongs to your cause.

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How Gift Aid changes the maths

Gift Aid is the central UK donation-tax mechanism and has no direct equivalent in any other country's fundraising tools. HMRC lets registered UK charities reclaim 25p from HMRC for every £1 a UK taxpayer donates, provided the donor has signed a Gift Aid declaration. A £100 donation becomes £125 to your charity at no extra cost to the donor.

The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) adds a 25% top-up on small cash and contactless donations of £30 or less, without a written declaration, up to £8,000 in eligible donations per tax year.

Gift Aid does not apply to:

• Raffle tickets or prize-draw entries

• Event ticket prices (where the donor receives something in return)

• Auction lots sold at fair value

• Company donations (different rules apply)

• Donors who have not paid sufficient UK Income or Capital Gains Tax

For technical guidance on Gift Aid and VAT reliefs, the Charity Tax Group is the independent reference UK charities trust.

The platform matters. Some platforms capture the Gift Aid declaration at the point of donation and handle the HMRC Charities Online submission for you. Others require you to export donor data and file manually. If your platform is not doing the claim for you, you are leaving real money on the table every quarter.

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Best fundraising platforms for UK charities

This is the UK-charity-only ranking. Platforms are scored on keep-rate, Gift Aid handling, all-in-one consolidation, ease of launch, and whether your charity can actually sign up without a demo call or a sales contract.

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1. Zeffy: £10,000 raised equals £10,000 received

Zeffy is the only platform on this list where £10,000 raised equals £10,000 received. No platform fee, no transaction fee, no credit card fee. Ever. Donors are invited to leave an optional voluntary contribution at checkout; your charity keeps 100% whether they do or not.

On top of that, a real donor CRM is included free: tags, smart filters, saved segments, donor history, automated donation acknowledgements, and donor email, all in one login alongside donation forms, ticketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, and raffles. Zeffy is available to registered UK charities (Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR, or CCNI).

Pricing: £0 platform, £0 processing, £0 monthly, no contracts, no upgrade tiers.

Pros:

• Unconditional £0 for your charity, not a model where fees quietly pass through on top of optional voluntary contributions.

• Zeffy's free donor management tools include tags, segments, giving history, and automated acknowledgements, not just basic donor records.

• One login replaces the four or five tools most volunteer teams juggle. Zeffy's free ticketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, and raffles are all included, with no upgrade tiers.

• Self-serve signup, no demo gate, no sales contract.

• 100,000+ charities and not-for-profits, over £2 billion raised.

Cons:

• Registered UK charities only (Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR, or CCNI). Not for individuals or unregistered community groups.

Ideal for: volunteer-led charities trying to keep every pound on mission and consolidate a fragmented tool stack into a single free login.

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2. JustGiving: household-name reach, but watch the fees

JustGiving is the most recognised UK donation platform and that name recognition still converts cold donors who recognise the URL. If your charity sends fundraisers to marathons and mass-participation events outside of the exclusive LME or Great Run channels, JustGiving's peer-to-peer infrastructure is mature and widely understood.

The trade-off is cost. JustGiving charges 0% platform fee on donations but defaults to a suggested donor voluntary contribution of around 17%, which Chartered Institute of Fundraising members and charity trustees frequently flag as the single most-criticised pattern in UK fundraising. Card processing runs at 1.9% + 20p, and there is a 5% fee on Gift Aid value reclaimed. For current fee details, see how Zeffy compares to JustGiving.

Ideal for: charities that need the brand recognition to convert cold donors, or those running peer-to-peer sponsored events outside the LME and Great Run exclusivity window.

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3. CAF Donate: trust-first, sensible for Direct Debit

CAF Donate is built and run by the Charities Aid Foundation, itself a registered charity with decades of infrastructure behind it. More than 8,000 UK charities use it for embedded donate buttons and Direct Debit giving. The fees are staggered by donation type and generally lower than commercial platforms. There is no monthly subscription.

CAF is a name trustees will recognise and donors will trust. Reporting is basic by modern standards, and there is no native event ticketing, peer-to-peer, or auction module. If your fundraising is primarily donate buttons and regular Direct Debit giving, CAF Donate is a sound choice. If you need more than that, you will still need additional tools.

Ideal for: charities that primarily need reliable donate buttons and Direct Debit processing, and for whom brand trust matters more than feature breadth.

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4. Wonderful.org: genuinely 0% via Open Banking

Wonderful.org uses Open Banking (Pay by Bank, account-to-account transfers) to achieve a genuine 0% fee across donations, Gift Aid, and card processing on Pay by Bank transactions. There is no platform fee and no tip jar. For card payments, processing fees apply.

The trade-off is reach and donor familiarity. The Open Banking flow requires donors to authenticate with their bank app, which converts well with younger, banked donors comfortable with that flow and converts poorly with older donors who find it unfamiliar. Wonderful's reach is narrower than JustGiving, so cold discovery is limited. For NCVO members and sector professionals, Wonderful has become a well-regarded reference point for transparent, fee-free giving.

Ideal for: charities with a younger supporter base, strong existing relationships with donors, and a willingness to explain the Pay by Bank flow.

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5. Enthuse: mandatory for LME and Great Run, weaker elsewhere

Enthuse is the official online fundraising partner for TCS London Marathon Events and the Great Run series, with an exclusive contract running to 2034. If your charity has places in the London Marathon or any Great Run event, Enthuse is effectively mandatory: fundraisers get automatic branded pages and the platform handles registration and Gift Aid seamlessly. £96 million-plus has been raised through Enthuse for LME alone.

Outside those flagship events, the value proposition is weaker. Fees include 0% platform on donations (with a voluntary contribution default), 1.9% + 30p card processing, 5% on Gift Aid value, and an optional events subscription. For current figures, see how Zeffy compares to Enthuse.

Ideal for: any charity with TCS London Marathon or Great Run places, where Enthuse is the only available option. For everything else, compare carefully on fees.

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6. Crowdfunder UK: best for time-bound campaigns with match funding

Crowdfunder UK charges 0% platform fee for registered charities and is the UK's largest home-grown crowdfunding platform. Its real differentiator is match-funding partnerships with the National Lottery Community Fund, local authorities, and other funders. If you secure a match-funder, Crowdfunder can effectively double the value of your campaign for free.

It is not the right tool for steady-state donate buttons or regular giving. The all-or-nothing and time-bound campaign structure suits capital projects, specific programme funding, and community causes better than year-round donation forms. For how Zeffy compares to Crowdfunder, see the comparison page.

Ideal for: time-bound campaigns where match funding is available, community capital projects, and one-off appeals where the campaign deadline creates urgency.

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7. Ticket Tailor: the event-ticketing companion

Ticket Tailor is not a donation platform, but if your charity's fundraising is event-heavy, it deserves a mention as the most-cited UK alternative to Eventbrite. UK-founded, B Corp certified, and bootstrapped, it charges a flat per-ticket fee (from 22p on pre-purchased credits) rather than a percentage, which makes a significant difference on £10 to £20 community tickets.

Ticket Tailor handles ticketing only: no donate buttons, no Gift Aid, no CRM. You still need a separate platform for everything else. For current fees, see how Zeffy compares to Ticket Tailor.

Ideal for: charities running regular paid events who want to minimise per-ticket fees; best used alongside a donation platform.

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If you are not yet a registered charity

A real caveat the US version of this guide never covers: many readers are running CICs, unincorporated associations, village halls, PTAs, or Neighbourhood Watch groups that have not yet completed charity registration. Until you are registered, most charity-tier platform fees and Gift Aid are unavailable.

If your income exceeds £5,000 per year in England or Wales, you are legally required to register with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) must register regardless of income. In Scotland, all charities must register with OSCR regardless of size. In Northern Ireland, registration with CCNI is required and phased registration is ongoing.

As one fundraiser at a small community group put it: "because we're not a charity, most of the better fee options are for charities… that does limit us." Registration is the unlock. Until you have a charity number, you are effectively locked out of Gift Aid, most charity-tier pricing, and the full platform features that make the fee maths work.

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How much do you actually keep?

Here is the keep-rate maths on a £10,000 campaign across the UK platforms in this guide, using the low end of each platform's published fees and assuming a typical mix of around 100 gifts.

That gap, the difference between £10,000 received and £8,500 to £9,600 after fees, is not a back-office detail. It is your next programme cycle. It is the sessions you can fund, the equipment you can buy, the staff hours you can cover.

The Gift Aid layer compounds this further. On a £10,000 campaign from UK taxpayers with valid declarations, Gift Aid adds up to £2,500 from HMRC. A platform that captures those declarations and submits the HMRC claim for you is not just saving you admin time: it is the difference between £10,000 and £12,500 reaching your cause.

A fundraiser at a UK village hall put the per-ticket fee problem plainly: all of these platforms apart from Zeffy charge an overhead per ticket, which would probably make them too expensive for a small community organisation. The maths hold for donation campaigns too.

For a small charity: these are not enterprise savings. A village hall fete, a PTA autumn appeal, and a Christmas raffle are small-scale operations. The pounds kept on each one are exactly what fund the next one.

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What to look for in a fundraising platform

If you are choosing for a small or volunteer-led charity, this is the short checklist. Most volunteer teams describe their current setup the same way: logging into one tool for donations, another for events, a spreadsheet for the donor list, a separate service for email, and a payment processor dashboard to reconcile it all. A good fundraising platform collapses that.

• Ease of use. A trustee or volunteer should be able to launch a donation page the same afternoon they get the login, with no training session required.

• Online donation processing. Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, all built in. Not a separate Stripe account to wire up.

• Direct Debit. Via GoCardless or equivalent. Direct Debit accounts for roughly 31% of all UK charity donations and is the gold standard for regular giving. Confirm whether your platform supports it natively.

• Mobile giving. Most donors are on a phone. The donation flow must feel native on mobile, not a desktop form shrunk to fit.

• Peer-to-peer fundraising. Supporters fundraise on your behalf with their own pages, included in the platform, not a paid add-on.

• Donor management and CRM. Tags, segments, giving history, and automated donation acknowledgements. If you have to export data and match it against a spreadsheet to send year-end letters, you are on a payment processor with a form on top, not a fundraising platform.

• Gift Aid declaration capture and HMRC claim submission. The platform should capture the declaration at the point of donation and support submission via HMRC Charities Online. Doing this manually for every campaign is a significant admin burden and a source of errors.

• UK GDPR and ICO compliance. UK charities must have a lawful basis for processing donor personal data. Direct electronic marketing is governed by PECR. Before adopting any platform, confirm it supports UK GDPR-compliant data handling. As one UK supporter put it: "Are you GDPR compliant? That would be important, obviously."

• Fundraising Regulator alignment. Reputable UK platforms follow the Code of Fundraising Practice, the current version of which came into effect on 1 November 2025, with Section 9 covering online fundraising platforms specifically.

• Integrations. At minimum, an export to whatever accounting tool your treasurer uses, plus email marketing if it is not built in.

For a small charity: if a platform forces you to keep using a separate email tool, a separate event tool, and a separate spreadsheet for donor records, it is not solving the problem you actually have. Consolidation is the lever, not feature count.

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How to choose the right fundraising site

Most "how to choose" guides bury you in 14 criteria. Two questions decide it.

Step 1: Clarify your goals. What campaign types do you actually run (one-off donation form, regular giving, events, peer-to-peer sponsored fundraising, auctions, raffles)? What donor data and reporting do you need? How much will you raise this year, roughly? Who on your team needs a login?

Step 2: Review against six levers, in this order.

• 1. Keep-rate. What pound reaches your bank account on £10,000 raised? Look at the actual fees, including processing and any Gift Aid fee. If your priority is keeping every pound, Zeffy is the only £0 answer here.

• 2. Gift Aid handling. Does the platform capture declarations at checkout and submit to HMRC for you, or do you export and claim manually? For most UK charities, this is the lever that matters most after keep-rate.

• 3. Speed to launch. Self-serve signup with no demo: Zeffy, JustGiving, CAF Donate, Crowdfunder UK. Charity verification required: Wonderful.org. Exclusive-event lock-in: Enthuse (LME and Great Run only).

• 4. Payout speed. Most platforms deposit on a two to seven day rolling schedule. Confirm before you commit to a campaign with supplier deadlines.

• 5. Donor experience. Mobile-first, few clicks, no surprise voluntary-contribution confusion. The fewer the steps, the higher the completion rate. The JustGiving ~17% suggested voluntary contribution prompt is the most-cited friction point in UK fundraising.

• 6. Reporting and CRM. Are tags, segments, giving history, and acknowledgements in the box? If yes, one login replaces several. If no, you are stacking tools.

The UK stacked-tool reality is real: a £15 fete ticket, an autumn appeal, a Christmas raffle, and a sponsored 5K currently means Ticket Tailor, JustGiving, Crowdfunder, and a CRM. Zeffy consolidates that into a single free login, with Gift Aid handling included. NCVO and Charity Excellence are the sector reference points UK charities trust for platform comparisons when they want a second opinion.

For a small charity: if a platform fails the keep-rate test or the Gift Aid handling test, it is the wrong tool regardless of how polished the demo looks. Score every option against those two first. For a deeper comparison of fundraising tools, see our guide to fundraising software for UK charities.

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Best fundraising sites for individuals in the UK

Not every fundraiser runs through a registered charity. If you are raising money as an individual, the right platform depends on what you are raising for. Here is the short map by use case.

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GoFundMe: personal emergency or costs not covered by the NHS

GoFundMe is the default for personal and emergency UK fundraising for a reason. Donors recognise the name, and that recognition converts. The fee model for registered UK charities is 2.2% + 20p per donation; personal campaigns typically run at 2.9% + 25p, with an optional donor voluntary contribution at checkout. For current fee details, see how Zeffy compares to GoFundMe.

One important reframe for UK readers: unlike the US, the NHS covers most medical treatment. UK personal campaigns on GoFundMe more often fund costs the NHS does not cover, family support during serious illness, or funeral costs, rather than hospital bills. The brand trust remains the real product: GoFundMe is the platform UK donors recognise for personal causes, and that recognition outweighs the fee difference versus lesser-known alternatives.

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Crowdfunder UK: community cause or local project

For community causes and local campaigns, Crowdfunder UK is the home-grown alternative with genuine match-funding potential. Zero platform fee for registered charities; community groups and individuals pay a percentage. The time-bound campaign structure creates natural urgency, and the match-funding partnerships with the National Lottery Community Fund, local authorities, and other funders can effectively double what you raise.

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Kickstarter: creative project or product launch

Kickstarter is the right choice for creative projects with a defined funding threshold. The platform charges 5% plus 3% to 5% in processing per pledge. The all-or-nothing rule applies: if you do not reach your goal, no funds are released. That structure works well for creative or product projects where a minimum viable funding level genuinely matters.

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Zeffy: fundraising on behalf of a registered UK charity

Use Zeffy only if the charity you are supporting is already registered on Zeffy. If it is, you can run a peer-to-peer fundraising page at £0 fees. If it is not, run your individual fundraising page directly through whatever platform that charity uses.

For an individual: pick by donor trust, not by fee alone. A platform nobody has heard of will raise less than GoFundMe charging 2.9%, because conversion is the whole game when you are asking a network you did not build.

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The bottom line

For registered UK charities, the answer is Zeffy. It is the only platform on this list where £10,000 raised equals £10,000 received, with a real donor CRM and the full toolkit (ticketing, peer-to-peer fundraising, auctions, raffles, donor email) consolidated into one free login. The Gift Aid handling means your HMRC claim is captured at the point of donation, not chased down in January.

For individuals in the UK, the answer is GoFundMe. It is the platform UK donors recognise for personal causes, and recognition converts.

The stacked-tool reality is where the real saving sits. A small UK charity currently running Ticket Tailor, JustGiving, Crowdfunder, and a CRM is not just paying more fees: it is spending volunteer time logging in and reconciling across four tools. Zeffy consolidates that into one free login and lets your team focus on the work, not the admin.

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Frequently asked questions

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