Givebutter is a polished, general-purpose nonprofit fundraising platform with donation pages, events, auctions, donor management, email and text marketing, payment processing, and other fundraising tools. Its core platform can be free when optional Givebutter tips are enabled.
Category
Donation platforms
Change the fundraiser assumptions or pricing setup to see how each amount changes.
Fundraiser assumptions
Givebutter preselects an optional tip for itself at checkout and backs uncovered processing costs under its guarantee.
Your group receives
$20,000
$0 vs. intended donations
Your group pays
$0
Donors pay extra
Optional — not estimated
Pricing used
No platform or processing fees
Your group now receives $20,000 from $20,000 in intended online donations.
Givebutter goes well beyond basic donation collection. Its free platform includes fundraising pages, donation forms, events, auctions, donor management, email marketing, payment processing, website widgets, and other tools for organizations that fundraise throughout the year.
Donations feed into Givebutter's built-in CRM, where organizations can track contacts, relationships, giving history, tags, segments, custom fields, and other supporter information. That can be valuable for nonprofits running sophisticated donor-development programs.
A school parent group often already knows much of its community and may primarily need a fast, low-friction way for parents, relatives, and friends to contribute. Groups should consider whether Givebutter's deeper donor-management and analytics capabilities provide meaningful value for their fundraising model.
Givebutter creates donor records from fundraising activity and supports additional checkout fields when organizations need them. Phone numbers are optional by default, while card payments require billing information. Organizations can also add their own checkout questions. Parent groups should keep donor forms as short as their actual needs allow.
When optional Givebutter tips are enabled, the Givebutter Guarantee covers eligible online platform and processing costs that donors do not cover. The organization therefore receives 100% of intended donations, while donors are given an opportunity to financially support Givebutter.
In the checkout observed for this research, Givebutter preselected a 4.25% tip to Givebutter. Donors could change or remove it. Because checkout defaults can change and donor behavior cannot be predicted, this calculator does not estimate total Givebutter tips.
Organizations that do not want Givebutter tips shown at checkout can disable them. Under current Standard pricing, Givebutter then charges a 3% platform fee plus standard payment-processing fees, with options for the organization or donors to cover those costs.
Givebutter is built for nonprofits of many kinds rather than specifically for PTOs, PTGs, booster clubs, or school communities. Parent groups should separately consider how they will handle board turnover, school-year continuity, volunteering, family relationships, websites, stores, programs, and other work outside fundraising.
Givebutter's free model is supported by optional tips from donors. When tips are enabled, eligible online donations qualify for the Givebutter Guarantee, so your organization receives the full intended donation even when donors do not cover processing costs.
Givebutter also asks donors whether they want to leave an additional tip that goes directly to Givebutter. In the checkout observed for this research, a 4.25% Givebutter tip was preselected. The donor could change or remove it before completing the donation.
Checkout defaults can change, and donor behavior cannot be predicted. The calculator therefore treats Givebutter tips as optional — not estimated rather than assuming donors leave the observed tip unchanged.
Givebutter includes a sophisticated donor CRM. Fundraising activity can build persistent contact records with giving history, relationships, tags, segments, custom information, and other data that organizations can use for reporting and future outreach.
That is a major advantage for nonprofits that actively cultivate donors. A parent group may have a different relationship with its supporters: many donors are already parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, and other people connected to the school.
When evaluating Givebutter, consider both sides of the experience. Richer donor data can give administrators better reporting and targeting, but every additional checkout field also asks more of the person who is trying to support your school.
Uses Givebutter's published Standard pricing, Givebutter Guarantee, and online card fee formula.
Givebutter includes donation forms, fundraising pages, peer-to-peer campaigns, events, auctions, donor management, email and text communications, payment processing, website widgets, reporting, and other nonprofit fundraising tools.
Givebutter’s core fundraising platform can cost the organization $0 in platform and processing fees on eligible online transactions when optional Givebutter tips are enabled. The Givebutter Guarantee covers eligible processing costs that donors do not cover.
Not necessarily. Givebutter asks donors whether they want to leave an optional tip that supports Givebutter rather than the organization. Donors can edit or remove the tip. This calculator does not assume how much donors will tip.
A Givebutter checkout observed during this research preselected a 4.25% optional tip to Givebutter. That is an observed checkout default rather than a universal or permanent Givebutter fee. Donors could change or remove it.
Under current Standard pricing, a 3% Givebutter platform fee applies in addition to standard payment-processing costs. Organizations can ask donors to cover those fees, require donors to cover them, or absorb the costs themselves.
Givebutter creates contact records from supporter activity and can store names, contact information, giving history, relationships, tags, and other CRM data. Phone numbers are optional at checkout by default. Billing information is required for card transactions, and organizations can add custom checkout questions when additional information is needed.
Fundraising activity is integrated with Givebutter’s contact and donor management system. Organizations can use those tools for segmentation, reporting, communication, and donor stewardship, although smaller parent groups may not need the same level of donor analysis as larger nonprofits.
No. Givebutter is a general nonprofit fundraising platform used by many types of organizations. Its fundraising and donor-management tools can work for school groups, but the platform is not specifically organized around school years, rotating parent-group boards, or the broader operational needs of a PTO or PTG.
When Standard pricing applies, card processing includes a fixed per-transaction charge. A fundraiser with more individual transactions can therefore have different total processing costs even when the same amount is raised.
No. It models current Givebutter Standard pricing and online card transactions. Older accounts can still be on Legacy pricing, and ACH uses a different processing formula.
See how the same fundraiser works across different fundraising platforms and service models.