How donation platform fees actually work (and what to ask before you sign up for one)
Every fundraising platform charges something — the difference is whether you can say exactly what, before a parent asks you to explain it. Here's what to actually check.
"Is this free?" is the wrong first question to ask about any donation platform, because none of them genuinely are — card processing alone costs money industry-wide, and a platform has to fund its own operation somehow. The right question is whether you can name the exact fee, to the cent, before a donor gives, or whether you'd have to go look it up and hope it hasn't changed.
The two fees that are actually in play
Almost every card-based donation involves two separate costs stacked together: a card processing fee (what Visa, Mastercard, and the payment processor charge to move money at all — typically in the range of 2.9% plus a flat 30 cents per transaction, industry-wide) and a platform fee (what the fundraising software itself charges for existing). On FundDriveGo, that's 2.9% + $0.30 processing and 3% platform, both itemized separately and shown to the donor before they confirm — not folded into one vaguer number.
| What a $50 gift actually costs, itemized | |
|---|---|
| Processing fee | $1.75 (2.9% + $0.30) |
| Platform fee | $1.50 (3%) |
| If the donor covers both | They're charged $53.25; the school receives the full $50.00 |
| If the donor doesn't | They're charged $50.00; the school receives $46.75 |
The question that actually matters: who chooses?
The single biggest difference between platforms isn't the fee percentage — most land in a similar range — it's who decides whether the fee comes out of the gift or gets added on top. On FundDriveGo, the donor is asked at checkout, gift by gift, and can opt in or out every time. A platform that bakes the fee choice into a general settings toggle you have to configure once, or worse, doesn't itemize it at all, is making that decision for your donors without asking them.
What to actually check before signing up anywhere
- Ask to see the exact checkout screen a donor sees, not just a fee percentage quoted in a sales conversation — a percentage without the flat per-transaction add-on is not the real number.
- Ask whether the fee is itemized on the donor's own receipt, not just visible at checkout. Auditors and boards eventually ask for that documentation.
- Ask what happens on a refund — do you get the platform fee back, or only the gift amount? This is rarely mentioned upfront and matters more than people expect once a refund actually happens.
If you can't say the exact number out loud in a PTA meeting, you don't actually know your fee structure yet.
The real test of fee transparency