As part of our commitment to continue to innovate, we are pleased to introduce our newest module: the Cover fees Module, or how your donors can contribute to the cost of fundraising. This module, inspired by best practices in digital fundraising from western countries, has been developed to help you raise more money for your cause and your fundraising efforts.
1. What is the Cover Fees Module?
The cover fee is a module that allows your donors to contribute to your fundraising costs.
Each transaction carried out online is subject to fees, particularly by the payment providers. These fees vary according to a number of criteria, such as the payment method used, the issuing bank and the issuing country for bank cards, etc.
By activating our new cover fees module, your donors will be able to cover all or part of the costs associated with their transaction.
2. How do the Cover Fees work?
The module is simply integrated into your donation form, without impacting your conversion rate.
In order to provide maximum transparency to your donors and potential donors, the module is presented on your forms with a sentence that is 100% customisable.
You also have the possibility to add an additional description, explaining for example what these transaction fees are. Donors are completely autonomous on the choice of their contribution, you can propose :
- predefined amounts,
- a free amount, which they can choose themselves
- or the option not to contribute to your fundraising costs.
✅ Your donor makes a single transaction that includes their donation and their contribution amount to the online fundraising fee. This means that the entire amount is taken into account for the calculation of the tax benefit.
3. Why should your charity adopt the Cover Fees Module?
There are many reasons why your organisation should adopt Cover Fees Module, see below a non-exhaustive list of benefits. If you would like to know more, get in touch with us here.
The Cover Fees Module does not impact your conversion rate
Wouldn’t it be nice, that all these people were still actively working for you? And that a large part of the donations were recurring, instead of one-offs? That’s what you need to be working on. Now.
Do you really think we would have taken the risk of launching this new module without testing it first? 😉
Over the last few months, we have been testing it with some of our clients, from different sectors and in different countries.
On average we find:
- The conversion rate of the donation pages remains the same with the cover fees,
- 50% of the donors make a contribution to the fundraising costs,
- Donors who use the module add an average of 5% to their initial donation.
For more details on our tests, please contact us.
The Cover Fees Module allows you to reduce your fundraising costs
By implementing this new module, we are effectively allowing you (as the name indicates) to cover part of the costs of raising funds – via your donors’ contributions.
In addition to increasing your average donation, you save on transaction costs!
The Cover Fees Modules is very well accepted by donors
This statement is also the result of our various tests. None of our clients that are using Cover Fees have received any complaints from their donors.
Contrary to popular belief, donors are willing to contribute to your fundraising activity and costs if the right level of explanation is provided in advance.
It is therefore a question of:
- using the two spaces provided to explain the context of the request and what the contribution is for: to help fund your costs 🙌,
- suggesting contribution amounts via a drop-down menu, plus the option of a free amount,
- to display the predefined amounts as a percentage, but also as a value (which our module allows you to do),
- to give them the option of simply not contributing.
Cover Fees have a positive impact on your average donation
As explained above, your donors’ contribution is included in their donation (a single transaction), so naturally your average donation increases.
Cover fees are a key element of innovation in digital fundraising
As we all know, the digitalisation of fundraising is underway. According to France générosités, 25% of donations are now collected online and this share is only increasing: online donations have increased by 48% between 2019 and 2021.
Adopting the Cover Fees Module is therefore the right way to be part of this evolution and to establish yourself as a truly innovative and, therefore, digital non-profit organisation.
Let’s not forget that asking for a contribution from donors is a widely known practice already adopted by many organisations in other countries.
Check out some of these organisations that already use iRaiser's Cover Fees Module successfully:
As you can see, the Cover Fee module is a lever for optimising your online fundraising. You want to know more about this topic ? Read our article: Build the perfect annual digital fundraising plan in 5 steps.