​According to Ashley Post, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator, “A charity that's spending 70% or more on their programs is one that we would feel comfortable with." Charity Navigator analyzes thousands of regulatory filings from charitable organizations.
According to a recent investigation by New York state attorney general, of the more than $1.3 billion raised by charities in the state in 2018, about $369 million — or 27% — went to pay professional fundraisers' fees (Attorney General Letitia James), down from 31% the previous year.
The report looked at 891 individual campaigns launched last year and found that fundraisers pocketed half of the money raised during 273 of those campaigns. Of those 891, 59% of those campaigns saw the cost of hiring outside fundraisers exceed the level of donations.
The figures come from fundraising efforts reported to the attorney general from more than 85,000 charities registered in New York. Donations included money sent to charitable nonprofits, charitable foundations or charitable trusts that focus on education, human services, the arts, housing, the environment and other issues.
Using fundraising firms isn't unique to New York. Thousands of charities nationwide hire such entities to help process gifts and fulfill other donor requests. But philanthropy experts say that most well-managed charities don't overpay for the services.
"We think charities definitely shouldn't be overusing professional fundraising, but in our research that's a pretty small percentage," said Ashley Post. 

Charity Navigator ranks the top 10 charities that it says overspend for professional fundraising. The organizations that make the list spent half or more of their yearly revenue on fundraising efforts, and includes charities in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Texas.
Rank       Charity                                     Program Expenses  Professional Fundraising Fees
1 Disabled Police and Sheriff's Foundation Genevieve, MO   4.7%               90.3%
2 Cancer Survivors' Fund Missouri City, TX                 8.5%               88.1%
3 The Committee for Missing Children Lawrenceville, GA     6.4%               87.9%
4 Autism Spectrum Disorder Foundation Schererville, IN     18.5%              77.2%
5 HonorBound Foundation Darien, CT                         20.3%              67.0%
6 Kids Wish Network Holiday, FL                            17.1%              62.5%
7 Children's Leukemia Research Association Garden City, NY 23.8%              60.4%
8 Law Enforcement Education Program Troy, MI               8.2%               51.9%
9 Find the Children Santa Monica, CA                       24.4%              48.9%
10 Veterans Support Foundation Silver Spring, MD           18.9%              48.8%
 
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&listid=28

​Missouri-based Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation, which spent 90% of its income on fundraising efforts and was shuttered earlier this year, topped Charity Navigator's list. Another organization, the Children's Leukemia Research Association of Long Island, New York, generated about $969,000 in revenue in 2017 (the most recent Charity Navigator data available), but roughly $671,000 went to fundraising expenses.
The leukemia group has used telemarketers for at least two years to help generate donations, a move that took place soon after the group's founder died, said Angelo Russo, the association's executive director. Russo said her organization is on the list because of activity that took place in 2017.
Form 990 filings from 2016 and 2017 show that most of the revenue went toward paying the telemarketing service, which threw off the association's programs-to-personnel cost ratio, said Russo, who took over as head of the organization in mid-2018. The group has since stopped using telemarketers.
 

​According to Forbes, Feeding America raised $2.7 billion in Fiscal Year ending June 2017, second in rank only to United Way Worldwide, based in Alexandria, Virginia, raising $3.92 billion. Third was Americares Foundation, based in Stamford Connecticut, raising $2.38 billion. 
Opelousas, Louisiana native Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, 54, took over as CEO of Feeding America. Ms. Babineaux-Fontenot is the Founder of CBF Consulting Group, LLC located in Dallas, Texas. She had previously worked with Wal-Mart for 14 years and her most recent role was Executive Vice President and Global Treasurer for 14 years. She is the only female 'top person' in the Forbes Top Ten Charities 2018. 

​Led by Michael Nyenhuis, Americares' highest paid person received $448,864.00, Feeding America paid their top person, $707,580.00 and United Way Worldwide, led by Brian Gallagher, paid their top person $1,223,823.00.
Number 9 ranked Boys & Girls Club of America, based in Atlanta, Georgia, led by James Clark, raised $2,037,000.00 and paid their top person $847,189.00. Number 8 ranked Habitat for Humanity, based in Americus, Georgia, raised $1,986,000.00, led by Jonathan Reckford and paid their top person $372,969.00. Number 7 ranked Direct Relief was the only west-coast based organization, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California and raised $1,238,000.00, led by Thomas Tighe, and they paid their top person $466,357.00.
Food for the Poor was ranked at 11, raising $948,000.00, led by Robin Mahfood. Based in Coconut Creek, Florida, Food for the Poor is a Christian relief agency specializing in providing donated goods to the needy in Latin America and the Caribbean. They paid their top person $470,120.00. Mahfood has been described as a “spiritual businessman with a true heart for the poor.” With his extensive background in commerce and his in-depth knowledge of the West Indies, Mahfood brings his compassion for the poor to the forefront as Food For The Poor’s leader.
At #34, Feed the Children, a foreign relief agency whose contributions consist of cash and donated goods, raised $417,000.00, led by Travis Arnold, and paid their top person $509,348.00.
At #87, the Midwest Food Bank raised $167 million, led by David Kieser and paid their top person $92,157.00. At #96, the March of Dimes Foundation raised $159 million, led by Stacey Stewart, and paid their top person $598,426.00.
In Florida, according to their Form 990 for FY 2016, ending 6/30/2017, Feeding Florida, Inc. raised $2.8 million and paid their Executive Director, Robin Safley, $131,740.00. In 2015, according to their Form 990 for FY 2015, ending 6/30/2016, Feeding Florida, Inc. raised $3.2 million and paid their Executive Director, Rebecca Brislain  $86,819.00.

​According to the latest-available employment data by Johns Hopkins University researchers, for the first time ever, the nonprofit world’s work force is larger than the manufacturing industry work force. Nonprofits had an estimated 12,488,563 workers on their payrolls in 2017, manufacturing companies had 12,456,203 workers. The data in the study includes all workers — full-time, part-time, and contractors.
Hotels, restaurants, and other entities that involve providing lodging or food services have a larger labor pool than nonprofits, at 13.7 million workers, and employees at retail stores number 15.9 million. According to the study, nonprofit workers now account for about 10.2% of the United States national work force, easily exceeding other industries such as construction (7.1 million) and finance and insurance (5.9 million). 
The nonprofit world has been growing faster than the for-profit work force for several years. The nonprofit world’s overtaking of manufacturing is also partly the result of a slow-growing manufacturing industry.  From 2016 to 2017, the number of nonprofit workers increased by almost 2 percent, while the number of employees in the business world increased by 1.5 percent. Another nuance of the study showed that rural areas have higher nonprofit shares of employment than do the smaller urban or metropolitan areas. In smaller metropolitan areas, nonprofit workers account for about 7% of the work force. In rural areas, they account for 8.7%.
However, in a separate study, the repercussions of low pay within the nonprofits themselves, create high turnover and difficulties in hiring employees from diverse backgrounds to carry out their missions. Some nonprofits are taking steps to offer better pay and benefits, sabbaticals, and professional development for all workers, not just senior leaders. But only thirteen people of color and 29 women head the nation’s 100 biggest nonprofits — and all the rest are led by white men, according to an exclusive analysis conducted by Michael Theis for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. 

An organization on the cutting edge of nonprofits using technology is now innovating in its campaign for growth.
TechSoup, which provides technology systems and assistance to charities around the world, is raising $11.5 million to increase the services it offers and the number of groups it serves. The organization is seeking both outright gifts and debt investments.
A big part of the campaign is its direct public offering, which includes three tiers of debt investments. Individuals can invest small amounts, even if they’re not accredited investors, which is not the case with many impact investments.
"It’s kind of like crowdfunding meets impact investment," says TechSoup’s CEO, Rebecca Masisak.
The first tier of TechSoup’s offering lets supporters buy notes of $50 to $2,499. At the end of the term, investors will get their principal back along with 2 percent interest. The middle tier allows supporters to buy five-year notes of $2,500 to $49,999 at an interest rate of 3.5 percent. The third tier allows accredited investors and institutions to buy five-year notes of $50,000 or more at an interest rate of 5 percent.
Paying Back Investors
TechSoup believes the offering marks the first time the Securities and Exchange Commission has qualified a nonprofit to raise funds nationally through something called a Regulation A+/Tier 2 offering.
Grants to fund specific programs are great, but it’s very difficult for an organization to expand its efforts using restricted money, Masisak says.
Money the nonprofit earns from fees for products and services currently makes up 95 percent of TechSoup’s budget. The debt the organization raises will help it expand its services and earned income, which will allow it to pay back investors.
"This capital, which will be unrestricted, will allow us to grow these new services, bring the impact, but also will financially make us stronger and allow for the returns."
So far, more than $8 million has been committed to TechSoup’s growth campaign, almost all in the form of debt.
The drive got a big boost today when VMware, a cloud-computing company in the Bay Area, announced a $2.5 million recoverable grant. (Recoverable grants are also known as forgivable loans. There is no possibility of default if the recipient cannot repay the money.)
"It was really powerful to invest in TechSoup’s own organizational transformation, knowing that ripple effect that they have with the nonprofits that they serve," says Jessamine Chin, director of the VMware Foundation. "They have a strong reputation in this space for being forward thinking."
Making a recoverable grant in TechSoup rather than an outright grant has been a learning opportunity for the VMware Foundation, Chin says. Grant makers think about potential grantees’ financial strength, she says, but that was magnified in this case as leaders discussed TechSoup’s ability to repay.
"This is a new approach. I appreciate how inclusive they been to have not just having institutional investors but also including community members," she says. "It’ll also be interesting to see if other organizations choose to follow TechSoup’s path."
Cloud Computing and A.I.
TechSoup says its growth campaign is important because of transformation in digital technology.
There was a time when TechSoup mailed free and discounted software to nonprofits, but the technology landscape has evolved significantly since then, says Masisak. Now organizations are dealing with cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and more.
"We feel like there’s so much need and so much opportunity to do more with technology for the sector," Masisak says. "We don’t want the sector to fall even further behind."
Nicole Wallace has been reporting on nonprofits for the Chronicle for more than 20 years. Her areas of expertise include data, technology, fundraising, and innovation. In March, Nicole wrote about the use of artificial intelligence in fundraising.
​More info: Click here

Too much pressure to meet unrealistic fundraising goals, coupled with too little pay and frustrating organizational cultures, is driving away fundraisers, according to a new Chronicle of Philanthropy survey.
Half of all fundraisers surveyed expect to leave their jobs in the next two years, the report says.
Even more alarming, 3 in 10 said they had recently left or plan to leave the development field altogether in the next two years.
While the large number of baby boomers in fundraising could account for some of that, it’s hardly the main source; only 12% said they planned to retire or had family changes or other personal reasons for quitting.
The new figures come from a survey of 1,035 fundraisers in the United States and Canada, conducted by Harris Insights & Analytics, through the Harris Poll, for the Chronicle and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. The online questionnaire asked survey participants about their job satisfaction; 5% of the survey takers included people who had left fundraising altogether within the past five years.

​Too Much Pressure, Too Little Appreciation
The new data shows that even after a widely shared study in 2013 sent a warning signal to nonprofit leaders about the anxiety and unhappiness of fundraisers, little has improved. Half of the top development officers in that survey, “Underdeveloped,” conducted by CompassPoint and the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund, said they were considering leaving their jobs.
The reasons the revolving door keeps spinning are numerous, our survey shows. But two findings stand out:
84 percent of fundraisers said they felt “tremendous pressure to succeed” in their role.
55% said they “often feel unappreciated” in their work.
Seeing an unpromising future at a job can stir a fundraiser’s restlessness, according to the survey results. At the jobs they left most recently, they were likeliest to be dissatisfied with their prospects for promotion (85 percent) or a lack of succession planning (83 percent).
Seeking More Time With Donors
The new survey did highlight some bright spots. Among them:
Fundraisers are driven by mission; 93% of survey participants said they couldn’t work for a charity if they didn’t have a strong connection to the cause.
They’re happy with their travel schedule (92%).
They appreciate their organization’s flexibility regarding their family and child-care issues.
They are satisfied with their level of independence in their jobs (83%), and the same share said they’re happy with their relationship with their charity’s volunteers (excluding board members).
In addition, fundraisers relish working with donors: 78% said they wished they had more time to spend meeting with supporters.
The survey provides valuable insights into how fundraisers feel about their work. “It helps us put a number on what we’re hearing anecdotally,” says Michael Nilsen, vice president for communications and public policy at the Association for Fundraising Professionals.
But those donors are changing, the survey found. Compared with five years ago:
Supporters want more information on their gifts’ impact, according to 92% of participants
They’re more aware of social issues (85%)
And donors are more likely to earmark their gifts for specific programs (77%)
Respondents also said that fundraising is getting harder: 1 in 3 said donations to their charity had dropped in the past two years. The latest “Giving USA” figures showed philanthropy over all down 1.7%  in 2018 compared with the previous year — including a 3.4% drop in giving by individuals.
More info: click here

Last year was a tough one for many charities even though the overall economy was strong: Donations declined 1.7 percent, to $427.7 billion, according to the annual “Giving USA” report released Tuesday.
The drop in contributions — due largely to average Americans donating less — follows four years of sustained growth that reached a high of $435.1 billion in 2017.
A drop in total giving is relatively uncommon. “Giving USA,” which examines contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations, noted that the decline was just the 13th drop in overall giving it had charted in the past four decades.
The decline could be a sign of trouble ahead, particularly if a recession is on the horizon and changes to the tax code cause a long-term challenge for fundraisers. Or it could be a sign that the erratic stock market in the last half of 2018, combined with uncertainty about the tax law, made last year especially difficult. Emphasizing that their results were based off of projections, researchers were careful to say that it was impossible to know yet just how concerned charities should be that giving was off last year.
Americans decreased their giving 3.4 percent from 2017 levels, dropping from $302.5 billion to $292.1 billion.
Historically, individuals have provided at least 70 percent of overall giving, but in 2018 they gave just 68 percent. Another 18 percent of contributions came from foundations and 5 percent from corporations.
One reason for the decline may have been that donors were spooked by the stock market’s nosedive in December. “Stock markets really went down at exactly the wrong moment last year,” said Thomas Kurmann, director of development at Doctors Without Borders USA.
“Even though the economy’s good, the markets have been on a rollercoaster, and that rollercoaster leads to uncertainty,” said Steve MacLaughlin, vice president for data and analytics at Blackbaud. When people don’t have a clear picture of their future, they usually forestall major financial decisions, like a large end-of-year gift, he said.
This donor hesitancy is significant because in recent years, many charities saw big donors making up for large losses in the share of middle-class donors’ giving. But that wasn’t the case last year.
“For many years, the biggest gifts — the megagifts — have been able to sustain growth and made up for the loss of household giving,” said Laura MacDonald, vice chair at the Giving USA Foundation and principal at the Benefactor Group. In 2018, however, those big contributions weren’t enough to stave off an overall drop in giving.
Outside of the “Giving USA” report, other philanthropy trackers are finding similar trends extending into 2019. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which measures annual fundraising rates, has seen donations from individuals continue to fall this year. In the first quarter of 2019, the number of donors shrank by nearly 6 percent, while overall donations decreased just over 2 percent.
More info, click here. 

​The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that best-selling author, podcaster, and investor, Tim Ferriss, who is now 42, disclosed that his decision to devote his philanthropy to research into psychedelic drugs is built on a solid foundation of peer-reviewed science. "I’ve spent hundreds of hours interacting with researchers to get a better understanding of the science," he says.
It is also very personal. Ferriss’s best friend from childhood died of a fentanyl overdose and his aunt, after injuring her shoulder, became addicted to Percocet and alcohol and died last year. Ferriss himself struggled with depression and anxiety as a college student at Princeton. He tried "magic mushrooms," which contain psilocybin, and found relief. "I was able to finally see things clearly," he says, "to appreciate all of the incredible chance blessings that I experienced in my life."
So, Ferriss decided to help fund research at John Hopkins to see if psilocybin-assisted therapy could treat opioid addiction.
Ferriss is quick to caution that no one should experiment with illegal drugs under uncontrolled circumstances. But like many, if not most, of the donors to psychedelic science, his passion is driven both by the head and the heart.
Usona founder Bill Linton, Cody Swift of the Riverstyx Foundation, and David Bronner, who leads Dr. Bronner’s, which makes organic personal-care products, have all experienced or seen up close the healing potential of psychedelics.
Donors are also motivated because, they say, conventional treatments for the pain caused by PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction often fall short.
Drug overdoses killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2017, which is more than the number who died during the entire Vietnam War.
"These compounds are by no means a panacea," Ferriss says. "But they show tremendous promise for serious conditions that currently have few or no effective treatments."
Ferriss has formed a foundation and pledged $2 million of his own money to fund psychedelic science. "Having done a few years of due diligence," he adds, "I’ve decided to push all my chips in."
Other major donors include David Bronner and his family, which owns Dr. Bronner’s, a company that makes organic personal-care products; Bill Linton, the founder and CEO of life sciences company Promega, who started a nonprofit to secure government approval for psilocybin to alleviate depression; Rebekah Mercer, whose concern focuses on veterans with PTSD; and the children of the late Richard Rockefeller, former chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, who was a passionate advocate for the research.
Others supporting the research include the foundation of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna; the foundation of Nick Pritzker, a venture capitalist and the former president of the Hyatt hotel chain, and his wife, Susan; George Sarlo, a Holocaust survivor and founder of an investment firm; the entrepreneur Elon Musk; Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason; and an anonymous Bitcoin millionaire known only as Pine, who says his philanthropy was inspired by a drug trip.
It’s all the more remarkable because the drugs being studied — primarily psilocybin, which comes from so-called magic mushrooms, and MDMA, the active ingredient in street drugs known Ecstasy or Molly — are not only illegal but designated, along with heroin and fentanyl, as Schedule 1 drugs by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a classification reserved for substances thought to have a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.
For more info on studying psychedelics, click here.
 

The longest U.S. government shutdown in history has the already overburdened nonprofit world on alert. The National Council of Nonprofits joined the National Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in condemning politics as usual when it sent a letter to President Trump and members of Congress, calling the shutdown "a tragic failure of leadership" with "very real and lasting consequences."

Tim Delaney, president of the charity advocate, said in an interview that the shutdown is "an unnatural disaster."

But there isn’t time to dwell. People in need are looking to community-based organizations for assistance, ranging from basic nutrition to help with their taxes. And some of those funds are drying up as a result of the shutdown.

Sabeen Perwaiz Syed, executive director of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance, said a major source of funding for domestic-violence shelters are in jeopardy because they come from grants received through the Violence Against Women Act and the Victims of Crime Act, both administered by the Department of Justice. Syed said eight groups in the state are in talks to reduce staff within the next three weeks because of a funding lapse.

Jessica Castello, assistant director of the Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County in South Bend, Ind., told the Chronicle that about 40 percent of its operating budget comes from the Department of Justice because the group is a grantee of the Office on Violence Against Women.

Similarly, Beth Goodrich, executive director of the Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said 32 shelters serve the state’s 75 counties. All of them are still operating, but that might not be the case in a month.

"When no one is present at DOJ to process reimbursement requests, state administrators cannot draw down those funds and they cannot reimburse local programs," she said in an email. "For some programs, it simply eliminates a position or two in the agency, for others it makes up a majority of their total funding."

She added: "The longer the shutdown continues, the scarier this becomes not only for the agencies but for victims themselves. They begin to question, How long will I have a place to live? Some people who have left abusive partners may feel they have limited choices on where to turn if the program that is assisting them now has to close."

Steve Taylor, senior vice president for public policy at United Way Worldwide, said he expects increased pressures on local organizations, especially ones that are helping federal workers and contractors who may not have ever needed goods or services from a nonprofit previously.

The fate of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, may be among the top worries for many advocates of the poor. For now, the benefits continue to flow, but the shutdown could interrupt SNAP assistance if it drags on much longer.

"We regard the SNAP benefits as fundamental to do what we do, so much so that we think helping people get their SNAP benefits is almost as important to us as distributing food."

In fact, the first thing the staff asks people coming through the door is, "Are you eligible for SNAP benefits?"

Bogan said his organization is preparing for its 11th annual fundraising event, the "Fill the Bag Benefit" in March.

The shutdown has also created financial concerns for individuals getting ready to file taxes. While the Trump administration has promised that the Internal Revenue Service will do what is necessary to send refund checks, Taylor is skeptical, partly because there may be a learning curve with the new tax code.

By Julian Wyllie  Read more here.

Kanye West pledged $10 million to back the completion of artist James Turrell’s work-in-progress, the Roden Crater Project.

Turrell has been working on the project since the 1970s to convert a dormant volcanic crater in the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, Ariz., into a series of viewing spaces, tunnels, chambers, and pathways that will offer visitors a variety of visual and auditory experiences.

West is a musician and record producer. Along with a number of different business ventures, he founded the production company and record label Good Music in partnership with Sony BMG.

​Jonathan Soros, an investment manager who is one of George Soros’s five children, wants nonprofits to raise money online without spending on pricey software.
So, in a move that’s raised some eyebrows, he and his wife, Jennifer, founded Give Lively, a company that started offering free digital-fundraising software to charities a year ago.
The company provides the basics: a way to generate donation forms for websites and emails. But it also gives charities the ability to raise money through text messages, the means to have supporters create their own fundraising pages, and, soon, a tool to sell event tickets. Nonprofits pay only a relatively small, but standard, payment-processing fee.
The couple wants to save nonprofits money and deliver online-fundraising services that are just as strong as what’s on the market today — if not stronger, says Jonathan Soros, 48.
Jonathan says he and Jennifer are not out to make money. Because the company offers free services, the couple — mostly known for backing liberal causes — sees it as a philanthropic project, despite Give Lively’s status as a limited-liability company rather than a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Jonathan Soros likened the couple’s funding of Give Lively to an "impact investment," albeit one where no profit will be made. Effectively what we’re doing is subsidizing the entire field of nonprofits that use this product," he says.
Most of the nonprofits that have used Give Lively so far are small. Still, some have recognizable names, like the Malala Fund, StoryCorps, and the Women’s March L.A. Foundation.
The company might be one to watch if it catches on with lots more nonprofits, experts say. But many nonprofit tech consultants and people who work at competing companies are skeptical of its offerings.
Civic Nation, which launched in 2015 and houses an array of advocacy and awareness campaigns, started using Give Lively’s donation pages starting in mid-2017, says Jenn Brown, the group’s executive director. The products are simple to use, she says, and "by far the best deal for our nonprofit."
Today, the charity, which projects that it will raise about $10 million this year, uses the company’s text-appeal services and its tool to allow donors to create fundraising pages for campaigns.
"As a nonprofit, my number one priority is to ensure as much money as possible is going toward the causes that people are donating in support of," she says. "So my priority is to work with online processors who charge us the lowest fees possible."
To generate a profit, other companies that offer similar products to Give Lively's tack on fees — sometimes up to 5 percent, depending on the service being used and how large the nonprofit is, experts say. Most providers also ask charities to pay for a monthly or annual subscription, with the price based on how large the transaction fees are.
By not asking for any payments beyond transaction fees charged by Stripe, a payment processor, Give Lively is a veritable unicorn. Its promise of free software is virtually unheard of in the nonprofit-tech space.
And that’s made some observers skeptical. How can a software company continue to grow, improve its tools, and compete with the likes of Classy, Network for Good, and Blackbaud with only one source of funding and no revenue?
"Seems unsustainable," says Sarah Sebastian, director of brand communications at Qgiv, a company that also offers digital-fundraising tools.
Some have questioned whether there’s another agenda. For instance, is the company looking to hook a lot of nonprofits by giving away services, only to sell its company to another vendor?
The answer to that is "no," DeParolesa says. "Our ethos is such that the idea of selling to a for-profit entity is sort of the antithesis of how we began," he says.
In late August, the Soroses approved a company statement drafted by DeParolesa called the "Forever Free Pledge." The pledge promises that all Give Lively’s current services — and some items still in the works, like the event-ticketing tool — will be free in perpetuity to all users, with no commitments. "We will never charge any annual fees, setup fees, hidden fees, or platform fees for our Forever Free Services," says the statement, which went online in August. "We pledge to offer each of our Forever Free Services for so long as we run each service."
A footnote at the bottom of the pledge says: "Stop trying to find a catch. There’s no catch."
Give Lively has some limitations.
The company can integrate its fundraising tools only with Salesforce. That means charities using other donor databases — like Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge — won’t get supporter data sent directly to their systems. They’ll have to download it and then manually import it into their databases — creating an administrative task that many charities don’t like.
Give Lively will be investigating ways to work with other fundraising software this year, but DeParolesa is unsure how long it’ll take to offer such services.
Today, nonprofits also need to use the payment processor Stripe as part of their Give Lively account. That service typically takes two days to verify credit-card payments for nonprofits. It takes seven days for contributions made by donors directly from their bank accounts. Among other reasons, the company uses Stripe because it offers good rates for processing nonprofit donations, DeParolesa says.
Give Lively, however, will start allowing nonprofits to use PayPal as its payment processor later this year, which charges fees similar to Stripe’s, but can send money to nonprofits faster in most cases.
Jonathan Soros acknowledges that it might be hard to get nonprofits that are used to doing business with other companies to join Give Lively.
"The transaction cost of shifting is not zero," Soros says.
Still, he thinks all nonprofits — no matter their size — care about saving money: "It really feels difficult to hand over a percentage of your revenue to anybody, whether you’re small or large."
​Michael Towner