FirstGiving deducts a total fee of 7.5 percent from each donation. Our transaction fee covers:

• Securing and hosting the site so you can feel comfortable providing your credit card details
• Vetting 501 (c) nonprofits associated with GuideStar
• Processing your donations securely
• Providing exceptional support: When you contact us, you speak to real people. Get to know us better.
• Ensuring the money you raise gets to the nonprofit quickly and safely; learn how.

We believe in giving all nonprofits the same opportunity to raise huge amounts of money, including the smaller ones who can't afford to spend a lot on technology, freeing them up to concentrate on their primary goal, whether it's medical research or running the local play group.

Our nonprofits understand this fee and the costs associated with constantly maintaining and updating an online fundraising service, and we make the fees clear when nonprofits are signing up with us.

We also give donors the option to cover that fee by adding a small amount to their donation so that the nonprofit receives the amount you intended to donate, effectively removing the fee for that donation.  We find that a significant number of donors choose to cover the fee - about 38%, on average, across the site.

Still have a question? We'd love to hear from you; please contact us.

Build it in-house or use FirstGiving? One nonprofit's story

Officer Hugh Miller of Police Unity Tour of Florida said his board of directors was concerned about the cost of FirstGiving's service and looked into building a fundraising solution in-house.

"We reviewed the cost of hiring people to build and support the platform, maintenance, all the credit card processing, refunds, charge-backs, and customer service, and decided: There is no way we could do this as well in-house," said Miller.

With FirstGiving, their donations jumped from $43,960 in 2007 to $75,616 in 2008. That's a 75 percent growth!