Why we're free for nonprofits
We believe that nonprofits, no matter their size, should not sacrifice their means to satisfy their missions. So we built and support a powerful and practical fundraising platform that’s free for nonprofits and intuitive for donors.
A huge charitable gift to the nonprofit community
Millions of dollars in donated money that nonprofits might otherwise have spent on digital fundraising software has instead been redirected toward their essential operations and services.
Give Lively does not charge nonprofits for use of our platform.
No setup fees, no platform fees, no membership or subscription fees, no annual or monthly fees, no hidden Give Lively fees.
We rely on third-party payment processors and pass along their small transaction fees, which can we covered by donors, and we accept tips from donors.
Our philanthropist founders cover our operating costs
They see Give Lively as a way to sustainably leverage their resources to help meet the development needs of the whole nonprofit community.
By funding Give Lively, they can make strategic, efficient and impartial decisions about a very broad group of potential beneficiaries. We call this the Give Lively Effect. Happily, it has worked extremely well.
Donors give to Give Lively
Donors can optionally tip Give Lively to support our work and extend the reach and capability of our free products and services.
Donor generosity toward Give Lively, coupled with that of our founder-funders, is another way to support the nonprofit community. We call it "paying free forward" since our free tech helps nonprofits direct millions of dollars to their critical work, instead of for-profit digital fundraising software. Because we work for nonprofits, not for profit.
Your data is not the product
We understand and sympathize with the concern about what "free" means today. We've experienced the same "free" service offers with hidden gotchas. And we know that some services claim to be "free" as a way to justify selling your data.
We, however, never sell, rent or lease any data — just one aspect of our comprehensive approach to data privacy and security.
Third-party fees
While we do not charge nonprofits for our tech, we do rely on third parties like Stripe, PayPal and Lob to power payment processing and disbursement. These market-leading service providers attach their small fees to every transaction, just as they do with all of their clients.
Some fees may also be charged by third-party platforms that we make available through integrations, like Salesforce, Zapier and Double the Donation.
We are fully transparent about all of these non-Give Lively costs, including how much they are and who must or may cover them. But we do not oblige donors to pay a fee to give through our platform.
The Give Lively Effect
Our free tech is a proven way to:
It all started with an idea
Our founders understood that providing consequential and ongoing support to Give Lively is a strategic capital commitment, triggering ever-increasing value to nonprofits many times greater than the investment.
Similarly, our CEO believed that smart, secure, user-friendly tech would transform nonprofit fundraising for the better, and at a scale not possible through more limited and fragmented philanthropy to fewer nonprofits.
Investing in efficiency
In the same spirit of doing more with less, Give Lively is saving both our founders’ and, more importantly, our nonprofit members’ time and energy. For nonprofits, our powerful and practical fundraising platform frees them to hit their fundraising goals without a significant drain on budget or time.
For our founders, in addition to acting as busy conventional grantmakers, they underwrite Give Lively and, in turn, our push to help a growing number of nonprofits maximize their own digital fundraising potential. Today, both our founders and our nonprofit member organizations spend more time focused on their missions and less time distracted by the cost and inefficiencies of digital fundraising.
Democratizing tech for nonprofits
Our founders are only human. In a crowded space full of trending topics, charismatic leaders and disparate regional priorities, they make their giving choices through the lens of personal and professional interests, always with the knowledge that there are thousands of other worthy causes.
Give Lively redresses any imbalances, throwing open the gates to more equal opportunity for a significant and growing group of aligned nonprofits. Now, no matter their size or digital fluency, all nonprofits that share our clearly stated progressive values can capitalize on our free technology.
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