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.
Through nonprofits’ use of our secure technology, we make it easier for them to devote more resources to their critical work — not to fundraising software — and hit ever-higher fundraising goals.
We do not charge nonprofits for use of our fundraising platform — no setup fees, no platform fees, no membership or subscription fees, no annual or monthly fees, no hidden Give Lively fees.
The Give Lively Effect
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.
We pledge to be different. To be the future of digital fundraising for nonprofits — powerful, practical and free.
Measuring our success
$90 million saved in tech expenses
This number grows every day as our active membership of 9,000+ nonprofits puts our platform through its paces.
Our decision not to charge nonprofits or donors for use of our technology can be thought of as a sizable charitable gift to the nonprofit community. Millions of dollars in donated money that nonprofits might otherwise have been spent on digital fundraising software have instead been redirected toward their essential operations and services.
Free means free
We do not charge nonprofits for use of our fundraising platform — no setup fees, no platform fees, no membership or subscription fees, no annual or monthly fees, no hidden Give Lively fees.
Voluntary contributions to Give Lively
In the fall of 2022, Give Lively introduced the ability for donors to make a voluntary contribution (not tax-deductible) to Give Lively and join forces with our founder-funders in supporting the nonprofit community.
We call this donor-powered generosity “pay free forward” because donor contributions to Give Lively extend the reach and capability of our free products and services, thus helping the nonprofit community direct millions of dollars to their critical work, not digital fundraising software. Because we’re in it 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.
Therefore, we would never sell, rent or lease any data — just one aspect of our comprehensive approach to data privacy and security. Nor do we oblige donors to pay a fee to give through our platform.
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 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.
How is free possible?
First and foremost, our founders are committed philanthropists. In keeping with their goodwill vision of digital fundraising, our founders cover our operating costs so that we don’t have to charge nonprofits or donors.
They see Give Lively as a technological remedy to the complexity of fundraising, solving problems that have long stumped the nonprofit community. Too many nonprofits, especially small ones, struggle to pay for, set up and faithfully manage cutting-edge and secure online fundraising tech. The real and perceived financial and technical barriers are just too high.
Given this, our founders identified an opportunity. They recognized a way to make strategic, efficient and impartial decisions about how to support the nonprofit community. They saw a mechanism for sustainably leveraging their resources to help meet the development needs of a very broad group of potential beneficiaries.
That mechanism is our superpower. We call it the Give Lively Effect: a proven way of democratizing and leveling the digital fundraising playing field, guiding nonprofits into the digital age, helping them hit their fundraising goals and freeing them to devote more resources to their critical work.
Happily, it has worked extremely well.
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