Tipping uses anchoring and guilt aversion to extract an extra percentage, most of which goes to the software platform rather than your cause. Our approach replaces the tip with two purpose-built tools: a transparent cover-admin ask (reflecting your real costs) and a creative upsell that shows donors the additional impact of a larger gift. You raise more, keep more, and build a stronger donor relationship.

"Free" platforms monetize through donor tips, often 13–20% of every donation. When you calculate the effective rate per dollar fundraised (including tips, hidden admin fees, and FX markups your donors might absorb), the "free" option is frequently the most expensive. Here's a cost comparison calculator so you can see the math with your own numbers.

It's actually the same number of asks: a tipping checkout asks for the donation, then the tip, and many also layer in their own upsell. A transparent checkout asks for the donation, an optional impact-based upsell, and an optional cover admin contribution. The difference is what each step communicates.

A "tip" implies the money rewards a service or goes to the cause, when it usually does neither. A cover admin ask names exactly what it's for: the real cost of processing the gift, typically a few percent. And tip percentages tend to run far higher than a transparent admin fee, often 15–20% versus around 5%, so it's the same friction, but very different effects on trust and on the dollar amount your organization actually keeps.

If you're small and your priority is simply getting money in the door with as little setup as possible, a tipping-based platform is a reasonable starting point. Once you start thinking about donor retention, stewardship, lifetime value, and keeping a larger share of what you raise, the trade-offs of the free model start to matter. Transparent pricing, upsell tools that deepen donor connection, and full visibility into your revenue become worth far more than the convenience of a zero-setup checkout. The calculator is designed to help you see that crossover point for your own numbers.

At the moment of giving, most donors are already committed, and many will add a tip without much hesitation, but the question is what happens afterward. Most of the time, when a donor later realizes their "tip" went to a software company rather than the cause they care about, it can quietly erode the relationship. Some won't give again through that platform, and others won't give again at all. That's a real cost to donor lifetime value that never shows up on an invoice, because the platform's pricing looks free. So the extra dollars aren't free money, they often come at the expense of the long-term donor trust that fundraising actually depends on.