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Donor Pays Fees Information

Asking donors to cover processing fees is an increasingly popular part of online donations. Our research has shown that at least half of donors are typically willing to optionally cover the processing fees of their donation so that they know more of their donation is going to the organization.

 

We've made it pretty easy to enable this functionality on Donately as a step in our form builder. You'll have a multitude of options to choose from, including standard rates, custom rates, a flat fees, and a flat percentage.

 

If you are a nonprofit but have not contacted Stripe or PayPal about their nonprofit rates for credit card processing, please see below:

Stripe for Nonprofits

PayPal for Nonprofits

Once you do that, you'll want to use the "Custom" option in the form builder to get your fees exact to your newly discounted rate.

 

Another big piece you'll need to understand is that this is not a simple percentage calculation. You can read more about that from Stripe here, but it boils down to following this equation:

 

donor_pays_fees_calc.png
 
Note, there are times that due to rounding, the final amount may vary by a penny in either direction (such as an intended $500 donation with the donor covering the fees comes out to $499.99 or $500.01). While we do our best to make it the even number, calculations are pretty messy and we round to the best of our ability.
If you have a consistent problem with rounding, let us know.
 
 

⚠️ Important: Updating Donor Pays Fees When Changing Subscription Tiers

If you upgrade or downgrade your Donately subscription, your Donor Pays Fee settings do not automatically adjust to match your new platform fee.

For example:

  • If you move from the Free tier (4% platform fee) to the Low Fees tier (2% platform fee), your forms will still reflect the previous Donor Pays Fee percentage unless manually updated.

  • The same applies when downgrading tiers.

After any subscription change, we strongly recommend reviewing the Donor Pays Fee settings on each donation form to ensure the percentage accurately reflects your current platform + processing fees.

To review:

  1. Go to Forms → Form Builder

  2. Open each active form

  3. Navigate to the Donor Pays Fees section

  4. Confirm your fees percentage matches your updated subscription tier

Because Donor Pays Fees are configured at the form level, they must be reviewed individually across all live forms whenever your subscription is modified.

If you’re unsure what percentage to use after changing tiers, our team is happy to help you calculate it.