7 Mistakes Nonprofits Make When Choosing a Donation Platform

The price of choosing the wrong donation platform is steep. Nonprofits are not like any other organization; their needs and priorities are different. When it comes to using an online donation platform that operates globally, it must respond to crises within hours and handle sensitive donor data at scale.

Donors’ security is paramount to safeguard their reputation, and they need to steer all the funds to the actual good they are trying to make, instead of giving vendors a cut of the donations.

Very often, decision makers go with an enterprise nonprofit software that everyone else is using, or they choose a cheap option.

Results: compromising security, failure to integrate, and overpaying in different types of fees.

Here are some common mistakes nonprofits make when choosing a donation platform and how to avoid them.

1 | Prioritizing Cost Over Total Cost of Ownership of a Donation Platform

A major mistake enterprise nonprofits make when settling on a donation platform is picking the popular, cheap options while disregarding hidden fees and transaction costs, and additional fees that will keep coming up in the long run.

Some of the hidden fees are commissions on each donation, which can be as much as 10%! Don’t underestimate the percentage, on a large-scale campaign of 50000 $ this means 5000$ taken away from your organization. Beyond transaction fees, there are the platform licensing costs. Rented SaaS platforms charge $500-$5,000+ monthly.

Over five years, that's $30,000-$300,000 in fees alone.

An owned platform requires a higher upfront investment but eliminates recurring vendor fees, saving hundreds of thousands over time while giving you complete control. That’s why the ideal road for nonprofits is to choose a zero-fee platform that allows the organization to keep 100% of the donation and actually pay it towards the cause it is raising funds for.

2 | Ignoring Integration Capabilities

Buying off the rack is always easy and convenient, but is it what your nonprofit really needs? When launching and managing donation campaigns for large nonprofits, a robust and easy-to-integrate platform is the best way to go.

CRM Integration, such as Salesforce integration for easier donor management, a secure nonprofit payment gateway integration to process the payments, and other integrations, such as Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, that will facilitate reporting, measuring, and optimizing.

If you are in charge of choosing your enterprise’s online donation platform, your best choice would be one that can easily integrate with all these vital tools to streamline the donation process, make your staff’s lives easier, and manage the donors' data easily and securely.

3 | Overlooking Multilingual and Regional Capabilities

Most of the major providers of fundraising platforms for large nonprofits cater only to the US and European donors, without any consideration of donors in the global south, ignoring users whose first language is not English, especially Arabic speakers.

Some of these platforms try to provide an Arabic interface, but it is usually poorly executed without a proper Right-to-Left layout change. They also fail to integrate Zakat calculators (Zakat is the charitable contribution Muslims pay on their wealth).

With over 420 million Arabic speakers globally and $2 trillion in Islamic charitable giving annually, ignoring this market means missing substantial donation potential.

Large nonprofits that are often engaged in global relief efforts need to use a more inclusive online donations platform that will have multilingual and multiregional capabilities to better cater to a larger donor base.

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4 | Ignoring Crisis Response Speed

Studies show that the vast majority of the donations are made in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, during the first 48-72 hours when donors are overwhelmed with emotions and have an immediate urge to act. Also, for those affected by an earthquake, a flood, or the aftermath of war, every second counts.

Therefore, being stuck in a loop of setup, approval, testing, launch, and starting the engines on a donation campaign is a luxury that cannot be afforded in times of crisis. Large non-profits need an online donation platform that can be up and running in minutes, not days.

Things need to be as quick as template select, customize, and launch something possible on an enterprise-grade donation platform built on Drupal that can have a campaign live in 30 minutes. 

Organizations like UNHCR have successfully used this approach to launch campaigns quickly during humanitarian crises, capitalizing on the large influx of charitable feelings and the generosity of donors immediately when a disaster strikes.

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5 | Underestimating Security and Compliance 

Many available online donation portals underestimate security compliance and do not conform to the major security regulations, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for card processing, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for data privacy of EU citizens, and various state-level US privacy laws.

Failure to adhere to these regulations not only puts the donors’ personal and financial data at risk, but this can also seriously harm the enterprise's reputation and cause permanent loss of trust from donors who had their security compromised.

Nonprofits need to invest in Self-hosted, owned platforms that give them complete control over security infrastructure. The nonprofit chooses where data is stored, how it's encrypted, and who has access, a critical aspect for organizations serving regions with specific data sovereignty requirements. Organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières have successfully deployed integrated donation platforms with enterprise-grade security.

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6 | Accepting Limited Customization from SaaS Providers

SaaS platforms usually offer pre-customized online donation platforms offering a one-size-fits-all kind of model. With limited to no flexibility for individual institutions' needs. Lack of customization will lead to a generic donation experience that doesn't reflect the brand and reduces donor trust.

Nonprofits cannot access the backend environment, are locked out of the platform, and need to communicate with the vendor for any adjustments that are usually urgent and cannot linger in the work pipeline.

However, choosing an easily customizable donation platform like Drupal-powered platforms designed for nonprofits allows unlimited customization and saves organizations the back and forth with the vendor to have adjustments made to fit the needs of the organization.

7 | Ignoring Vendor Lock-In and Data Portability Risks

Imagine you acquire a traditional off-the-shelf online donation platform and all goes well, what happens when your vendor raises prices by 30%? Goes out of business? Gets acquired and discontinues your product?

Most nonprofits don't ask these questions until it's too late! This is what is called vendor lock-in, which means the vendor owns the data of your donors, not your organization, and the data is locked in the vendor’s systems.

You won’t be able to access campaign, history, and analytics when you need them. To save your data, you will need to go through a lengthy and costly migration process, as enterprise migrations can cost more than $20,000 and take 3-6 months. You can avoid this by choosing an open-source online donation platform.

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What CIOs Need to Know

Take control of your future by owning your platform. Relying on rented platforms that put vendor profit ahead of nonprofit mission is the root cause of all the mistakes on this list.  Owning your donation infrastructure eliminates transaction fees, vendor lock-in, customization restrictions, and slow deployment. 

Built on Drupal, an open-source framework trusted by The United Nations, World Economic Forum, and thousands of organizations worldwide, owned platforms combine proven stability with unlimited flexibility.

The open-source foundation means you're never dependent on a single vendor, a global community of developers continuously improves the platform, and you have complete freedom to customize, extend, and evolve your donation system as your mission grows.

Enterprise nonprofits deserve platforms that can launch crisis campaigns in 30 minutes, serve Arabic-speaking donors with native language support, integrate seamlessly with current systems, and keep 100% of donations flowing to your cause, not vendor pocket.