How OpenCharities works

Where your money goes

OpenCharities is transparent giving infrastructure. Donors pick an organisation on the platform and pay into that organisation's own account. NGOs keep their own accounts and use our cockpit to show donors where the money went; companies commit an amount and a theme through us and get the allocation and the report back. Pick your route below.

Choose your route

Your donation, step by step

Three steps, from the initiative you pick to the update that shows what your money did.

You pick an organisation and an initiative

Browse the partner organisations on the OpenCharities platform and choose the initiative you want to back. You decide where your money goes, and OpenCharities never holds it as an intermediary.

You pay on the organisation's own page

The donate button hands you to the organisation's own hosted payment page. Your payment lands in their own account. Their payment provider deducts a transaction fee, and OpenCharities takes 5% from the organisation's side as the donation comes in — you are never asked to pay anything on top.

The organisation shows what it did

The organisation posts dated updates on the initiative page: what the money paid for and how far the work has come, written by the people doing it. You follow the initiative you backed instead of waiting for an annual report.

You should be able to see what happened after you gave

Most giving ends at the thank-you page. On OpenCharities the organisation holds the money and keeps telling you what it is doing with it.

Giving today

Your money passes through a platform on its way to the organisation

After the thank-you page you hear nothing until the next campaign

Impact comes back once a year, as one total in an annual report

You have to take the organisation's word for what happened

Giving through OpenCharities

Your payment lands in the organisation's own account; OpenCharities never holds it

You back a named initiative, not a general fund

The organisation posts dated updates on what the money did

The organisation is paid first; OpenCharities takes its 5% from their side

You should be able to see what happened after you gave

Most giving ends at the thank-you page. On OpenCharities the organisation holds the money and keeps telling you what it is doing with it.

Giving today

Your money passes through a platform on its way to the organisation

After the thank-you page you hear nothing until the next campaign

Impact comes back once a year, as one total in an annual report

Giving through OpenCharities

Your payment lands in the organisation's own account; OpenCharities never holds it

You back a named initiative, not a general fund

The organisation posts dated updates on what the money did

How partner organisations are chosen

OpenCharities is not a funder and does not allocate your money. What we decide is which organisations can be on the platform, and we are honest that the bar is a judgement call rather than a published score.

You choose, we do not

You pick the organisation and the initiative, and your payment goes into that organisation's own account. OpenCharities has no say in where your money lands and no discretion over it afterwards.

What a partner organisation signs up to

An organisation joins by taking payments in its own account and committing to post dated updates about what the money did. Willingness to show the work is the bar, and it is checked at the point money starts moving.

During the pilot we approach partner organisations ourselves rather than running an open application, and we do not publish a scoring rubric — we will not pretend a judgement call is automatic. As more organisations join, we will keep saying how we picked them.

Proof you can follow

We would rather you check than take our word for it, so the route leaves as little as possible to trust. The organisation is the merchant: you pay on their own payment page, the money lands in their own account, and there is no OpenCharities step in between. What the money did is theirs to show, in dated updates on the initiative you backed. OpenCharities takes 5% from the organisation's side as the donation comes in — never out of your donation.

How you follow it

The organisation holds the money and writes the updates. We show them, dated, next to the initiative you gave to.

Find an organisation to back

Browse the partner organisations on the OpenCharities platform and pick an initiative. You pay into their own account, and they show you what happened next.

Browse the organisations

Your payment lands in the organisation's own account · OpenCharities takes 5% from their side

Take control of your impact

Let's talk about your giving programs, and how OpenCharities makes the money flow traceable.

Get in touch