An income you build. Not one you buy again every year.
The treadmill is the same everywhere: buy donors at about €165 a head, watch them drift away in silence, buy them again. OpenCharities is the base for your own fundraising — campaign pages, peer fundraisers, ambassadors, and the one step almost nothing else does: showing every donor exactly what their money did. Nothing up front. 5% on donations made through your OpenCharities pages, and nothing on what you raise outside them.
Cost per new donor, on the street
€165paid up front
What you pay OpenCharities
5%on donations through your OpenCharities pages
On your own fundraising
0%nothing, ever
The money goes out before it comes in.
Face-to-face fundraising is still how most Dutch charities meet a new donor. It works. It is also the most expensive money a charity can buy, and it is bought up front, on a promise.
€165
What one new donor costs via face-to-face fundraising, the fundraiser's bonus included.
Our estimate of Dutch sector practice, 2026
€100
What that same donor cost in 2015. The price of buying a donor keeps climbing.
Dutch sector figure, 2015
3 months
The clawback window. Cancel inside it and the signup costs nothing. Cancel just after, and it cost full price.
Dutch fundraising practice
Ask. Give. Show. Ask again.
Every fundraising tool you already have covers the first two. Almost nothing covers the third — which is why the fourth costs you as much as the first. OpenCharities closes the loop.
Ask
Campaign pages, peer fundraisers and ambassador emails — the asking tools you already expect, in one place.
Give
Donations arrive in your own Stripe account and settle straight to your bank. OpenCharities never holds, pools or moves your money.
Show
Every gift is traceable from donation to allocation to spend, and the report writes itself. This is the step nobody else builds.
Ask again
Your next ask goes to people who have already seen what the last one did. Whether that changes how they give is exactly what pilot one is built to measure — and you get that number either way.
0% is not free. It is billed to your donor.
A platform that charges the charity nothing still has to be paid. It asks your donor for a tip right after the gift — on a page you do not control, in words you did not write, for an amount you never see, while your donor believes all of it reached you. If the donor pays the platform, the platform works for the donor. If the charity pays the platform, the platform works for the charity.
A 0% platform
OpenCharities
0% is not free. It is billed to your donor.
A platform that charges the charity nothing still has to be paid. It asks your donor for a tip right after the gift — on a page you do not control, in words you did not write, for an amount you never see, while your donor believes all of it reached you. If the donor pays the platform, the platform works for the donor. If the charity pays the platform, the platform works for the charity.
A 0% platform
OpenCharities
5%, on money that already arrived.
No setup fee, no seat licence, no minimum. The fee is taken from each donation made through your OpenCharities pages as it comes in, with one invoice a month for your books. The 5% is of the donation amount, excl. VAT; your own payment costs come on top — never on the fundraising you do outside them.
The cockpit costs a flat 5% platform fee on the donations made through your OpenCharities pages, excluding VAT, including gifts from your own supporters who give there. You never pay it on the money you raise through your own channels outside them. A charity that prefers a monthly plan can move to one, which lowers the transaction fee to 3% or 2%. Separately, as OpenCharities grows we intend to charge less — that is the direction this market has always moved in, and we are not pretending to know the date.
You hold the money, always
Your charity is the merchant of record on its own Stripe account. Donations settle straight to your bank. OpenCharities never holds, pools or moves donor money — we make it visible, nothing more.
Do the sum on your own numbers
Take a donor who gives €120 over a year. Won on the street at the going rate, that donor cost about €165 before the first euro arrived. Through OpenCharities, the same €120 costs you €6. Your own gift sizes will differ, and the €165 is our estimate of what the sector pays, not a figure we measured.
Nothing on your own fundraising
The 5% applies only to donations made through your OpenCharities pages. The direct debits, legacies and major gifts that arrive through your own channels carry no transaction fee.
Pilot one is an experiment, and you see the data
We have no retention results to sell you, because the experiments have not run yet. Pilot one measures four things per charity: how many donors were new to your CRM, how far one ambassador's email travels, what a donor costs you all-in, and how gift size moves against your own baseline. Per charity, never averaged into one flattering number. You get your numbers whatever they say.
You hold the money, always
Your charity is the merchant of record on its own Stripe account. Donations settle straight to your bank. OpenCharities never holds, pools or moves donor money — we make it visible, nothing more.
Do the sum on your own numbers
Take a donor who gives €120 over a year. Won on the street at the going rate, that donor cost about €165 before the first euro arrived. Through OpenCharities, the same €120 costs you €6. Your own gift sizes will differ, and the €165 is our estimate of what the sector pays, not a figure we measured.
Nothing on your own fundraising
The 5% applies only to donations made through your OpenCharities pages. The direct debits, legacies and major gifts that arrive through your own channels carry no transaction fee.
Pilot one is an experiment, and you see the data
We have no retention results to sell you, because the experiments have not run yet. Pilot one measures four things per charity: how many donors were new to your CRM, how far one ambassador's email travels, what a donor costs you all-in, and how gift size moves against your own baseline. Per charity, never averaged into one flattering number. You get your numbers whatever they say.
Bring your own numbers.
At the end of a first call, one fundraising lead put it like this: "It feels like I can run this whole fundraising engine with you guys." That is a conclusion we would rather you reach yourself than hear in a pitch. Thirty minutes, your numbers, the whole loop.
Limited founding-partner spots · Launching 2026
Questions from nonprofits
What it costs, who holds the money, and what happens to the fundraising you already do.
It's a dashboard for your own fundraising. Donations, allocations and spend come together in one view, so your team, your board and your donors can all see where funding stands without rebuilding spreadsheets. It's a paid product for charities that run their own fundraising, separate from the OpenCharities Foundation's grantmaking.
Have a question we didn't answer?
Reach out to us