A few years ago there were several choices of platform for taking straight donations and running sponsored events – marathons, silences, reading, you name it…

Several have fallen by the wayside, and there are now two main ones left – JustGiving and Virgin Money Giving.

A conundrum…

Many treasurers ask “Which is cheapest in terms of fees – so we’ll make the most money?”. The answer to this isn’t simple:

• Virgin Money Giving charge an initial one off fee, which isn’t insignificant at £150+VAT. Some of us were lucky enough to register in the six months after BT MyDonate closed. It’s a big fee, but of course once it’s paid, it’s paid. So you may want to look at the impact over a few years.
• JustGiving have two packages – START and GROW. START has no monthly fees; GROW does. START is a very bare bones package, but it does do most of the basics – the one exception is a “DONATE” button for your website. GROW has fees, a donate button and reporting – as does Virgin Money Giving.
• Card and platform fees vary – JustGiving is lower at 1.9% platform fees+0.0% platform fees rather than 2.5% card fees+2% platform fees for Virgin, but they also charge a fixed 20p per transaction. That means that Virgin Money Giving is cheaper for donations of £7.69 or less; it’s more expensive for donations of £7.70 or more. That said, Virgin Money Giving gives the option to the donor to pay the fees – they reckon 80% of people do on average, but clearly your experience may differ.
• One of the glories of both sites for a hard-pressed treasurer is that they automate Gift Aid collection. Virgin Money Giving always does it for you and don’t charge extra; Just Giving normally do it for you but charge 5% of the Gift Aid recovered – you can opt out, mind.

Ah…. another spreadsheet

Given all of this, I felt another spreadsheet coming on. Download it, have a play with an average number of donations a month, average size of donation, proportion paying Gift Aid etc.

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. All rates are correct as at 13 October 2020 but may change.

Conclusions

• JustGiving’s START package is often the cheapest in terms of fees provided you don’t have an abnormally high rate of Gift Aid, or are willing to do the Gift Aid recoveries yourself – but it doesn’t have an ad hoc ‘Donate Now’ button, and little in the way of reporting features (e.g. being able to compare which classes are doing best at a sponsored event).
• Virgin Money Giving may be better than JustGiving START, particularly if you’re already registered and don’t need to pay the £150+VAT one off fee (or if they waive that again in the future).
• JustGiving’s GROW package has an ongoing monthly fee, whether you use it or not, and so is probably best left for larger charities who need the reporting functionality.
• JustGiving START may be cheaper if you are willing to do your own Gift Aid reclaims – but you have to remember to do them – 95% of Gift Aid automated is better than 0% because you forgot to claim!

Ultimately though – it’s about which is going to work best for you – can it produce appealing looking pages that tug on the heartstrings to separate parents, grandparents, friends, family and colleagues from their money?

Selling tickets to events is a common ask for a PTA. Until now we’ve taken payments one of three ways:

• cash sales in advance or on the door;
• taking payments through the school’s own parent comms system; or
• bookings in advance with cash collected on the night.

All have their merits – but with the number of parents at the school gate falling, an online solution is becoming more important. The school’s own system provides that, but is a “per child” rather than “per parent” system, and is hardly seamless – we tell the office who to bill how much.

So… it’s time to take the plunge and look at online options.

What do we want?

• ease of purchase – how many clicks does it take?
• cost – we’re a charity – how much will we lose – hopefully to be made up by extra sales?
• ticket scanning – we’re a small school – but we might we want this in future?
• other options – can we use it to sell second hand uniform and the like?

Comparing sites

Comparing sites is hard, as they all charge a variety of fixed vs % vs per ticket fees.

As a rough ready reckoner to compare:

• PTA Events, Ticket Tailor, BookWhen, EventBrite and TryBooking – these are all sites that offer specific functionality for ticket sales and inventory management; and
• Wix and SquareSpace – which are more generic website tools, but which both offer an eCommerce plugin.

The spreadsheet below compares their plans as at 1 October 2022 – fill in the green boxes. I put this together very quickly, so you should of course do your own homework and check my sums!