If you’re an administrator, teacher, or PTA/PTO member at a K-12 school, you’ve likely planned and executed fundraising campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re working to renovate facilities, upgrade classroom technology, or fund extracurricular activities, school fundraising is essential to make students’ educational experiences the best they can be.
However, school fundraising has a reputation for being challenging, and the source of many of its difficulties—from promoting your campaigns to tracking donations as they come in—is not leveraging the right software.
Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place to mitigate this problem! We’ve compiled a list of our top fundraising platforms for schools and the reasons why each one is so great:
1. ShopRaise: Best Overall Fundraising App for Schools
2. 360MatchPro: Best for Corporate Giving
3. OneCause: Best for Event Management & Auctions
4. PledgeCents: Best for Crowdfunding
5. 99Pledges: Best for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
6. Bonfire: Best for Branded Merchandise Sales
7. Jotform: Best for Fundraising Form Creation
8. DonorsChoose: Best for Classroom Supply Donations
9. BetterWorld: Best for PTA, PTO, & Booster Club Fundraising
10. GiveCampus: Best for Donor & Volunteer Engagement
Before we dive deeper into these software solutions, let’s discuss the top features a strong school fundraising platform should have.
What to Look for in a School Fundraising Platform
Most fundraising platforms are designed for specific purposes, from crowdfunding to event planning to booster club management. However, there are some general software features that make it easier for your school’s community to support your cause. These include:
- Customization and branding. Your school should be able to adapt its platforms to give its campaigns their own signature look and feel. Plus, when community members see your school’s colors, logo, and other brand elements in your fundraising apps, they’ll trust that their contributions are supporting your initiatives.
- User-friendly interface. Make sure you can easily set up these custom-branded fundraisers—even if your team doesn’t have a background in coding or development. Your software should also provide a straightforward user experience for supporters so you can spend less time teaching them how to use it and more time bringing in donations!
- Secure, flexible payments. Community members appreciate the ability to contribute to fundraisers using their preferred payment method, so ensure your platform accepts all major credit cards, bank account transfers, and mobile payments like Venmo and Apple Pay. Any solutions with built-in donation processors should also protect supporters’ sensitive information—ones marked PCI-compliant or PCI-certified are your best bet.
- Marketing support. For your school’s fundraisers to succeed, you need to spread the word to students, parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, alumni, and countless other audiences. Look for platforms with built-in tools or customizable templates for promoting your campaign via your school’s website, email, social media, digital ads, and flyers.
- Reporting and analytics. Your chosen software should automatically track your fundraising revenue, participation, and other relevant metrics that will help you capitalize on your strengths and improve where necessary going forward. Platforms that display this data on reporting dashboards with easy-to-read charts and graphs provide the best insights.
- Customer service. To make your fundraiser run as smoothly as possible, ensure your software comes with access to a dedicated customer support team that will assist with setup, promptly answer your questions, and fix any problems as they arise.
Once you determine what type of fundraising platform your school needs, make lists of the features you definitely need and ones that would be nice to have, ensuring the capabilities described above go on the must-have list. Then, schedule demos for your top platforms so you can see how the software works before you make your final decision.
Best Fundraising Platforms for Schools
Since you’ll be looking for different platforms depending on the types of fundraisers your school wants to host, we’ve highlighted what each of the solutions on our list is most suitable for. Additionally, consider your school’s budget, size, and student population to help you choose the right software for your needs. That being said, let’s dive into our list of platforms!
1. ShopRaise: Best Overall Fundraising App for Schools
ShopRaise allows community members to contribute to various mission-driven organizations—including schools—simply by shopping online. By partnering with ShopRaise, your school will have access to two types of fundraising campaigns:
- Online shopping fundraiser: Supporters download the ShopRaise app or browser extension and otherwise shop as usual at participating online retailers. A portion of their sales total (3-10% depending on the retailer) goes directly to your school.
- Gift card sale: Supporters buy digital gift cards to popular stores and restaurants from the Gift Card Store in the ShopRaise app, and your school receives a percentage of their purchase (5.5% on average).
With more than 1,500 participating businesses in the online shopping fundraiser and more than 250 fundraising gift card options, ShopRaise is as flexible as fundraising gets!
How It Works
Your school can launch its own online shopping and gift card fundraisers in three easy steps:
- Sign up for ShopRaise. The ShopRaise team will walk you through a simple onboarding process, answer any questions you may have, and design a branded landing page for your school.
- Spread the word. Once you set up your fundraisers, they’re fairly hands-off to run. All you need to do is let supporters know how to get started and remind them to continue participating over time. ShopRaise can also help with this step by creating custom email templates, social media graphics, flyers, and website banners for your school.
- Track results. You’ll be able to view real-time fundraising data on a comprehensive dashboard, making it easy to hone your marketing strategy and thank your top supporters individually. ShopRaise protects shoppers’ privacy by just displaying their names and fundraising totals—only the supporter will know exactly what they purchased.
When community members shop online for your school, they’ll pay the same prices and have access to the same discounts they normally would—the only difference is using the ShopRaise app to purchase items or gift cards. They’ll also receive their gift card via email within minutes of purchase, at which point they can give it to someone else by forwarding the email or use it themselves to shop more ethically. Plus, if supporters pay for their online shopping fundraiser purchases with fundraising gift cards, they’ll maximize their contributions to your school!
Why ShopRaise Stands Out
ShopRaise is our top pick among school fundraising platforms for several reasons, including that:
- It’s completely free for both schools and supporters.
- You can use it year-round as an unrestricted revenue stream.
- It’s scalable, so it works equally well for schools of all sizes.
- You receive personalized support at every stage of the fundraising process.
Although each contribution your school receives through ShopRaise is relatively small, they quickly add up to make a significant difference for your students’ education!
2. 360MatchPro: Best for Corporate Giving
Did you know that more than 26 million people work for companies with matching gift programs? Employer matching gifts are a lucrative funding source for traditional 501(c)(3) nonprofits, but many businesses will also match their employees’ donations to educational institutions—like your school!
To take full advantage of this revenue stream, your school needs to leverage a robust matching gift database where donors can check their eligibility and submit match requests to their employers. The best platform available to meet this need is 360MatchPro by Double the Donation.
Top Features
- The world’s largest matching gift database, which you can easily embed into your school’s online donation page to prompt donors to check their eligibility.
- Auto-submission capabilities that allow eligible supporters to send match requests simply by entering their work email addresses.
- NEW 360MatchPro Volunteer Hub to help your school’s volunteers take advantage of their employers’ corporate volunteer programs like volunteer grants and paid volunteer time off.
Pricing
360MatchPro’s Standard Plan—the most popular plan for K-12 schools—starts at $2,500/year.
3. OneCause: Best for Event Management & Auctions
Whether you’re planning a fun run for students, an auction for parents, or a talent show for your entire school community, there are likely multiple events on your school’s annual fundraising calendar. OneCause is a comprehensive platform your school can use to manage all of its events throughout the year. Since the company’s founding in 2008, OneCause has helped 11,000 nonprofits and schools raise more than $6.5 billion through their fundraising events!
Top Features
- Registration, ticketing, and data collection tools that work for any type of event in any format—in-person, virtual, or hybrid.
- Mobile bidding capabilities to streamline participation and checkout for both silent and live auctions.
- Online giving functionalities like text-to-give and campaign-specific donation pages so you can generate additional revenue before, during, and after events.
Pricing
OneCause’s pricing varies depending on which features your school wants to leverage—contact their team for a custom quote.
4. PledgeCents: Best for Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a great way for your school to quickly bring in a lot of donations to meet an immediate need, such as paying for an emergency building repair or helping a community member going through a hard time. While there are many crowdfunding platforms to choose from, PledgeCents was built with K-12 schools in mind and will ensure your campaigns are tailored to your school’s needs.
Top Features
- Personalized strategy session with a PledgeCents fundraising expert to help you get started.
- Email and social sharing to gather essential community support for your crowdfunding campaigns.
- 0% platform fee, so you keep all of the revenue you earn.
Pricing
In addition to the 0% platform fee, it’s completely free to set up a campaign on PledgeCents!
5. 99Pledges: Best for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
“A-thon” fundraisers like walk-a-thons, dance-a-thons, and read-a-thons are among the most engaging for students since they provide two challenges: doing an activity for as long as possible and collecting as many donations as possible through peer-to-peer fundraising. 99Pledges makes every aspect of these campaigns easy, from setting up students’ individual fundraising pages to collecting donations once they’ve completed the activity.
Top Features
- Customizable participant pages where you can create a standard campaign message for students to share or allow them to personalize their page with their own stories and photos.
- Automated email reminders to encourage students to collect more donations and ensure they always have access to their pages.
- Real-time data collection with comprehensive admin reports and shareable leaderboards.
Pricing
99Pledges fundraisers are free to set up, and there are no platform fees!
6. Bonfire: Best for Branded Merchandise Sales
Selling merchandise like t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and tote bags that feature your school’s logo and colors is a win-win—community members get to show their school spirit, and you bring in revenue for your school’s needs. Bonfire is a flexible merchandise sale platform for charitable organizations that offers a wide range of product options, simple design customization, and two ways to sell your school’s merchandise: online stores and peer-to-peer campaigns.
Top Features
- A wide size range for apparel—most adult t-shirts and sweatshirts come in sizes S-3XL (with a few going down to XS and up to 5XL), plus there are youth, toddler, and infant sizes available.
- Multiple ways to design products—use one of Bonfire’s pre-made templates, create or upload custom artwork, or partner with a professional graphic designer.
- The Bonfire marketplace, where you can feature your school’s merchandise alongside thousands of other organizations and creators to expand your reach.
Pricing
Setting up an online store or campaign through Bonfire is free, but there is a processing fee of 3.5-8% depending on the organization, and a base cost for each item you create.
7. Jotform: Best for Fundraising Form Creation
Professional-looking, user-friendly digital forms can make or break your school’s ability to reach its fundraising goals. With Jotform, you can create forms to collect donations for specific campaigns, sign supporters up for events, gather feedback on your initiatives, and more—all in a matter of minutes with no coding required!
Top Features
- 10,000+ form templates to meet all of your school’s needs, as well as a custom builder if you want to create a unique form structure.
- Form theme and widget stores to add a creative look and unique embeds to your forms.
- 150+ integrations with marketing platforms, donor databases, and other essential fundraising tools.
Pricing
Jotform has a free Starter Plan, paid plans starting at $34/month, and a 50% discount for eligible educational organizations.
8. DonorsChoose: Best for Classroom Supply Donations
The beginning of each new school year means restocking classroom materials—but unfortunately, teachers often have to pay for supplies and books out of their own pockets. DonorsChoose is a nonprofit created by teachers, for teachers to alleviate this burden. Teachers simply create a campaign and select the items they want, and donors choose which items to buy for them!
Top Features
- Catalog of more than a million items from popular retailers like Amazon, Staples, and Lakeshore.
- Classroom Essentials bundle option with a streamlined list of teacher-favorite supplies that ship as they’re purchased, in addition to custom campaigns.
- Complete online project list so donors from all over the U.S. can find and fund your campaign.
Pricing
It’s completely free to create a campaign on DonorsChoose. However, there are strict eligibility requirements for who can receive funding, and custom projects run on an all-or-nothing model (meaning you have to hit your fundraising goal to get any of the supplies you requested).
9. BetterWorld: Best for PTA, PTO, & Booster Club Fundraising
PTAs and PTOs are critical to school fundraising success, and booster programs are particularly helpful for funding school clubs and sports. BetterWorld offers an all-in-one suite of free fundraising tools that makes it easy for volunteer fundraisers to run all types of campaigns, from crowdfunding to auctions to recurring giving.
Top Features
- Comprehensive online auction suite that includes ticketing, mobile bidding, consignment items, and streamlined checkout.
- Customizable digital donation pages to help you communicate how you’re fundraising for specific initiatives.
- Giveaway and raffle tools for an easy add-on to other fundraising campaigns (as long as your school is mindful of the raffle laws in your state!).
Pricing
BetterWorld is free to use, aside from a 2.9% + $0.30 credit card donation processing fee, which donors have the option to cover.
10. GiveCampus: Best for Donor & Volunteer Engagement
No matter what types of fundraisers your school runs, it’s essential to track donor and volunteer participation to fuel effective communication and stewardship. GiveCampus was designed with schools in mind and does exactly that! More than 1,300 K-12 schools and higher education institutions trust GiveCampus with their overarching online fundraising and supporter engagement needs.
Top Features
- Mobile-first donation forms to meet modern donors’ needs, including flexible payment options and matching gift integration.
- Robust donor and volunteer data tracking so you can use past engagement to inform future outreach and solicitation.
- GiveCampus Community where school fundraisers can learn from each other and access an extensive resource library.
Pricing
GiveCampus pricing varies based on the solutions and functionality your school needs—contact their team for a custom quote.
Wrapping Up: Additional Resources on School Fundraising
The platforms in this guide are just a few of the possible solutions your school could use to support its fundraising efforts. Research each platform you’re considering carefully, and keep your school’s unique needs and budget in mind as you make your decision. And remember—if you want to add a free, easy-to-use, and innovative revenue stream to your fundraising toolkit, look no further than ShopRaise!
For more information on school fundraising, check out these resources:
- Online Shopping Fundraisers for Schools: How to Get Started. Dive deeper into how online shopping fundraisers can benefit your school and how to launch one with ShopRaise.
- 20+ Holiday Fundraising Ideas for a Merry and Bright Season. Discover a flurry of engaging fundraising ideas to get your school community in the giving spirit.
- 25+ Winning Sports Fundraising Ideas for Your Team. Explore the best campaigns and events for turning your school’s sports teams into championship fundraisers.
