Americans gave an estimated $4.0 billion on GivingTuesday last year, up 13% from 2024, according to GivingTuesday’s own Data Commons. This year it lands on December 1, and most of that money will move through a donate button. Behind that button sit online donation fees that most donors never see itemized. The processing fee gets all the attention, but it’s the smallest piece. The tip box you didn’t touch and the payment method you picked out of habit decide whether the charity gets 84 cents or a full dollar for every dollar that leaves your account.
To see why, you have to separate a donation into the layers that each take a cut.
Online donation fees come in three layers, and only one belongs to the platform
When you give $100 through a site like GoFundMe, three different parties can touch the money. The card network and your card’s issuing bank take a processing fee. The platform itself may charge a fee or ask for a tip. And sometimes the charity has its own costs for the software it uses to accept gifts.
GoFundMe is a useful example because its model is so common. It charges no platform fee to people running fundraisers. Instead it deducts a transaction fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 from each donation, which it says covers the cost of credit and debit charges. Recurring donations carry a 5% fee. The company makes its money mainly from optional tips that donors add at checkout.
“No platform fee” is technically true. It just moves the platform’s revenue from the charity’s side of the transaction to yours.
The card network takes its cut before the charity sees a cent
That 2.9% isn’t GoFundMe’s profit. Most of it pays for the card network’s machinery: the interchange fee that goes to the bank that issued your card, plus network and processing charges on top. (We’ve walked through how interchange fees work before. Short version: the merchant, or in this case the charity, pays to accept your card, and premium rewards cards cost the most to accept.)
This is why the payment method matters more than most people think. Every.org, a nonprofit giving platform, publishes a fee table by payment type. Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cost 2.2% plus $0.30 at its negotiated nonprofit rate. American Express costs 3.5%. PayPal and Venmo cost 1.99%. A bank transfer (ACH), a stock gift, or a grant from a donor-advised fund costs nothing, because Every.org covers those fees itself.
The gap reflects how each rail works. A card payment pays for fraud protection, chargebacks, and rewards points. An ACH transfer pulls money from your checking account to the charity’s in a batch, with no rewards program to fund. On a $100 gift through Every.org, an Amex card costs the charity $3.50, a Visa costs $2.50, and a bank transfer costs zero.
The fixed 30 cents is why five small gifts cost more than one big one
The percentage part of a card fee scales with the gift, but the flat $0.30 doesn’t. That flat piece hurts small donations the most.
On a $10 gift at 2.9% plus $0.30, the fee is $0.59, which is 5.9% of the gift. On a $100 gift, it’s $3.20, or 3.2%. So if you plan to split $100 across five causes at $20 each, you pay the flat fee five times. Each $20 gift loses $0.58 plus $0.30, or $0.88, for a total of $4.40. One $100 gift loses $3.20. Spreading your giving thin costs the charities an extra $1.20 out of the same $100.
Small gifts are still worth giving. If a charity would be equally happy either way, though, one $120 gift a year loses $3.78 to fees, while twelve $10 monthly gifts lose $7.08.
The default tip is the biggest leak, and it isn’t deductible
The tip box is where the real money goes. Many “free” platforms fund themselves through a tip slider at checkout, and some set it to a percentage before you touch it. CharityWatch, a charity watchdog, reported in November 2025 that CNN found certain platforms pre-filling the tip field with suggested amounts between 15% and 17%, so donors have to actively lower or remove it. CharityWatch’s CEO, Laurie Styron, said tips should be opt-in rather than opt-out.
Now put the pieces together. You give $100 by credit card on a platform that charges 2.9% plus $0.30 and pre-fills a 15% tip. You spend $115. The processing fee takes $3.20, so the charity receives $96.80. The platform keeps the $15 tip. Divide $96.80 by $115 and you get 84.2%. Roughly one dollar in six that left your account went somewhere other than the cause you picked.
Give the same $100 through Every.org by bank transfer with the tip set to zero, and the charity receives $100. Same donor, same intent, about 16 percentage points of difference.
There’s a tax wrinkle too. The IRS says only qualified organizations can receive tax-deductible contributions. A tip to a for-profit platform is a payment to a company, not a gift to a charity, so it doesn’t belong in the deductible total on your receipt. If you’re keeping records for your taxes, separate the two.
The cheapest way to give is the one most donors skip
Many donation forms offer a checkbox to “cover the fee,” which adds the processing cost to your gift so the charity nets the full amount. It’s a fair option, but the math is slightly worse than it looks, because the fee also applies to the extra amount you add. To net exactly $100 at 2.9% plus $0.30, you have to give $100.30 divided by 0.971, or $103.30. That’s $3.30, not $3.20.
If the platform offers a bank transfer, that’s usually the better route. You pay nothing extra and the charity keeps everything. Mailing a check directly to the charity also skips the card networks, though the charity takes on some handling of its own. And some giving funds, including PayPal Giving Fund, route your donation through a donor-advised fund that then re-grants it to the charity, with no processing fee charged to you in that flow, according to CharityWatch’s comparison.
The mechanism behind all of this is simple once you see it. Card rails cost money because they do more: they protect you, extend credit, and pay out rewards. Platforms that call themselves free still have servers and staff to pay, and the tip box is how they do it. Neither is a scam. But when you give on December 1, you’re choosing how your money travels as well as who receives it. So before you hit the button, check the tip line, switch to a bank transfer if the form offers one, and consider one larger gift instead of several small ones. With those three moves, the online donation fees you pay can shrink from about one dollar in six to close to zero.
