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Crowdfunds can reach new audiences

iDonate has developed a personal fundraising or crowdfunding feature to challenge the dominance of GoFundMe for once-off fundraisers

Alan Coyne, co-founder, iDonate: crowdfunding taps into donors across the globe

Though some charities might have held back from using crowdfunding, it taps into donors across the globe, said iDonate’s Alan Coyne.

Guaranteed Irish company iDonate has developed a personal fundraising or crowdfunding feature to challenge the dominance of GoFundMe for once-off fundraisers. This popular type of fundraising page can be set up in minutes.

“GoFundMe is the biggest fundraising website in world,” said Coyne. “iDonate now has a new feature for personal fundraising that is directly targeting GoFundMe’s dominance of the market. The main difference is that the iDonate page is much more cost effective, plus pay out is never more than a few weeks.”

“We provide local support to help you through every stage of the process. We also proudly display the Guaranteed Irish symbol.”

Personal fundraisers can be set up for a variety of reasons and needs. Those include medical expenses, memorials home renovation or disasters such as flooding, said Coyne.

“Families often struggle with sudden expense in the event of a member becoming ill and needing emergency treatment. With iDonate, there are no upfront costs. There is no specific goal requirements as you get to keep whatever you raise. It is easy to track who’s supporting your campaign and great social media integrations make sharing easy.”

“The page consists of a title, description, profile image, target and finish date. Donors have the option to display their name, amount donated and a message. The pages are fully GDPR-compliant.”

iDonate has several new products in the pipeline for launch over the coming months. They have introduced a new service for corporate fundraising. This assists corporates in keeping in contact with home workers in team-building exercises, while also allowing them develop their Corporate Social Responsibility programmes.

Coyne said that they also offer a range of customised microsite templates, such as Giving Trees and Flower Gardens. “Those provide a visual way of showing the support for a particular fundraiser. We are also moving forward with our plans to enter the UK market.”

In 2020, iDonate successfully developed and implemented an eSign process for Charity Taxback and also got Revenue approval for the eSign process which replaced the previous manual CHY3/4 Forms.

“Having reached the €250 donation threshold, the donor is prompted to complete the online Taxback Form. The charity can then claim back the tax on the donation, which has been forfeited by the donor. It can be worth an additional 45 per cent of the donation amount to the charity,” said Coyne.