List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada

The Crowdfunding is the strongest tool we have in our hands to tell stories and spread messages that would have remained unheard otherwise. The Crowdfunding had gone through numerous changes since its launch in North America.

The Crowdfunding has many fundraising models amidst which the donation based model is well known and preferred by the fundraisers and donors alike.  This type of fundraising is again split into three subcategories: Traditional donation based fundraising, reward based fundraising and government matched fundraising.

Traditional donation based fundraising is the old method of collecting funds where donors contribute without expecting any rewards in return. Reward based fundraising is a relatively new concept compared to the prior one and here donors receive interesting gifts for their donations. Government matched fundraisingexists in some countries like Sweden, Australia, the UK but not in Canada.

Now Crowdfunding has become one of the most desirable and convenient way to collect the funds for everything: new inventions, business startups, medical procedures, education, etc. It is the most suitable way to collect funds for charitable purposes and many non profits are actually using them.

If you are a fundraiser and just beginning your campaign on any Crowdfunding platform then there are a few things you must consider in the first place. Before setting up a campaign or contributing to one it is important you do a research about the platform and read its policies well. Many Crowdfunding platforms are designed to serve a specific purpose so make sure it suits your campaign theme.

Spend some time planning about some creative ways to launch your campaign trying to make it attractive because it will take less time to collect funds than usual. You can certainly study other fundraisers’ campaign pages and seek inspiration from them.

The pricing policies of each Crowdfunding site vary slightly. Do not believe if any website claims that they are free. Crowdfunding may provide you much hassle free procedures for raising funds but that service is given to you with costs attached. The costs are however within reach but different sites collect their fees differently.

Here we have enlisted Top 5 Crowdfunding Websites in Canada which may help both fundraisers and donors:

List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada

1 – Transparent Hands

2 – Indiegogo

3 – CauseVox

4 – Kickstarter

5– FundRazr

1 – Transparent Hands

Fund the Surgeries of Poor Patients by Giving Donation

TransparentHands is in First position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. We are blessed with good health and wealth and it’s their duty to further utilize them for the service of mankind. Even a small amount can create a lasting impact on someone’s miserable life. Spend your wealth in a noble cause and change the lives of deserving people of Pakistan. The amount which you’ll contribute towards the surgeries of these poor patients will bring them back to better health and improve their living.

With the help of Crowdfunding by kind donors like you, many people under Transparent Hands were given medical relief. But there are still thousands of people who are in dire need of your support and are waiting for a miracle which could save their lives. Together through fundraising, we can give new lives and hopes to many deserving patients in their country. Let’s unite and make effort in making Pakistan an ideal place to live.

Why Donate to Us?

• You want to save the lives of people by donating for their surgical treatment.
• You need complete transparency of where your donation/charity is going.

Donors can completely put their trust in us regarding their donations and charity. There are many people in Pakistan and all over the world who wish to spend their money on non- profit charity organizations but they are unsure about to whom they should donate. In order to ensure complete transparency, Transparent Hands uploads all the documents with the patients’ success stories so the donors can see that their money is spent on a right cause.

Where Is the Problem?

More than 70 million people in Pakistan are living below the poverty line due to which they are unable to undergo proper health treatment if they experience any disease. Estimated amount of surgery backlog in Pakistan is in millions every year.

There are not many health insurance plans for underprivileged community. They have to pay out of pocket if they need any medical treatment but due to the limited or no resources, majority is unable to undergo surgical treatment.

Beyond the cost of the surgical procedure, they might have to pay for pre and post-operative expenses which includes medical tests, medications, hospital stay and other expenses. It is almost impossible for someone who earns less than $2 a day to pay hefty amount for medical relief.

• There is lack of advanced medical facilities and medical professionals due to which lower middle class families are unable to avail treatment facilities.
• There are a limited number of beds in hospitals but the number of patients visiting these hospitals is a lot more.
• Every second patient including a child is put on a long waiting list and during the waiting period, the patient’s health further deteriorates. In most of the cases, patients expire until their turn comes.
• There is no advanced healthcare services in slums due to which majority of people have to rely on quacks in their areas.
• Private hospitals are out of reach for deprived community due to the high costs of consultation fees and surgical procedure.

Role

• Committed to Provide Free Surgeries to Those Who Cannot Afford

Transparent Hands is a non-profit organization which is tackling this major healthcare issue of Pakistan with the help of fundraising through its unique Crowdfunding platform. It is registered under Trust Act 1882 as a Trust Organization with a Tax Exemption status under the article 2(36) in Pakistan. Transparent Hands is registered in USA EIN assigned: 47-3564801 as Transparent Hands Foundation US, Inc. with tax exemption status 501(c)3.

-> List of Top 5 NonProfit Organizations in Canada

Transparent Hands conducts the surgeries of deserving patients free of cost at private hospitals with the help of donations and charity. Donors from all over the world can use their online Crowdfunding web portal if they wish to donate. They could select any patient, fund the surgery and receive regular feedback and updates until the patient is recovered completely.

User friendly online fundraising work as follows:

• Choose the patient whose surgery you want to fund.
• Choose from a number of payment methods as per your convenience.
• Donate to that particular patient and get tax exemption.
• Get regular updates of that patient until he/she gets fully recovered

What makes us unique is; their transparency level that means donors will be ensured that each penny they are giving will be spent on the needy patient. We do this by uploading all the hospital bills and other documents of their patient after his/her surgery is successfully conducted. Donor can see that the exact amount hospital has charged against the surgery of that particular patient.

2 – Indiegogo

About

Indiegogo is in second position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. Millions of people around the world visit Indiegogo to find clever and unconventional things that solve everyday problems large and small. By giving entrepreneurs everywhere a platform to launch new and groundbreaking products, they help surface innovations in tech, design, and much more, all before they go mainstream.

The Indiegogo Community

Powered by curiosity, the Indiegogo community has helped bring more than 800,000 innovative ideas to life since 2008. Today, their group of backers is more than 9 million strong, representing 235 countries and territories. Always on the lookout for new solutions to everyday problems, their community thrives on making clever discoveries before everyone else. From live campaigns to ready-to-ship tech, curious humans rely on Indiegogo to find the latest innovations in tech and design.

Founded to Empower Innovation

Their founders were inspired to create Indiegogo based on their own experiences trying to make ideas come to life. Danae Ringelmann produced a play but couldn’t get funding to take it to the next level. Eric Schell struggled to fundraise for a Chicago theater company. Slava Rubin tried to raise funds to find a cure for Multiple Myeloma, the disease that killed his father. Then, they had an idea. They could use the internet to bring people together to empower innovation.

Danae, Eric, and Slava founded Indiegogo in 2008 because they believed that you should choose the ideas that come to life. You and your fellow innovation seekers should get to change the world. It’s time to start discovering the next big idea.

3 – CauseVox

Simple, beautiful online fundraising. 

CauseVox is in third position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. CauseVox is a community-driven fundraising platform trusted by thousands of fundraising teams at nonprofits to help them activate their supporters, reach new donors, and raise more online.

Who They Are

Before they started CauseVox, they found ourselves volunteering at nonprofits to scale their impact. They worked on everything from systems implementations to marketing projects for NGOs in South Africa, Uganda, and India.

One of the puzzling things that came up was why people, who were making such a profound change in communities, struggled with scaling their social impact. Why did they have to fight in order to make this world a better place for all of their to live?

Back in the States, they dug around for the answer. They talked to hundreds of people — people that volunteered, people that worked at nonprofits, and founders of nonprofits. They joined an incubator for social good and a community group for social entrepreneurs. They even moved from Washington DC to NYC to be closer to the nonprofits that they knew. They really wanted to figure out why there was a struggle.

The one thing they kept on hearing was that raising funds was always a challenge and using technology was always hard; these people were struggling for funding and wrangling with software every day. They always were trying to find new ways to find new donors. Major donors and grants were drying up because of the recession. Galas and events were too costly to organize.

That’s where CauseVox comes in to fix this broken system.

After testing the crowdfunding concept on their own volunteer projects — they built their own crowdfunding platform to raise funds for their volunteer projects — they launched CauseVox for all nonprofits and individuals to use.

They wanted to find a way for nonprofits and social good projects to raise funds online that is affordable, easy to use, yet powerful enough for professionals.

That first few months, they helped a nonprofit raise over $75,000 in 40 days. They launched a crowdfunding campaign with SXSW that raised $125,000 in 10 days. One of their advisors was stabbed seven times in a mugging and they helped raise $43,000 for his medical bills.

Since then, they’ve helped tens-of-thousands of people fundraise online, serving thousands of nonprofits every year. Their mantra today is to help good things flourish.

Accessible in one place

Managing your online fundraising, everyday donations, and peer-to-peer campaigns should be simple. With CauseVox, you can keep track of your online donations, quickly access the data you need, and see a real-time view of donations coming in and easy ways to download what you need or integrate directly with your other fundraising tools.

4 – Kickstarter

“Kickstarter is one of those platforms that gives you space to work with people who know you, love you, and support you.”

History

Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009. A lot has happened since.

They had the craziest 24 hours ever. They saw $1 billion get pledged. They shared the early designs behind Kickstarter. They learned what a Kickstarter project looked like back in 1713. They talked about why Kickstarter matters. They made some important changes to how they govern the site. They put on film festivals in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. A project won an Oscar. And after five years, they made a video about it all.

Community.

Kickstarter is in fourth position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. Kickstarter is an enormous global community built around creativity and creative projects. Over 10 million people, from every continent on earth, have backed a Kickstarter project.

Some of those projects come from influential artists like De La Soul or Marina Abramovic. Most come from amazing creative people you probably haven’t heard of — from Grandma Pearl to indie filmmakers to the band down the street.

Every artist, filmmaker, designer, developer, and creator on Kickstarter has complete creative control over their work — and the opportunity to share it with a vibrant community of backers.

Their mission.

They built Kickstarter to help bring creative projects to life. They measure their success as a company by how well they achieve that mission, not by the size of their profits. That’s why, in 2015, they became a Benefit Corporation. Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders. Radically, positive impact on society becomes part of a Benefit Corporation’s legally defined goals.

When they became a Benefit Corporation, they amended their corporate charter to lay out specific goals and commitments to arts and culture, making their values core to their operations, fighting inequality, and helping creative projects come to life. You can read their commitments in full below.

Team.

They’re an independent, founder-controlled company of 114 people working together in an old pencil factory in New York City. They spend their time designing and building Kickstarter, connecting people around inspiring creative projects, and having a lot of fun doing it.

They’re developers, designers, support specialists, writers, musicians, painters, poets, gamers, robot-builders — you name it. They’ve backed more than 34,000 projects (and launched plenty of their own).

5– FundRazr

How it Works

FundRazr is in fifth position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. FundRazr is a crowdfunding solution that is laser-focused on eliminating the guesswork of raising money online for your campaign. Their thoughtful technology and expert social media guidance make telling your powerful story easy; sharing it with the widest community simple; and collecting the money worry-free.

Thousands of people just like you use FundRazr to reach their friends, friends of friends and beyond, convert them to supporters, and raise money for causes close to their heart.

Why choose FundRazr?

Flexible Funding

Raise money the way that suits you. Choose Keep it all to access funds immediately. Or choose All or nothing to charge supporters after you reach your goal. Either way, you never pay extra fees or penalties.

Global Reach

FundRazr can be used in any country with the ability to send and receive payments through PayPal, and in 25 currencies worldwide. U.S. and Canadian users can also accept funds via WePay.

Success Tools

Full campaign functionality on your website or blog & full campaign functionality on your Facebook page will increase your campaign’s visibility and help supporters find a way to donate to your cause.

Easy and Secure Payments

Easy and secure payments by PayPal, credit card, bank card or WePay. Your donors’ privacy is respected, your funds are safe, and money received is immediately deposited into your account.

Better Incentives

Enhance your fundraising campaign by providing perks, products, tickets or wishes. Incentive images and share feature create more engagement, sharing and social media visibility.

Great Value

Contributors pay no fee. Recipients pay 5% FundRazr fee plus Payment Provider fee of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. There are no additional fees or penalties.

Story

FundRazr was launched in the summer of 2010 with an enthusiastic team led by CEO and crowdfunding pioneer, Daryl Hatton. They understand the difficulties of raising money, and they are passionate about providing an alternative funding source for startups, charities, and personal causes. They believe in the power of community support and sharing your story with the world. Ultimately, they want to build great company, have fun, and help people in a meaningful way.

So far, FundRazr has helped raise over $69 million from over 45,000 campaigns in dozens of countries around the world. They believe in creating a platform that is easy to use, inexpensive, and can leverage the power of the internet community. Contrary to some other crowdfunding platforms, their platform does not limit the type of campaigns they host. They want to be flexible and available to everyone, for any kind of cause, from almost anywhere in the world.

With a team of 5 at inception, FundRazr has more than doubled in size since then. Located in the heart of Gastown in Vancouver, Canada, FundRazr is at the hub of all things entrepreneurial. They work hard and innovate every day so you can be the next fundraising success story.

Honorable mention

United Way

History

united way is in sixth position in our List of Top 5 Online Donation Websites in Canada. For more than 125 years, United Way has evolved to meet the needs of the times. Today, the world needs United Way more than ever.

In 1887, a Denver woman, a priest, two ministers and a rabbi got together… It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but they didn’t walk into a bar; what they did do was recognize the need to work together in new ways to make Denver a better place. 

Frances Wisebart Jacobs, the Rev. Myron W. Reed, Msgr. William J.O’Ryan, Dean H. Martyn Hart and Rabbi William S. Friedman put together an idea that became the nation’s first united campaign, benefitting 10 area health and welfare agencies. They created an organization to collect the funds for local charities, to coordinate relief services, to counsel and refer clients to cooperating agencies, and to make emergency assistance grants for cases that could not be referred. That year, Denver raised $21,700 for this greater good, and created a movement that would become United Way. 

They’re not doing it alone. United Way is able to make a lasting difference because they work together with strategic partners who share our vision. Partners like the NFL. Back in 1973, they joined forces with the NFL to boost awareness of what was then called social service issues. Together, they created public service announcements and programs featuring NFL players, coaches and owners.

From this partnership—the longest running of its kind—they’ve drafted 39,000 people to serve as readers, tutors and mentors. Since 2007, our nationwide Play60 campaign has also encouraged kids and families to make healthy food choices and get at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day.

Our Mission

United Way improves lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good.

They all have a stake in what befalls our fellow man. They all benefit when a child succeeds in school, when someone finds a job that will help them provide for their family, or when more people are able to access quality, affordable health care. 

The solutions they create for communities around the world go beyond short-term charity for a few.  When United Way’s support for Community Schools helps increase the graduation rate in the Vallejo City Unified School District by 11 percent in just three years, it’s not just the students, or even just the families of those students who benefit. Those proud graduates now have a much better chance of landing a job that pays a livable wage, of staying out of trouble with the law, and of living longer, healthier lives — and that translates into a safer, healthier and more prosperous community for everyone.

They rise or fall together. With your support, they are reaching for great new heights.

Our Focus

United Way advances the common good by creating opportunities for all. Our focus is on education, income and health—the building blocks for a good quality of life and a strong community.

Health

When it comes to accessing health services, a person’s zip code should never be a deterrent to success, nor should it be a barrier to improved health. Yet for many, that’s a daily reality.

By making it easier for individuals to access substance abuse programs, receive quality health care and access nutritious foods, they’re fighting to help everyone get—and stay—healthy.

Success Stories

From introducing food stands in urban food desserts to supporting the emotional and mental needs of our veterans, they’re committed to building healthy communities, one person at a time.

Conclusion:

After you have selected your platform and setup your campaign page there are other things as well that you should take care of. A lot of studieshave shown that donors prefer short high quality videos compared to text. Make an engaging video and post it on your Crowdfunding page to entice the people to make a contribution.

Again your Crowdfunding page must rank on search engines. This is the most important part of your campaign because if you fail to reach your donors online there is no other way that they would get to know about you or your purpose. So hire a SEO expert to create your campaign contents. An expert in SEO will make sure that your descriptions and headlines contain the right keywords to perform better on search engines.

Lastly, you need to focus on Marketing and building public relations. You can contact journalists in  top online publications and hire them to advertise your campaign to their readers. But keep in mind this will require some expenses. However, you may spend some time to build a long list of followers even before launching the campaign so that you’re ready to reach a larger group of people once it starts.

Beginners on the Crowdfunding platform should keep in mind that their first campaign may fail due to no prior experience. But failure shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your dreams. So even if your first campaign doesn’t work don’t be disheartened. It’s a learning process so take note of your mistakes in  the beginning and make sure you do not  repeat that again.