Top 10 University Crowdfunding Services for Every School
Fundly
Fundly is one of our top crowdfunding platforms for colleges and universities of all shapes and sizes. Their easy-to-use tools make it a breeze to set up campaigns for students and campus organizations.
Bonus: Integration options with Double the Donation!
GiveCampus
GiveCampus is one of our favorite fundraising and volunteer management platforms for schools of all shapes and sizes. With tools built specifically for educational fundraising, this platform makes giving more than a transaction.
Bonus: Integration options with Double the Donation!
Handbid
Handbid is one of the leading crowdfunding platforms for colleges and universities. This comprehensive platform is incredibly user-friendly, making it easy for students and campus organizations to get up and running.
Bonfire
Bonfire is a top crowdfunding service for colleges because it offers schools a unique platform for t-shirt crowdfunding. With their site, your school can set up a t-shirt merchandising campaign in minutes.
The Best Crowdfunding Platforms for Universities
Fundly
Overview
Fundly is a crowdfunding platform that universities and other organizations can use.
Features like social sharing make it easy for you to spread the word about your campaign to supporters (and even new donors!).
Fundly’s easy-to-use platform is intuitive and can be customized, so you can create a unique crowdfunding page with your university’s brand.
In addition to Fundly’s crowdfunding platform, they also offer great training resources to help you succeed, whether this is your first or fifth campaign. Fundly charges a 4.9% platform fee and a credit card processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.Why We Love It
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GiveCampus
Overview
GiveCampus is a leading fundraising and volunteer management platform for nonprofit educational institutions, helping schools raise more gifts from more joyful donors. GiveCampus is the only platform that specializes in peer-to-peer fundraising, an approach that can be 300x more effective than institutional asks. Over 50% of gifts on GiveCampus come from new, reactivated, or upgraded donors. Whether you’re planning a Giving Day, putting together longer term fundraising campaigns for your school, or just trying to fundraise more efficiently, GiveCampus makes giving easy and fun.
GiveCampus’s technology is built specifically for schools, with a focus on innovation that means schools can always stay on top (or ahead) of the latest fundraising trends. Reach out to GiveCampus and they will share how their flexible pricing makes their platform accessible to K-12 schools and higher education institutions of all sizes.Why We Love It
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Handbid
Overview
Handbid reimagines the nonprofit experience with its intuitive fundraising tools. The forward-thinking experts on its team developed a crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising platform based on meeting the evolving needs of today’s colleges and universities.
Maximize revenue and ignite some friendly competition with your school’s fundraisers thanks to powerful gamification tools like leaderboards, fundraising thermometers, and even a unique puzzle project.
That way, your school can generate all the engagement it needs amongst classes, students, or grades. Your school will reach (and exceed!) its goals in no time.
Handbid’s expert team knows what it takes to pull off a successful fundraiser and has a proven track record of success. Not to mention, their crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising tools integrate with their auction and ticketing software — giving schools a one-stop-shop for all of their event fundraising needs! Handbid offers a straightforward pricing package for crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaigns. It costs 3% of total fundraiser revenue plus 3.5% + .30 per transaction for credit card transactions processed through Handbid.Why We Love It
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Bonfire
Overview
Bonfire offers colleges and universities the unique opportunity to crowdfund by selling t-shirts and sharing campaigns across the internet.
Schools can simply set up a campaign by designing a t-shirt, hoodie, tank top, or other clothing item.
Next, universities can set pricing for their merchandise and launch their fundraiser. It’s that simple!
Universities can use this crowdfunding service to sell spirit wear, or student organizations may leverage the site to sell merchandise branded to their clubs, teams, or other campus groups.
One reason why we love Bonfire? If your campaign doesn’t gain traction, the crowdfunding service won’t charge you for your shirts. Since there’s no financial gamble, your school can be creative with your designs and see what gets supporters excited! It’s free to start a campaign on Bonfire. The college crowdfunding service simply charges a 3.5% payment processing fee and a 4.5% platform fee.Why We Love It
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Community Funded
Overview
Community Funded creates crowdfunding pages for nonprofits, healthcare institutions, and higher education.
They offer features such as an integrated email system, social feeds and sharing, and matching gift information.
Instead of using a platform, Community Funded creates a site for you with its own domain to give you a unique crowdfunding page. That way, you don’t have to compete with other campaigns like you would on a traditional platform.
Community Funded handles all the set up for you. All you have to do is start sharing your page with your supporters. Plus, they provide you with best practices so you can promote your campaign and reach your goal. Community Fund creates a page specifically for your university, so prices will vary. Check out their website to learn more.Why We Love It
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Other University Crowdfunding Platforms
ScaleFunder
Overview
ScaleFunder is a crowdfunding platform backed up by the superb technology of Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a software provider for higher education.
With their 24/7 online technical support and reporting and analytics, you’ll be able to track your fundraiser’s progress and get the proper help when you need it.
They’ve helped over 100 universities fund for over 1000 different projects.
You can combine ScaleFunder’s crowdfunding platform with their giving day fundraising plan to improve your campaign’s chances of success. ScaleFunder creates a plan that is specific to your university’s needs. Check out their website or request a demo to learn more about pricing.Why We Love It
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Hubbub
Overview
Hubbub is a crowdfunding platform made just for schools. In order to create a campaign, the creator needs to be a student or staff member of a university or college.
Hubbub follows an all-or-nothing approach, which means that you’ll only receive funds if you meet or exceed your goal.
To start a campaign on Hubbub, you need to make your page, set a goal, and determine a reward for each giving level.
With rewards and an all-or-nothing approach, your supporters are more motivated to share your cause with others. Hubbub charges no fees to use their site. However, you’ll still pay a processing fee of 2.4% plus $0.30 per transaction if you use Stripe or a 3%-5% fee if you use PayPal.Why We Love It
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Experiment
Overview
Formerly known as Microryaza, Experiment is a crowdfunding platform that helps scientists raise funds for university research projects.
Experiment’s all-or-nothing approach means that your project will only receive funds if you meet your goal.
Before your campaign is launched, it has to be approved by the Experiment team.
Experiment has a 46.7% success rate, so your project has a high chance of succeeding. If your project is fully funded, Experiment charges a 5% platform fee. Additionally, you’ll pay a 3-5% payment processing fee.Why We Love It
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Pozible
Overview
With Pozible, your university can set up a campaign that offers rewards based on different giving levels.
Some of the features that you can expect with the Pozible platform include a list of current supporters, rewards for different giving levels, and social sharing capabilities.
The creators of Pozible wanted to make a crowdfunding site that anyone could use to host a campaign and raise funds.
Pozible is a flexible platform that can be customized to fit any project your university wants to raise funds for. Depending on your campaign’s goal, Pozible charges a 3%-5% platform fee. You’ll also be charged a payment processing fee of 2.4%-3% plus $0.30 per transaction.Why We Love It
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Thrinacia Reach
Overview
With Thrinacia Reach, your nonprofit can create a crowdfunding campaign and then host it on your website. You won’t have to direct donors to another site to give!
Or if you prefer, your campaign can be hosted on Thrinacia’s website.
The Thrinacia platform makes it easy to create a campaign, and you can include reward giving levels, a goal tracker, and sharing options.
Thrinacia gives your nonprofit the option to choose where you want to host your campaign, so you can market your fundraiser in a way that best fits your needs. Thrinacia doesn’t charge any fees. However, to accept donations on their platform, you’ll need a Stripe account, which will charge you a payment processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.Why We Love It
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Additional Resources
Crowdfunding Platforms
Looking for more crowdfunding sites? We have 9 top sites for nonprofits that your university can also use.
Look at more crowdfunding platforms that your school can use to raise funds.
College Crowdfunding Strategies
Can’t wait to start crowdfunding for your college? Not so fast! Be sure to brush up on the best practices of university crowdfunding first.
Check out Recharity’s crowdfunding strategies!
Crowdfunding 101
If you’re looking to start your crowdfunding campaign, we recommend this ultimate guide that will teach you the basics.
Learn everything you need to know about crowdfunding!
