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How to Use Giving Assistant for Online Fundraising

How to Use Giving Assistant for Online Fundraising

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Using Giving Assistant for online fundraising is really, really easy.

So easy in fact, the whole operation could be summed up pretty accurately in just one step:

Download our browser extension (the Button) and shop online. Done. Happy fundraising!

But knowledge is power. So let’s dig in a bit deeper and talk about how you can use Giving Assistant to create an ongoing, 24/7 stream of donations, just by tapping into the everyday online shopping you and your community are already doing.

Online Fundraising For Nonprofits Made Easy

In this article, we’ll cover these topics:

  1. What is Giving Assistant?
  2. How does Giving Assistant work?
  3. How to get started fundraising with Giving Assistant

To learn more fundraising ideas for your 501 (c) (3), check out these 9 Tips for Raising More Nonprofit Donations.

What is Giving Assistant?

Giving Assistant is a charitable online shopping site that not only saves shoppers money with coupons, promo codes, and cash back, but that also lets shoppers donate their cash back earnings to any nonprofit in the U.S. 

We are also Certified B (“Benefit”) Corp—one of only a few thousand in the world! We have to go through rigorous evaluations examining our impact on the planet, our communities, and our employees in order to keep our certification, so it’s a big deal.

How does Giving Assistant work?

  1. First, shoppers join Giving Assistant for free.
  2. Then, using our site or (even easier) our browser extension, members just carry on with their everyday, online shopping to earn cash back they can donate to any nonprofit. 
  3. Members can donate as little as 1% of their cash back earnings, up to 100%, and can also save extra money with coupons and special offers. 
  4. Nonprofits receive donations via secure eChecks.

Giving Assistant vs. Amazon Smile

  • Shoppers don’t have to remember to visit Giving Assistant’s site to raise donations. Our browser extension (the Button) takes care of that.
  • Nonprofits raise on average $5 in donations for every $100 spent: That’s about 5 times more than Amazon Smile.
  • Giving Assistant works at around 3,000 top brands like Target, Ulta Beauty, American Eagle, FabFitFun, Lowe’s, and tons more.

(Note: If someone is using Amazon Smile to fundraise for you, we want them to keep doing so! Many online shoppers use both Amazon Smile and Giving Assistant to donate to their favorite nonprofits.)

How To Get Started Fundraising For Free

Nonprofits who want to fundraise using Giving Assistant just have to sign up through our nonprofit landing page and follow the prompts. 

Fundraising with Giving Assistant is completely free! We make money via our great brand partnerships, not via our nonprofit partners. Nonprofits keep 100% of all the cash back donations they receive.

1. Sign up with Giving Assistant

  • Use the nonprofit landing page and search for your nonprofit using the name you’re registered with in the IRS database. (Don’t worry if you can’t find it or it isn’t in our database: if that happens, another page will pop up that will allow you to add your nonprofit.)
  • Sign up using your work email address. It should be something like [email protected]. (If you don’t have an email address like that, go ahead and use the email address you have, and someone from Giving Assistant will reach out to help you.)
  • Sign-up will be complete once we’ve been able to verify that you’re employed with the nonprofit that will be fundraising with us. This is to help keep your donations safe and ensure that any checks we send will be going to the right place.
  • Read our nonprofit help section if you need assistance.

2. Start fundraising

Once you’re signed up, your nonprofit will get a personal fundraising page: it’s a customizable Giving Assistant sign-up page you can put your logo and mission statement on. Just customize the page and share the URL with your community in email, social, text, on your website, or wherever else your donors will see it.

When they sign up through your fundraising page, their account will be automatically set up to donate 100% of their cash back to you. (They can change the amount they donate later, if they’d like to.) 

3. Meet More Fundraising Goals

That’s it! Now you’re set up, all that’s left is to share your fundraising page on social media and on your nonprofit’s website.

Enjoy your new stream of donations! Remember, this works best if you share our platform with your donators! The more people that use the Giving Assistant platform, the more donations you can get!