Small is the strategy,
not the compromise.
Most fundraising picks a number the donor has to think about. Thinking is where giving dies. A dollar is below the threshold where anyone deliberates, which means the only real constraint left is how many people you can reach.
The ask is small so the yes is automatic.
A $50 ask converts a few percent of the people who see it, and each of those people weighs it against their budget. A $1 ask converts a much larger share and nobody consults a budget. The revenue question is not which ask is bigger. It is which ask, multiplied by its conversion rate, is bigger.
There is a second effect that matters more. The dollar is not the goal — the donor is. Someone who has given once is dramatically more likely to give again, to give more, and to tell someone else. A dollar is the cheapest possible way to turn a stranger into a donor, and the donor is the asset.
What the card companies take.
This is the part nobody puts on a donation page. We are putting it on ours, because it is the single biggest argument for giving weekly instead of once.
| If you give | You are charged | Processing takes | Arrives | Delivered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1, one time | $1.00 | $0.33 | $0.67 | 67% |
| $1 a week, billed monthly | $4.33 | $0.43 | $3.90 | 90% |
| $52, once a year | $52.00 | $1.81 | $50.19 | 97% |
Same generosity, different arithmetic. A dollar given twelve separate times delivers about $8.04. The same twelve dollars given as one monthly plan delivers roughly $11.35. Nothing about you changed. The batching did.
Right now we route gifts through Zeffy, which charges the organization no platform fee. Donors are offered an optional tip to Zeffy at checkout — it is genuinely optional, and declining it does not reduce what reaches the cause.
What a year of dollars looks like.
One person
A dollar a week for a year. Less than most people spend on coffee in a fortnight.
One hundred people
A small room's worth of humans. Enough to fund a defined, named program line.
Ten thousand people
Roughly the audience of a single well-run campaign. Nobody in it felt a thing.
That last number is the reason this site exists. It is not built on generosity at the individual level. It is built on the fact that a dollar asks nothing of anyone, and there are a great many anyones.
You've seen the arithmetic.
Now it needs one more line.