Where Do Your Donors' Tips Actually Go? (Most Platforms Won't Tell You)
By GiveGrove• 3 min read • Published 2026
Most fundraising platforms invite your donors to leave an optional tip at checkout. It feels like a small, generous gesture, and it is. But here's what most nonprofits don't realize: on most platforms, that tip doesn't go to you. It goes to the platform itself.
The Tip Nobody Talks About
That's not exactly a secret. It's just built into how most of these companies make money, and it's rarely spelled out in plain language. Your organization gets the donation. The platform quietly keeps the tip.
Multiply that across every event, every year, and it adds up to real money that never made it back to your mission.
How GiveGrove Works Differently
We built GiveGrove around a simple idea: if a donor is generous enough to leave a tip on top of their donation, some of that generosity should come back to the cause they were supporting in the first place.
That's the GiveBack Guarantee. When a donor leaves a tip on GiveGrove, we share a portion of it back with your organization. Every time. It's the reason we can say something most platforms can't: GiveGrove is the only platform that pays you back to fundraise.
Here's what that means in practice:
No platform fee, ever, when tips are enabled
A portion of every tip shared goes back to you
No contracts, no upsells, no paid tier hiding features you already need
Each analysis and recommendation comes with estimated dollar figures based on your own data and auction best practices. Not "consider raising your bid increments," but "these nine items have increments that will stall the bidding, and fixing them is worth about $350." Not "promote your auction more," but "ten more people opening your page is worth about $1,000, and here is where the next ten come from."
What This Has Meant for Nonprofits Like Yours
Since we started, that model has helped more than 300 organizations raise over $15 million from 35,000 donors and counting. Groups like the Youth Service Bureau of St. Joseph County have called GiveGrove "efficient and easy to use," and that ease comes paired with a model that actually gives more back.
If you're evaluating fundraising software for your next event, it's worth asking one simple question: where does the tip actually go? For most platforms, the answer stops the conversation. For GiveGrove, it's the whole point.
Curious how much more your next event could raise? See how the GiveBack Guarantee works
Thanks for trusting GiveGrove with your fundraisers!
The GiveGrove Team 🍋
A Code Works company
GiveGrove makes events and auctions for fundraising easy. Email info@givegrove.com for more info. Click here to sign up for our mailing list.
