What is Zeffy? A Guide to the 100% Free Platform for Nonprofits

For social impact organizations, every dollar is a promise. It represents a meal delivered, a habitat protected, or a student mentored. This makes the hidden costs of doing good—platform subscriptions, processing fees, and software licenses—particularly frustrating. These necessary expenses can feel like a tax on generosity, diverting precious funds away from your core mission.

This is the challenge that a platform like Zeffy aims to solve. By offering a comprehensive suite of fundraising tools that are completely free for nonprofits, it presents a compelling alternative to traditional software models.

But is a 100% free platform truly free? And is it the right choice for your organization’s long-term growth?

At Cosmic, we believe that your digital tools should be a seamless extension of your strategy, not a budgetary burden or a fragmented workaround. Your technology is part of your brand experience, shaping how supporters interact with your mission. Let’s explore what Zeffy is, how it works, and how to determine if its unique model aligns with your goals.

An Overview of Zeffy

Zeffy is an all-in-one fundraising platform built exclusively for nonprofit organizations. It’s not just a donation button; it’s a suite of tools designed to cover many of the core fundraising activities that social impact organizations manage every day.

Its primary features include:

• Donation Forms & Pages: Create customizable forms and landing pages for your fundraising campaigns.
• Event Management: Sell tickets, manage registrations, and track attendees for galas, workshops, and other events.
• Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: Empower your supporters to raise money on your behalf.
• Memberships & Recurring Donations: Manage membership tiers and cultivate a base of sustained support.
• E-commerce: Sell merchandise to raise funds and increase brand visibility.
• Lotteries & Raffles: Run games of chance where legally permitted to engage your community in a fun way.
• Donor Management: A built-in system to track donor information and giving history.

The platform’s central promise is that it is 100% free to use. There are no setup fees, no monthly subscriptions, and no platform fees. Zeffy even covers the standard credit card transaction fees.

How Can Zeffy Be Free? The Tip-Based Model

This "100% free" claim is possible because Zeffy operates on a voluntary contribution, or "tip-based," model.

When a donor makes a contribution or purchases a ticket through a Zeffy form, they are given the option at checkout to add a tip to their total. This additional amount goes directly to Zeffy to cover its operational costs and the third-party transaction fees that it pays on your behalf.

This model shifts the cost of the platform from the nonprofit to the donor, but in a voluntary way. Your organization receives the full, intended amount of every donation, a powerful proposition for maximizing your fundraising efforts.

The Pros of Using Zeffy for Your Nonprofit

Maximizing Every Donation

The most significant advantage of Zeffy is financial. In a sector where resources are perpetually scarce, eliminating platform and transaction fees means more money goes directly to your programs. A 3% fee on a $100 donation might seem small, but across thousands of donations, it represents a substantial amount of impact lost. Zeffy’s model ensures that a supporter’s $100 gift is truly a $100 investment in your mission, which can be a powerful and transparent message to share with your community.

An Integrated, All-in-One Solution

Many nonprofits struggle with a fragmented digital ecosystem—one tool for emails, another for donations, and a spreadsheet for managing events. This creates data silos and makes it nearly impossible to get a unified view of a supporter’s journey.

Zeffy brings fundraising, events, and basic donor management under one roof. For a small organization without a dedicated tech team, this simplicity is invaluable. It reduces the complexity of managing multiple platforms and logins, allowing your team to focus on building relationships and telling your impact story instead of wrangling technology.

Ease of Use for Lean Teams

Complex software with a steep learning curve can be a major barrier for staff and volunteers who aren’t tech experts. This "tech empathy gap" can lead to frustration, underutilization of expensive tools, and inefficient workarounds. Zeffy is designed to be straightforward and user-friendly, making it accessible for teams of all technical skill levels to get campaigns up and running quickly.

The Cons and Considerations for Zeffy

The Tipping Model and the Donor Experience

Your donation page is a critical brand touchpoint. A seamless, trustworthy, and on-brand experience can build confidence; a clunky or confusing one can create friction and reduce conversions. While the tipping model is transparent, it does introduce an extra step and an additional ask at a pivotal moment.

Some donors may be confused by the suggestion, while others might reduce their donation to you to cover the tip they feel obligated to leave for the platform. You must consider whether this trade-off is worth it. For some organizations, the financial benefit will outweigh the potential for a slightly more complex checkout experience. For others who prioritize a frictionless, fully-branded path to giving, this could be a significant drawback.

The Limits of "Good Enough"

The allure of an all-in-one platform is that it does many things well. The potential pitfall is that it may not do any single thing with the depth and power of a specialized, best-of-breed tool. As your organization grows, your needs will become more sophisticated.

You may require advanced donor segmentation that Zeffy’s built-in CRM can’t handle, or you might need deeper analytics to track program outcomes. While Zeffy provides a great starting point, organizations with complex needs may find they outgrow its capabilities, forcing a difficult migration down the line. It’s crucial to choose a tool not just for the organization you are today, but for the one you plan to become.

Customization and Integration Challenges

An integrated system is only as powerful as its ability to connect with your other essential tools. An all-in-one platform like Zeffy may offer limited integrations with specialized email marketing, accounting, or project management software. This can re-create the very data silos you were trying to avoid.

Furthermore, brand expression is in the details—the colors, fonts, and flow of your website tell a story. Platforms that prioritize simplicity may offer less flexibility for visual branding and customization, making it harder to create a donation experience that feels like a natural extension of your unforgettable brand.

Zeffy Alternatives for Nonprofit Fundraising

Zeffy exists in a growing landscape of tools designed to serve nonprofits. Here are a few alternatives to consider:

• Givebutter: Another popular platform that operates on a similar tip-based model but also gives nonprofits the option to pay low platform fees instead. It’s known for its modern and mobile-friendly features, including text-to-donate and Venmo integration.
• Donorbox: A powerful and flexible donation platform—not an all-in-one system—that functions as a best-of-breed tool. It charges a modest platform fee on top of standard processor fees (from Stripe or PayPal). Its strength lies in deep customization options and robust integrations, allowing it to fit neatly into a more complex, curated tech stack.
• Stripe or PayPal: For organizations that want maximum control, building a donation system directly on their website using a payment processor like Stripe offers the ultimate custom brand experience. This approach requires more technical expertise but ensures every detail of the donation process aligns with your brand.

Is Zeffy the Right Choice for Your Organization?

Choosing a fundraising platform is a strategic decision that goes beyond a simple comparison of fees. It’s about building a digital infrastructure that can support your mission and scale with your impact.

Zeffy is an excellent choice for many small to mid-sized nonprofits, especially those just starting out, those with a heavy focus on event-based fundraising, or organizations working with extremely limited budgets. Its free, integrated model removes significant barriers and empowers lean teams to do more with less.

However, larger organizations with complex donor databases, those that require deep integrations with a powerful CRM like Salesforce, or brands that prioritize a fully customized donor experience may find Zeffy too restrictive.

Ultimately, the right tool is the one that best serves your strategy for transforming your organization from fragmented to integrated and from invisible to magnetic. It should empower your storytelling, not inhibit it. It should forge stronger relationships with your supporters, not create friction.

Feeling overwhelmed by your tech stack? Let's talk strategy. Book a free strategy call with Cosmic.

Ready to build a truly integrated system for growth? Learn about our Social Impact Growth Model.