Chuffed fundraising: the fee model a UK charity actually gets

I read fee pages the way a fundraiser does: what reaches the cause, and when. Every figure below comes from Chuffed’s own documentation or a primary register, read in October 2026.

What is Chuffed fundraising?

Chuffed is a crowdfunding platform for socially conscious projects, open to individuals, charities, social enterprises and community groups. Its own description calls it 100% free and notes that Chuffed is a Social Benefit Company, so its directors must weigh community impact alongside money.

The company behind it is Australian. The Australian business register lists CHUFFED.ORG PTY LTD, ABN 24 608 395 393, active since 28 September 2015, in central Sydney. The structure is not window dressing. A legal case study records that Chuffed wrote a purpose statement and a unanimous-vote mission lock into its constitution when it became a Pty Ltd to raise equity.

One more point in its favour. Chuffed runs every campaign on a keep-what-you-get basis: you receive everything donated by the deadline whether or not you hit your target.

What does Chuffed fundraising cost in the UK?

Either 2-3% or roughly 8%, depending on which of two models you choose. Chuffed publishes three, and its fee models article, read in October 2026, sets them out:

Put £500 of willingness through each. Under the shared model you receive roughly £485 to £490. Under the flat fee model, 4.9% is £24.50 and card fees are £10 to £15, so you receive about £460 to £466 before any tax on the platform fee.

Neither is punishing. Both are a long way from the ten pence in the pound I have seen a charity keep from a consignment auction. But the Keep 100% row, the one that makes Chuffed look cheapest, is the one UK campaigners cannot have.

Why can UK campaigners not keep 100%?

Because Chuffed says payment processing regulations prevent it. Keep 100% is not available to EU or UK campaigners, and from 24 September 2026 it is gone for Australian campaigns too.

Under it the donor covers card fees and may add an optional tip. Chuffed’s tip page is honest about what tips are for: they are what lets it offer a “100% free crowdfunding platform”.

Two things follow for a UK charity. A tip is a payment to Chuffed, not a gift to your cause, so you cannot claim Gift Aid on it. And tip prompts are regulated here: the Code of Fundraising Practice standard for online platforms, effective 1 November 2025, requires a platform to show how its fee is calculated, how much you receive, how it can be removed, and a representative £10 example. Readers of my Zeffy piece will know the shape.

For scale, UK card processing rates in October 2026 start at 1.5% plus 20p. The 2-3% Chuffed quotes is the cost of moving money, not a margin.

Which countries and currencies does Chuffed cover?

Twenty-nine, the United Kingdom among them, each in its own currency.

To run a campaign you need a bank account, an address and government-issued ID in your chosen country. The list spans Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States and most of western Europe.

The currency rule matters more than it looks: campaigns run in the domestic currency of that country but can accept donations from anywhere. Chuffed says gifts have arrived from over 120 countries, and an overseas donor is still charged in the campaign currency, with their own bank converting it. A UK campaign is a sterling campaign, and your American sponsor pays the conversion, not you.

Does Chuffed handle Gift Aid?

It collects the declaration and leaves the claim with you.

Ticking “Collect Gift Aid Declarations” under Optional Features puts the declaration on the donation form, switches address collection on, and writes it into the donor’s receipt. Who declared then shows in your donor data. But Chuffed does not process the declarations with HMRC. The claim is yours to file.

Fair enough for crowdfunding, where almost every payment is a plain gift from an individual. It gets harder once an event is involved, because HMRC treats a payment for goods and services differently from a gift. Tickets do not qualify. An auction lot above the benefit limits does not qualify. Company money never qualifies. If that split is new, start with Gift Aid basics.

When does the money reach your bank?

On a rolling weekly cycle, through Stripe.

Card donations are transferred to your bank through Stripe, Chuffed’s payment provider, on a 7-day rolling cycle for most accounts. Some campaigns sit on manual payout settings instead, so you start the transfer yourself. PayPal donations land shortly after processing, and because the rest runs on Stripe the charity card rate is worth asking about.

Regular giving is available too, on a weekly, monthly or yearly schedule, card only. Note the admin tail: cancellations go through Chuffed’s support team by email, including when a campaign ends.

Where Chuffed fits, and where it does not

Chuffed is built for a story that sits still. A cause, a page, a target, donations arriving over weeks from people who found it on a phone. For a grassroots appeal with no staff behind it, that is the right shape.

A fundraising evening is the opposite shape. Two hundred people in one room for three hours, where the total depends on the order they are asked in and whether the ask reaches everyone or only the ten people who win a lot.

At Jigsaw Trust I was briefed for £14,000 from the live auction. The auction did £27,000 and the live pledge straight after it did £30,600, because for three minutes everyone in the room had a way to give. Paintings by the children raised another £4,000. None of that is a fee problem. It is a design problem, and it needs live bidding, pledge tiers on a screen, Gift Aid captured in the moment and an offline fallback when the venue wifi folds. Chuffed has never claimed to do any of it.

Where the Generosity Works platform sits instead

My answer to that room is not a cheaper percentage. It is no percentage at all.

The Generosity Works platform covers bidding, ticketing, pledges, Gift Aid capture, card on file, regular giving and the gala screen, and it is free when a charity books me as auctioneer and host. My fee is the only money Generosity Works takes. The platform is not sold on its own, and our pricing page explains why. One fee agreed up front, it does not move with the total. Charities use their own Stripe keys, so nothing is added to the card rate and there is no tipping prompt. Bookings go through my charity auctioneer site.

Use Chuffed for the campaign that runs for a month. If one evening carries £30,000 or more of your target, its design matters far more than the fee, which is the whole argument behind running a pledge properly.

If you have an evening this year with a number on it, book a discovery call. Let’s talk about your number.