GalaBid: what it costs a charity, and where the money goes

I build fundraising software myself, so I have read a lot of these pricing pages. Here is an honest breakdown of what GalaBid costs a charity, in plain terms, and where the money actually ends up.

What is GalaBid?

GalaBid is an online fundraising platform used by charities, schools and community groups to run silent auctions, raffles, event ticketing and donation campaigns. Guests bid or give from their phones, with mobile bidding, outbid alerts and a live leaderboard, and payments run through Stripe straight to the charity’s own account.

It is a capable, well-established product. It has a strong Trustpilot presence and is used by tens of thousands of fundraisers, so none of what follows is a question about whether it works or whether the company is reputable. It is.

What varies, and what most affects your total, is which of its pricing options you choose. So that is where the real decision lives.

How much does GalaBid charge?

GalaBid publishes three options. The figures below are taken from its own pricing page, and are shown there in US dollars.

• Free plan. No platform fee. Instead, guests are shown a suggested tip at checkout, and GalaBid shares 10% of those tips back with your cause. Donors can opt out of the tip.
• Pro plan. A 4.9% fee on transactions, with no tip prompts shown to your guests.
• Flat fee plan. A fixed $1,250 per campaign, again with no tip prompts.

On top of any of these sit Stripe’s standard payment-processing fees, which you can absorb or pass on. To GalaBid’s credit, it does not mark up Stripe, and the funds go from Stripe to your bank rather than through the platform. That part is genuinely clean.

The differences that matter are in how the platform itself is paid: from your donors’ tips, from a slice of every transaction, or from a fixed fee.

Is GalaBid’s free plan really free?

Not for your donors. The free plan carries no fee for the charity, but it is funded by the tips your guests are prompted to add at the checkout, and only 10% of those tips is shared back with your cause. The other 90% funds the platform.

Sit with that for a second. A guest bids £200 on a lot, is nudged to add a tip on top, and adds £20 believing they are giving a little extra to the charity. Nineteen of those pounds do not reach the charity. Across a whole event, tips add up, and the gap between what donors think they are giving and what the cause receives can be large.

Put rough numbers on it. If 200 guests each add a £10 tip, that is £2,000 of extra generosity, and the charity keeps £200 of it. The same £2,000, given as a straight donation with no platform taking a share, would reach the cause in full, and with Gift Aid on top it would be worth more still. The tip itself is not the enemy. A platform keeping ninety per cent of it is the part worth questioning.

This is exactly the belief this brand exists to question: the idea that a platform should take a cut of the giving. GalaBid is upfront that tips are optional and can be declined, and recent Fundraising Regulator expectations that fundraising be open and honest with donors point the same way. But “optional” relies on a donor reading the prompt and choosing to opt out, and most do not. The maths behind the belief is the whole reason we refuse this model.

Where the money goes

Run the three options against a real event and the picture sharpens. Imagine a night that raises £100,000.

On the Pro plan at 4.9%, that is £4,900 to the platform. On the flat fee, it is a fixed sum whatever you raise, so the more successful the night, the smaller the bite proportionally. On the free plan, the cost is invisible on your invoice but real in your donors’ pockets, and it scales with how generous your guests are: the more they tip, the more the platform keeps.

Notice the pattern. Two of the three GalaBid options cost more the better your event does. A percentage and a tip share both take a slice of success, which is the opposite of what you want from a supplier. GalaBid’s per-campaign fee does not move with the total, which is a real point in its favour at the top end. It is still a charge for the software, though, and it is worth setting against a different arrangement, where the platform comes with the booking of your auctioneer and costs nothing extra. That single distinction, how the platform is paid, matters more than any feature comparison.

Now shrink the event. On a £10,000 community night, 4.9% is £490, a flat fee of over a thousand would be poor value, and a modest amount of tips might cost less than either. That is the honest case for the free and percentage plans: at small scale, a tip-funded platform can be the cheapest way in, and it is a genuine point in GalaBid’s favour. The calculation only turns as the total climbs, which is exactly where most galas and balls live.

How does GalaBid compare with other platforms?

Broadly, it sits with the rest of the category. Most of the well-known event-fundraising platforms fund themselves the same two ways: a suggested donor tip, or a percentage of what you raise. The names on the login screen change; the model rarely does.

That is why the comparison that matters is not GalaBid against one rival, but how each platform is paid: from donor tips, from a percentage of what you raise, from a fee per campaign, or, in the one case I can speak for, as part of booking Kevin as your auctioneer, with his fee the only money taken. So when you shortlist platforms, group them by how they get paid, not by their feature lists. The features are largely the same across all of them. The fee model is where the real money moves.

Is GalaBid legitimate?

Yes. GalaBid is a legitimate, established platform with thousands of charity users and strong public reviews, and it does what it says. If you are asking the question because a “free” fundraising platform sounds too good to be true, the reassurance is that it is real software, the money reaches your Stripe account, and the tip model is disclosed rather than hidden.

So this is not a warning about a dubious company. It is a nudge to read the pricing as carefully as you would read any supplier’s, and to work out the true cost to your cause under the plan you would actually use. Legitimate and inexpensive for the charity are two different tests, and only one of them is about trust.

Is there an alternative to GalaBid that takes no percentage?

There is one route I can speak for. The Generosity Works platform is free when a charity books Kevin as its auctioneer and host. It is not sold on its own, and Kevin’s fee is the only money taken: no percentage of what you raise and no tip prompt for your donors. The terms are on our pricing page, and the hire itself is described at The Charity Auctioneer.

Like GalaBid, we run payments through your own Stripe account, so the money is your own Stripe and never passes through us. The difference is the fee model: no percentage and no tips, rather than a share of your donors’ generosity. We set out the comparison in full on our GalaBid alternative page, and our guide to silent auctions covers how to run one that keeps the money.

None of this means GalaBid is the wrong choice for every event. For a small, one-off campaign, a free plan funded by a few tips may be perfectly sensible. It is at the larger end, where a percentage or a tip share turns into thousands, that it is worth asking whether you need to pay for a platform at all when the booking of your auctioneer can include one.

Read the pricing before you pick a platform

Whichever platform you choose, do the same simple sum first: take the total you realistically expect to raise, apply each pricing option to it, and see what the charity actually keeps under each. That one calculation tells you more than any feature list.

If you have a real target this year and you want the platform, the strategy and the auctioneering designed as one evening, for one fee agreed up front rather than a cut of the result, book a discovery call and let’s talk about your number.