The Crowdfunding Problem No One Talks About — And How to Solve It

At The Everbloom Foundation (TEF) //Name Changed//, a mid-scale NGO based in India focused on improving access to quality education, faced the typical challenges of traditional crowdfunding platforms: manual data entry, limited donor insights, and high platform fees. To overcome these hurdles, we helped them transition to a progressive, white-labeled, intelligent crowdfunding platform designed specifically for Indian nonprofits. Today, TEF’s team analyzes donor behavior patterns through a sophisticated dashboard, streamlining operations and maximizing the impact of every contribution.

“We used to have ten full-time employees just reconciling donations and sending thank-you notes,” says Aman Chabra, TEFs Technology Lead. “Today, they’re working on donor engagement strategies instead.”

This transformation didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a systematic shift in how Indian nonprofits are addressing their biggest challenge: Sustainable Crowdfunding.

A Billion-Dollar Elephant in the Room

India’s nonprofit sector is massive but surprisingly inefficient. With over 3.3 million registered NGOs managing an estimated ₹70,000 crore ($8.5 billion) in annual donations, you’d expect sophisticated financial infrastructure. The reality? Most organizations operate on a patchwork of basic payment gateways, Excel sheets, and WhatsApp groups. Some good ones are raising via crowdfunding platforms, but they seldom ask the question of who owns the data & whether their donors are being mined post that single donation they got them to make.

This inefficiency isn’t just an operational headache—it’s actively hampering India’s social sector growth.

The Numbers Tell the Story:

• The average Indian nonprofit spends 16-24% of staff time on donation management.
• Donor retention rates hover around 5%, compared to 23% in developed markets.
• Only 7% of donations are recurring, creating constant fundraising pressure.

“The traditional approach to nonprofit fundraising is broken,” explains Satyam Gambhir, from Platform Commons. “We’re not just solving a payment problem. We’re rebuilding the entire fundraising infrastructure. The crowdfunding platforms are indeed moving the needle, however our focus remains getting the campaigns reach their fundraising targets, full ownership of data & full control over branding.

Key Components of Progressive Crowdfunding Platforms in India

What sets Better Together apart isn’t just what we’ve built—it’s how we’ve approached the problem (Checkout all features of the Civic Tech Platform here). Unlike traditional crowdfunding platforms in India which are retrofitted for nonprofits, we’ve designed a stack around the entire fundraising lifecycle.

1. The Campaign & Payment Interface:
   This is an interface that informs the user about the cause, handles one-time and recurring transactions, ensuring compliance. This is also the layer that offers intuitive user experience, builds trust, offers no surprises and ensures quick payment.
   
   
   
2. The Fundraisers’ Layers
   This is a gamified, omnichannel approach that is designed to eliminate reliance on organic donations, establishing a structured workflow that empowers volunteer fundraisers. This workflow facilitates mobilization, engagement, and successful donation solicitation. The users who act as a channel to reach donors is often ignored in tradiitonal crowdfunding platforms, and they are the key enablers. We built a set of features to ensure this audience is empowered through,
   
   • Custom Campaign URLs for Tracking: A fundraising volunteer can generate a custom referral URL to ensure she gets to track all donations from her network.
   • Creating Child Campaigns: If branding & familiarity for the fundraising team is important, they can choose to create a linkedin campaign to the master campaign & run it like their own. All money raised through the linked child campaign feeds to the mother campaign.
   • Leaderboards: The fundraising volunteer then sees how their campaign is doing against peer campaigns. And this comparsion is not just based on funds raised, the motivation also comes from observing, shares, views, clicks, intent-to-pay metrics, payments, recrurring payments, etc.
   • Nudges: Leaderboards are not enough. The fundraising volunteers need to be reminded of important events. Such as when someone makes the payment, when they move up the leaderboard, or when they drop a rank, etc.
     
3. Donor Relationship Management: A powerful Donor Management System, built into the Crowdfunding Platform, allows you to personalize outreach, track giving trends, and build a loyal community of supporters. It helps tracks engagement, repeat visits and behavior patterns. This is where you get extremely deep and meaningful insights that traditional crowdfunding platforms won’t offer! The crowdfunding platforms wishes to keep control over the data they collect, limiting your access and ability to utilize it for your own long-term fundraising strategies
   
4. Analytics Layer: Predicts donor trends and suggests strategies.
   
   

But the real innovation lies in the interaction between these layers, particularly in solving what we call the “middle mile” problem.

The Forgotten Middle Mile with Traditional Crowdfunding Platforms

“Everyone focuses on the first mile (collecting donations) and the last mile (impact reporting),” explains Akash Verma, Product Lead. “The middle mile—converting a donor into a long-term supporter—is where nonprofits struggle.”

This realization led to features designed for real impact:

• Donor Stewardship
  • Personalized Thank-You Messages: Going beyond generic emails. Handwritten notes, personalized videos & phone calls significantly enhance donor relationships.
  • Regular Communication: Consistent updates (quarterly newsletters, impact reports, etc.) that keep donors informed about the organization’s work and how their contributions are making a difference. This is enabled via regular updates & broadcasts from the campaign owner.
  • Donor Recognition: Publicly acknowledging donors (i.e. on the campaign page, in newsletters, at events) increase their sense of value and encourage continued support.
    
• Building Donor Community (Roadmap Features)
  • Personalized Recognition: Create a tiered recognition program that offers increasing levels of benefits and recognition for donors who increase their giving.
  • Online Communities: Create online forums or social media groups for donors to interact with each other and share their passion for the cause.
  • Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: Encourage donors to become peer-to-peer fundraisers, leveraging their networks to expand the organization’s reach.
    
• Other Conveniences
  • 15-Minute Onboarding: Nonprofits can start accepting donations with just their 80G certificate and bank account.
  • Automated Donor Journeys: Personalized campaigns triggered by donor behavior patterns.
  • Predictive Analytics: Machine learning models identify donor churn and suggest retention strategies.
  • Automated Tax Compliance: Instantly generates acknowledgements and dispatches 80G receipts when uploaded.
  • Recurring Donations Simplified: A subscription engine for impact lowers donor churn by 73%.
  • Rich Donor Profiling: Builds comprehensive personas using data like donation patterns, referral connections, and communication preferences.
  • Donor Self-Service: Donors can conveniently access their donation receipts online, in addition to receiving them via email and WhatsApp.

Case Study: The TEF Experiment

TEF’s journey with Better Together exemplifies the future of nonprofit fundraising.

“We approached this like a tech company would,” says Akshay. “We A/B tested campaigns on the Crowdfunding Platform, analyzed donor cohorts, and built engagement loops.”

Key Results:

• Recurring donations increased from 8% to 27% in six months.
• Donor retention improved by 24%.
• Average donation size grew by 43%.
• Volunteer time spent on donation management dropped by 35%.

Perhaps the most surprising result: donor referrals increased by 156%, highlighting the power of network-driven fundraising.

The Network Effect in Fundraising

Better Together’s referral system treats every donor as a potential ambassador.

“We’re seeing donation patterns that look more like social network growth than traditional fundraising,” notes Satyam.

40% of new donors come through second-degree connections, showing how nonprofits can leverage networks for growth.

The Road Ahead: AI, Open Banking, and the Future of Giving

Better Together is already developing innovations for the future:

• Smart Pledge Manager: Tracks and fulfills large fundraising campaigns.
• Corporate Giving Hub: Manages CSR donations and employee matching programs.
• Event Fundraising Toolkit: Integrates live donation tracking with event management.
• Impact Metrics Tracker: Real-time reporting connects campaigns to outcomes.
• Giving Graph: Maps donor relationships to revolutionize fundraising strategies.

The Bigger Picture

India’s nonprofit sector is at a tipping point. While individual giving is growing at 13.4% annually, nonprofits must adopt data-driven approaches to thrive. (Source)

Better Together’s success shows that the future of fundraising isn’t just digital—it’s predictive, personalized, and powered by networks.