JustGiving Alternatives for UK Sports Clubs: What It Costs, Where It Fits, and What Raises More

JustGiving is the default answer to "put up a donation page" in the UK — and for registered charities running appeals, marathons and memorial giving, it has earned that position. But if you run a grassroots sports club, there's a good chance you've hit one of its walls: your club isn't a registered charity, your supporters are tired of being asked to simply give, or you've realised a donation page doesn't produce income between asks. This guide covers what JustGiving actually costs in 2026, the two catches that matter for clubs, and what to run instead — or alongside it.

What JustGiving actually costs in 2026

The headline is genuinely good: no platform fee, funded instead by optional donor tips. According to JustGiving's own fees page, what remains are payment processing fees, and they differ sharply depending on which side of the platform you're on:

Charity fundraising: 1.9% + 30p per donation on standard payment methods. Personal crowdfunding: 2.9% + 35p per donation. If JustGiving processes Gift Aid on a charity's behalf, a 5% administration fee comes off the Gift Aid amount (the service is optional).

On top of that, charity plans split into a free Start plan and a Grow plan at £15/month + VAT for charities raising up to £15,000 a year — £39/month + VAT above that — with the paid tier adding reporting, donor data tools and API integrations. Reasonable pricing for what it is. The problems for clubs aren't the fees.

Catch one: the good rates are for registered charities

The charity side of JustGiving — the 1.9% + 30p rate, Gift Aid processing, the subscription plans — is for registered charities. Most grassroots sports clubs aren't charities: they're unincorporated associations or CASCs run off a committee bank account. Those clubs land on the personal crowdfunding side at 2.9% + 35p per donation, with no Gift Aid and none of the charity tooling. It works, but at that point you're paying general-crowdfunding rates for a plain donation ask — and if a one-off campaign is genuinely the right tool for your project, a club-focused platform with Sport England match funding attached is usually the stronger version of that play. We've compared that route in detail in our guide to Crowdfunder alternatives for UK sports clubs, where the Movement Fund's 50% top-up (up to £15,000) does the heavy lifting.

Catch two: a donation page only works when you're asking

The deeper limit isn't fees or eligibility — it's the shape of the income. A donation page raises money at the moments you actively push it: the sponsored walk, the crisis appeal, the season launch. Between pushes it sits silent. And every push draws on the same finite goodwill; supporters asked to give, again, for nothing back, respond a little less each time. For charities with big supporter files and event calendars, that rhythm works. For a club whose real problem is insurance, utilities and pitch fees arriving every month, a donation page is a spike generator being asked to do a rhythm job.

There's a third, smaller catch worth naming because committees trip over it every autumn: you can't run your raffle through a donation page. A payment that buys a chance to win a prize isn't a donation — HMRC will not pay Gift Aid on raffle or draw entries, and donation platforms aren't built to run prize competitions. If part of your plan is a draw, it needs a platform actually designed for one; our plain-English guide to Gambling Commission rules for fundraising draws explains what keeps a club draw licence-free.

The recurring alternative: prize draws

The strongest alternative for year-round club income is a recurring prize draw. The mechanics flip the donation ask on its head: supporters enter a branded 50/50-style draw online — after the platform fee, the pot splits 50/50 between the winner and the club — so saying yes weekly or monthly feels like joining in, not being collected from. Because a free entry route sits alongside paid entries, a properly structured draw needs no lottery licence, no local-authority registration and no returns. The income arrives as a rhythm rather than a spike — which is precisely the gap a donation page leaves.

It's the model behind £1M+ raised for 2,500+ UK organisations, and it scales to club size: our breakdown of how much a 50/50 draw can raise works through the maths for clubs of different sizes, fee first. If you're comparing draw platforms specifically, our Raffall alternatives guide covers fees, payout timing and compliance side by side.

Which tool for which job

If you're a registered charity, it's not either/or

Charities shouldn't read this as "leave JustGiving". Keep the donation page for what it does well — Gift Aid-able gifts, sponsored events, one-off appeals — and add a draw for the recurring layer. The two asks are legally and psychologically different: one is a gift that qualifies for Gift Aid, the other is an entry that never does, and keeping them clearly separated protects both. Our guide to Gift Aid for grassroots sports clubs sets out what qualifies on the donation side.

The honest bottom line

JustGiving is excellent infrastructure for the thing it was built for: registered charities receiving donations. If that's you, the fees are fair and the tooling is real. But if you're a grassroots club — not a charity, supporters fatigued by plain asks, bills arriving monthly — then the search for "JustGiving alternatives" is really a search for a different income shape. A recurring 50/50 draw gives supporters a reason to say yes every month and gives your treasurer a line they can budget on. Setting one up takes minutes: start fundraising with Play Fund Win and see what a monthly draw could raise for your club this season.