How Much of Your Donation Actually Reaches the Cause?

Less than you think, usually — because a donation passes through up to three toll booths before it does any good: the platform's fee, the card processor's cut, and the charity's own overhead. Each layer is individually small and collectively meaningful. The good news: two of the three are checkable before you give, and one of them can be zero.

This article walks the fee stack layer by layer, shows the arithmetic with clearly-labeled illustrative numbers, and explains how the Make More Marbles Foundation engineered one layer out of its own donation flow entirely.

What is the donation fee stack?

Layer 1: The platform fee — the one you can eliminate

Many fundraising platforms take a percentage off the top of every donation, and some add an optional "tip" prompt at checkout that defaults to on. The structure varies by platform, and every legitimate one publishes a fee page — the mistake donors make is never reading it.

Run clearly illustrative math: say a platform takes 5% and you give $100. That's $5 gone before the charity is involved. Trivial once — but scale it the way giving actually happens. A community that donates $100,000 over time through that pipe has quietly handed $5,000 to a website. That's ten reservations' worth of a Mexico house build weekend, evaporated as a convenience charge.

This is why the Foundation's founder built FreeDonateButton, the platform this Foundation runs its own giving through: it charges zero platform fees, and donations route directly to the Foundation's Stripe account. The platform layer of the toll road, deleted.

Layer 2: Payment processing — the one nobody can waive

Honesty matters here, because "100% reaches the cause" claims often quietly ignore this layer. Card networks and processors charge a standard rate on essentially every online transaction, donations included — typically a small percentage plus a fixed few cents. No charity, platform, or donor can make that zero on a card payment; it's the cost of money moving on the internet. What a well-designed flow does is ensure it's the only cost — the donation goes donor → processor → charity's own account, with no intermediary account and no platform percentage stacked on top. That's exactly how the Foundation's flow is wired: straight to its Stripe account, receipts issued automatically.

Layer 3: Overhead — the one you should judge carefully

Overhead is the layer donors obsess over most and understand least. A charity that spends nothing on staff, logistics, or compliance isn't efficient — it's usually ineffective, because real programs need infrastructure. The overhead ratio alone tells you almost nothing; what matters is whether the money produces outcomes that last.

The Foundation's stated filter is the sharper question:

"We don't fund band-aids. We build systems that compound."

A dollar into the Foundation's Kiva program became one of 251 microloans that get repaid and re-lent — the same dollar works repeatedly across 36 countries. A dollar into a build weekend becomes part of a house that never needs re-donating. When money compounds, the overhead conversation gets smaller, because each net dollar does multiple dollars of work.

How do you check any charity before giving?

1. Verify the legal status. Get the EIN and confirm 501(c)(3) status in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search — the full walkthrough is in how to verify a charity is a legitimate 501(c)(3). (This Foundation's: EIN 92-2489150.)
2. Read the platform's fee page. Before donating through any third-party site, find out what it keeps.
3. Look at the reporting cadence. Nonprofits above the smallest thresholds file public Form 990s. Beyond filings, look for published impact numbers. The Foundation's own standard: impact is tracked and published every year, not just at year-end.
4. Prefer direct rails. A donation page that routes straight into the charity's own payment account beats one that pools funds in an intermediary's.

So what happens to a dollar given here?

It enters through FreeDonateButton (platform fee: zero), lands in the Foundation's Stripe account minus only standard card processing, and flows out to the four FUSE pillars — Food, Utilities, Shelter, Education — through partners like Feeding America, Kiva.org, Baja Bound, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Arizona. The Foundation states it plainly: tax-deductible, direct to mission, 100% goes to the people we serve. What FUSE covers, pillar by pillar, is laid out in what FUSE stands for.

FAQ

Does 100% of my donation really reach the Make More Marbles Foundation?

The platform layer takes nothing. Donations run through FreeDonateButton, which charges zero platform fees, and route directly to the Foundation's Stripe account. Card networks charge their standard processing rate on any online transaction — that layer exists everywhere — but no platform percentage is skimmed, and the Foundation states that 100% goes to the people it serves.

What fees do typical donation platforms charge?

It varies by platform, but the common structure is a platform fee of several percent taken off the top, plus standard card processing, plus in some cases an optional "tip" prompted at checkout. Before giving through any platform, look up its fee page — every legitimate platform publishes one.

Is high overhead always a sign of a bad charity?

No. Overhead ratio alone is a crude metric — real programs need staff, logistics, and infrastructure, and starving those can shrink impact. The better questions: does the organization publish its results, do its programs compound, and can you verify its status and filings? Judge outcomes, not just ratios.

How do I check where a charity's money goes?

Registered U.S. nonprofits above the smallest filing thresholds file an IRS Form 990, which is public. Verify the organization's 501(c)(3) status by EIN in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, then read its 990 and whatever impact reporting it publishes. The Make More Marbles Foundation's EIN is 92-2489150, and it publishes its impact numbers every year.