Free tool
Enter a gift or payment and your fees, and see exactly what a donor has to add so your organization receives the full amount. It works for any platform, not only ours.
| Organization pays the fees | Donor covers the fees | |
|---|---|---|
| Donor pays | ||
| Platform fee | ||
| Card processing | ||
| Organization receives |
Fees are rounded the way Clerestory rounds them: the platform fee up to the cent, processing to the nearest cent, and the covered total up, so the organization never comes out short.
How the math works
Card processing and platform fees are charged on the amount the donor actually pays. So when a donor adds the fees to their gift, the fees grow with it.
In Clerestory
Clerestory offers fee coverage as a checkbox at checkout on donations, memberships, dues, event tickets, classes and the gift shop, and calculates the amount with exactly the formula above.
Divide the gift plus any fixed per-transaction fee by one minus the percentage fees. Because the fees are charged on the total the donor pays, not on the gift, simply adding the fee on a $100 gift is not enough. At Stripe's non-profit rate of 2.2% + $0.30 plus a 3% platform fee, a $100 gift needs a total of $105.81 for the organization to receive the full $100.
Because the fees are charged on the covered amount too. The donor who covers the fees pays $105.81, and 3% of $105.81 is $3.18 while Stripe's 2.2% + $0.30 of it is $2.63, which together come to $5.81.
Many do. Across every payment processed on Clerestory through September 2026, 44% of people paying chose to cover the fees, with a checkbox that starts unticked.
Use the rate on your own merchant account. Stripe's standard US card rate is 2.9% + $0.30, and eligible non-profits can apply to Stripe for a discounted rate; Clerestory customers with it pay 2.2% + $0.30. In-person card rates differ from online rates.
Yes. Set the platform fee to your platform's percentage, or to 0 if it charges none, and the processing rate to yours. Platforms round cents differently, so the result can differ from theirs by a cent.
Bring last year's payments to a 20-minute demo and we will work out your all-in cost with you, to the cent.
