Methodology

Ownership

Givingplatforms is owned and operated by WhyDonate B.V., a Dutch crowdfunding company. WhyDonate is one of the platforms we cover. That fact is a structural conflict of interest. We don't pretend otherwise — we manage it explicitly through the rules below.

What we cover

Givingplatforms covers donation crowdfunding: platforms where individuals, nonprofits, or causes raise money from donors without offering anything in return. We do not cover reward-based crowdfunding (Kickstarter-style), equity crowdfunding, or lending. Platforms must be operational and accept donations from the general public, not just from invitees.

How we score

The editorial score shown on each platform page is a 0–10 number computed automatically from five weighted, transparent factors — no hidden hand-tuning:

• Fee efficiency — how much of a representative €100 donation reaches the recipient after platform + payment fees — 35%
• Trustpilot rating, volume-weighted, as an independent third-party signal — 30%. We weight each platform’s score by its review volume (a Bayesian average toward a neutral 3.5/5), so a 4.9 from a dozen reviews counts for less than a 4.6 from a thousand. A platform with no Trustpilot reviews yet is scored at exactly that neutral mid-point — it isn’t penalised for the gap.
• Country coverage — the breadth of markets the platform operates in — 15%
• Domain authority — the strength of the platform's web presence and backlink profile, as measured by Domain Rating by Ahrefs — 10%. Platforms not yet measured score the neutral mid-point.
• Data residency — a bonus for EEA/EU data residency (GDPR-native) — 10%

Because the score is derived from live data, it updates whenever the underlying fees or ratings are re-verified. We display the last verified date on every platform page so readers can see how fresh the inputs are. The top-list ranking on the home and country pages is a separate, region-aware calculation (it also weighs the local payment method and interface language, plus a small 7% domain-authority input and a small EEA data-residency match for EU/EEA markets); platforms without a Trustpilot rating are excluded from those curated top lists but still appear on the full platforms index.

Conflict of interest mitigations

Because WhyDonate is our parent company, we apply three structural rules to keep that relationship from corrupting the ratings:

1. No self-review JSON-LD. We do not emit Schema.org Review markup on our own WhyDonate page, since a review by us of our own parent would be a self-review under Google's editorial guidelines.
2. Above-the-fold disclosure. The WhyDonate review page carries a prominent disclosure callout at the top — readers see it before any of the editorial content.
3. Methodology priority. The methodology is published in full and is linked from every editorial page, every comparison table, and every head-to-head comparison page.

Trustpilot ratings

We display Trustpilot ratings as a third-party signal with attribution and an "as of" date. We do not republish Trustpilot's data as our own first-party aggregateRating in Schema.org markup — that would conflate two separate sources. Trustpilot data is updated when we re-verify each platform.

Domain Rating

The domain-authority factor uses Domain Rating by Ahrefs, a 0–100 measure of a website's backlink-profile strength, fetched from Ahrefs' public endpoint and refreshed weekly alongside our Trustpilot sweep. It is a proxy for a platform's reach and established presence — not a quality verdict on its product. As with Trustpilot, we display it with attribution and do not republish it as our own structured data.

Trust & safety signals

Beyond the score, each platform page shows trust & safety facts we collect from the platform’s own pages: its registered company, regulatory standing, refund policy, donor-guarantee programme, how donor funds are held, and an editor-assessed payout speed. We summarise these as a 0–5 transparency score — one point each for disclosed itemised fees, company registration, regulatory standing, a refund policy, and a known fund-safeguarding arrangement. These signals are displayed only; they do not yet feed the 0–10 editorial score.

Updates and corrections

Fees and platform policies change. If you spot an error, please contact the editorial team. We will update the data, re-verify, and update the last verified date.

What we never accept

• Payment in exchange for placement or higher rankings.
• Suppression or removal of negative findings about any platform, including WhyDonate.
• Sponsored content disguised as editorial.