Ray of Hope is different because there is:

1) Donor accountability – All donations are collected by Ray of Hope. We perform due diligence before donations are disbursed.

2) Structured and responsible disbursement of funds – We work closely with all our recipients to estimate their income and living expenses, debt, medical bills et cetera before funds are raised. Disbursements are then made in installments, sometimes in the form of vouchers to ensure that the money is used appropriately.

3) Personal touch for giving – Donations are disbursed directly to the individual or family and not to a general pool. Donors receive continuous and timely updates on our beneficiaries’ progress.

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Ray of Hope is Singapore only crowdfunding charity & platform that is also an institute of public character.

100% of all donations made through us are channeled to our beneficiaries.

To illustrate how a donation is flowed through to our beneficiaries, here an example of a $100 donation.

When donors make a $100 donation to a beneficiary online, we don’t receive $100. We receive between $96 to $99 depending on the type of credit card donors used. This fee is deducted by the credit card company and payment gateway (Stripe) whom we use to process donations. All online platforms have to use a payment gateway to process the funds. The fees charged by our payment gateway are among the lowest in the industry.

How do we still transfer $100 to the beneficiary? We in turn use our own funds to top up the difference so that $100 still goes to the beneficiary.

Other crowdfunding platforms will not top up this difference and instead only transfer the deducted amount to the beneficiary.

How do crowdfunding platforms sustain themselves?

We often get asked  how then do we sustain ourselves if we topup the difference, given that we are not a business (unlike other crowdfunding platforms who are) and is a charity, whose mission is to help those who fall through the cracks.

There are typically 2 different ways crowdfunding platforms sustain themselves

1. Some take a percentage off the donation
2. Others have an optional donation at the checkout page to encourage donors to give directly to the platform itself.

For Ray of Hope, we chose option 2 – to have an optional donation at the checkout page so donors can give directly to us. This way donors have a choice – instead of having their donations deducted.

For option 2, typically other platforms making it as difficult as possible to reduce this additional amount to zero. In our experience, most platforms require 3 or 4 clicks for donors to select $0 to the platform.

For Ray of Hope, we decided very early on that we want to make it as easy as possible for donors to choose whether they want to donate to us. Therefore, we introduced a checkbox so donors only have to perform 1 click, instead of the usual 4 if they decide not to donate to us.

Donors who continue to donate to Ray of Hope are helping us keep our lights on, cover the costs of verifying the needs of our beneficiaries, maintain website operations and help cover some of the credit card processing fees.

Why can’t a donor just donate via bank transfer or PayNow directly to Ray of Hope so you can avoid paying the credit card company or payment gateway?

The key challenge is that there is currently no automated way to record donations that come in via an offline donation directly into our bank account – either via bank transfer or a PayNow QR code. It requires a tremendous amount of manual effort to record offline donations – especially if there are thousands of donations that come through our platform. There is also no easy way to get donor information if they choose to donate offline. While you could write a reference in the transfer, donors sometimes either forget to put the name of the beneficiary they want to donate to, or don’t put in their contact details. There is also no automated way to issue a receipt to donors who give via an offline donation.

This is why we have a platform, so we can scale our impact and focus on finding those who need help in the community. A platform enables us to help many families at the same time with as little manpower costs as possible.