Why We're Doing Pricing Backwards

We kept hearing the same question from organizations we talked to: "What's the catch?"

When something is free, people look for the hidden cost. And honestly, they should. In nonprofit tech, "free" usually means the cost is buried somewhere you can't see it, baked into processing fees, locked behind premium tiers, or extracted from donation volume in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

We decided to answer that question by rethinking how we charge entirely.

What organizations actually want

After dozens of conversations with nonprofit leaders, we realized that what organizations care about most isn't whether a platform is cheap. It's whether the platform is aligned.

They want to know that their technology partner succeeds when they succeed, not the other way around. They want predictability. They want to know exactly what they're paying, and they want that number to make sense as they grow.

Most pricing models in this space do the opposite. More contacts means a higher tier. More features means a premium plan. The better you do, the more you pay. We wanted to flip that.

How Collective pricing works

Every organization gets the full Collective platform from day one. Community space, content distribution, fundraising, CRM, programs, analytics, all of it. No feature gates, no premium tiers, no "contact sales to unlock."

You pay one simple subscription based on your contact count:

• Starter (up to 500 contacts): $19/mo, or $15/mo annually
• Growth (up to 2,500 contacts): $39/mo, or $29/mo annually
• Scale (up to 10,000 contacts): $79/mo, or $59/mo annually

That's it. One price. Everything included.

But here's where it gets interesting.

The Collective Promise

Raise $50,000 on Collective, and your subscription drops to $0.

It's cumulative, so every donation processed through Collective counts toward the milestone: one-time gifts, recurring donations, campaign contributions. Once you hit $50k, your subscription goes away. To maintain it, your organization raises at least $10k/year on the platform, which keeps us aligned and keeps your subscription free.

If your annual fundraising dips below that threshold, your subscription simply resumes at your contact tier. No penalty, no surprise, no gotcha.

And when your supporters give through Collective, processing fees are covered by the donor by default. Your organization's cost on donations is always $0.

Why this model

We need to cover our costs. Infrastructure, email delivery, support, all of it takes real investment. But we believe the best business model is one where our success is genuinely tied to yours.

We're not trying to undercut anyone. We're trying to build a pricing model that reflects what we believe: that the better you do, the less you should pay for the tools that helped you get there.

When we charge a flat subscription, you know exactly what you're paying. When we make that subscription go away as you fundraise on Collective, we're telling you something: we'd rather earn your trust by building a platform so good you want to use it for everything, and then reward you when you do.

The math

Here's what it looks like for a typical organization with about 1,000 contacts:

• Annual subscription: $29/mo x 12 = $348/year
• Processing fees on donations: $0 (covered by donors)
• After hitting $50k raised: subscription drops to $0/year
• Ongoing cost after milestone: $0

That's the whole picture. No hidden fees, no percentage skimmed, no surprises.

We're betting on your success

This is what we think alignment looks like. Not a race to the bottom on pricing, but a model where the better you do, the less you pay. Where your technology partner is genuinely incentivized to help you raise more, engage more supporters, and tell better stories, because that's how the relationship works.

We're betting on your success. And we think that's a bet worth making.

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