This is a guest post by Wen-Chih O’Connell, Executive Director President of PayPal Giving Fund Canada.
If fundraising feels harder today than it used to, you’re not alone. Many charities, especially small and mid-sized ones, are juggling tighter budgets, increased demand for services, and limited staff time. At the same time, how and where people choose to give is changing quickly. Fortunately, the future of fundraising is rooted in something familiar — community — and charities can use technology to make it easier to engage and invite people in.
Traditional fundraising methods like events or direct mail campaigns still bring in funds and remain important revenue sources. However, how people choose to give is evolving (especially among younger generations), and fundraising strategies need to evolve with them.
In Canada, individual donors account for the vast majority of charitable donations, contributing $12.8 billion in the most recently reported year, and digital channels are playing a growing role in how those donations happen.
Globally, online giving has grown significantly: Research from Blackbaud shows an 11 percent year-over-year increase in online donations in 2025, with social and peer-driven fundraising becoming a common entry point for new donors. Research consistently shows that people are more likely to give when the ask comes from someone they trust: trusted voices on social media can shift perception per Edelman's Trust Barometer, and according to GoFundMe, 41 percent of Gen Z reported that social media content motivated them to research or donate to a cause.
Use of digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and GoFundMe reflects this shift. Not only do younger generations prefer to use these platforms (PDF) for their giving, they allow people to give in social, community-driven ways rather than through standalone donation pages. They also make it possible to give in the moment, whether a story in a post resonates, a friend shares a campaign, or a live-stream inspires action. For charities, this opens the door to reaching supporters beyond traditional email lists and events.
Some organizations hesitate to adopt new tools because technology can feel overwhelming: There’s pressure to undergo a wholesale “digital transformation,” and technology integrations seem to require a significant resource investment. However, the real value of technology in fundraising lies in making giving more convenient, and there are ways for all charities to take advantage of easy-to-use, no-cost tools.
The major platforms that your supporters use every day already have giving tools built in. Donate buttons on Facebook and Instagram, campaign tools on GoFundMe, and community fundraising on Twitch all allow supporters to give right away and in-app. Donations through these platforms are processed by PayPal to PayPal Giving Fund Canada, a CRA-registered charity that issues the donation receipts (taking that burden off charities) and delivers the funds safely and securely to benefiting charities.
This model gives donors a familiar and trusted way to make donations and provides charities with a new source of unrestricted funds — all while reducing their administrative load. When giving is embedded into platforms people already use, donors are more likely to follow through. The right tools can help bring in more supporters without piling more work onto your team.
When donations come from many people, across multiple channels, organizations are less vulnerable to a single event, funder, or campaign falling short. This approach does not replace grants or major donors, but rather strengthens the foundation underneath them.
Community-led fundraising does something else that traditional campaigns cannot: It extends a charity's reach through trusted relationships. When a supporter shares a cause on social media, starts a birthday fundraiser, or rallies their community around a challenge, they are doing outreach that no email blast or ad campaign can replicate — and they are doing it for free. Each person who fundraises on your behalf brings their own network, their own credibility, and their own ability to motivate. For small and mid-sized charities with limited staff, this kind of distributed effort can be transformative.
In fact, half of Gen Z shares causes or fundraisers at least once a week, and 46 percent of Gen Z surveyed by GoFundMe believe people should share donations online to help spread the word and inspire others. Community-led fundraising is already happening among younger generations, and charities that want to engage with them need to be part of it.
The good news is that charities do not need to wait for a viral moment to happen to start building community-driven support. There are simple, practical steps any organization can take that can help spark action and engagement.
You do not need a large tech budget to make digital fundraising work for your charity. Here are a few simple approaches that are realistic for smaller teams, driven by the data and learnings from PayPal Giving Fund Canada’s “Future of Giving: Looking Beyond the Selfie” report, investigating the giving motivations and challenges for Gen Z and millennials in Canada.
Many donors now discover causes through social platforms and online communities. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, GoFundMe, Twitch, and PayPal partner with PayPal Giving Fund to make it possible for people to give without leaving the platforms they trust and already spend their time. Integrated in-app giving helps to reduce the number of clicks that create friction in the donation experience and makes it easy for users to give in the moment they’re inspired.
Action tip: Make sure your organization is eligible and easily discoverable on the platforms your supporters already use. Visibility matters more than perfection, so make sure your logo and org information surfaces to platform users. Enroll with PayPal Giving Fund to access and customize your profile so your charity’s info will sync across all our partner platforms.
Trust grows when donors quickly understand what their support makes possible. Clear impact messaging performs better than long explanations, especially in digital spaces. Using clear, concise posts about your charity’s impact throughout the year will better engage younger donors than a once-a-year report.
Action tip: Create one or two short impact statements that explain what a donation does. Use them consistently across fundraising pages, social posts, and campaigns. Try using A/B testing to see if certain impact statements (or platforms) perform better than others.
Peer-to-peer and community-led fundraising helps to distribute the effort and build credibility. Many younger donors give because a friend, colleague, or influencer they follow invited them to support a cause.
Action tip: Encourage supporters to fundraise for birthdays or milestones, on their live-streams, or through community challenges. Recognize their efforts publicly to build momentum and trust and to increase the audience seeing the campaigns through your engagement.
For many charities, the biggest barriers to adopting new fundraising tools are time, compliance, and administrative burden. That’s where PayPal Giving Fund can help. PayPal Giving Fund has already done the work to partner with major platforms to incorporate in-app giving and fundraising tools. We handle the compliance, receipting, and security of delivering funds to eligible charities for all donations we receive on these platforms. Our behind-the-scenes work allows charities to take advantage of these no-cost digital tools and to focus on their mission and their community.
If you are looking for practical guidance on using platform-based fundraising effectively across Facebook, Instagram, GoFundMe, Twitch, or PayPal, check out our Digital Fundraising Guide for tips for charities of all sizes to get started. Check back periodically, as additional pages for new partners and platforms will be added to this live resource.
Fundraising has always been about community: people giving because they are moved by a cause, trust the person who invited them, or are inspired to support your impact. What has changed is where those communities gather and how easily they can act.
You don't need a bigger budget or a bigger team to start community-led digital fundraising. You need simple, secure ways for more people who care about your cause to act. For charities ready to meet donors where they are, the tools for you to be part of the future of fundraising are available and don’t have to cost anything — you just need to start!
[Thumbnail photo: Shutterstock]