Where your fees go — and how to lower them.
Education Opportunity Funds run on a notably lighter fee structure than most fundraising platforms — no ACH fee and a fiscal-sponsor rate (1%) that’s a fraction of what comparable scholarship sponsors charge. This page walks through every fee, shows you what a real donation looks like end-to-end, and explains the levers that bring your effective rate down even further — including the referral program that can knock another 0.5% off for each EOF you bring in.
What your fees actually pay for
A scholarship sponsor that knows the rules
Yeshiva Giving Fund is your fiscal sponsor. Scholarship awards need to comply with specific IRS rules — eligibility criteria, selection process, no self-dealing. YGF carries that responsibility so you don’t have to.
The platform that runs your fund
Donation pages, donor receipting, scholarship application workflows, recipient management, reporting, dashboards, support — purpose-built for scholarship funds, not retrofitted from a generic donation tool.
Free ACH processing
Bank transfers process with zero passthrough fee on EOFs. Better than using a DAF – Donors give exactly what they intend; full amount is available to grant (minus platform + sponsor only).
Direct ACH to scholarship recipients
Your fund has a dedicated banking sub-ledger through Crowded. Scholarship disbursements go out by ACH to schools or recipients you specify — no check-cutting, no multi-week wait.
The fee schedule
All fees are calculated on the gross donation amount and deducted before crediting your fund balance — except the disbursement fee, which is taken on the way out. Where a donation triggers multiple fees, they combine.
| Fee | Rate | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Fee | 4.5% (tiered + referral discount — see below) |
BrightLeaf Giving — the donation pages, dashboards, scholarship workflows, donor management, reporting, and support. |
| Fiscal Sponsor Fee | 1% | Yeshiva Giving Fund — your 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. Charitable receipting, IRS scholarship compliance, fund administration. |
| Payment Processing — ACH | Free | Bank transfer — no additional processing fee on EOF donations. |
| Payment Processing — DAFPay | 3% | Chariot / DAFPay and similar donor-advised fund processors. This is the only payment method with a processing charge. |
| Disbursement Fee | 1% | Crowded Banking — ACH disbursement to scholarship recipients. Deducted at time of disbursement. |
| Off-System Donation Fee | 8% | Donations received outside the platform (Zelle, Venmo, direct transfer, etc.) that have to be manually recorded and receipted. |
How this compares
Most scholarship sponsors and donor-advised fund administrators charge a lot more for less. Here’s the honest comparison.
- Sponsor fees of 1%–2.5% annually, on assets under management
- Card processing passed through (~3% per donation)
- Minimum balance requirements ($25k+ common)
- Investment-style management charges
- Slow disbursements, paper checks
- Annual fees regardless of activity
- No way to lower your rate
- 1% fiscal sponsor fee — and only on incoming donations, never on balance
- ACH processing is free
- No minimums, no annual fees, no setup fee
- Platform fee tiers down sharply with donation size
- Referral discounts compound — keep stacking them
- Crowded Banking disbursements direct to recipients
- Built for scholarship funds specifically
Four ways to lower your effective rate
The headline rate is the ceiling, not the floor. The levers below stack — pull a couple and your platform fee can drop to numbers most sponsors won’t even quote.
Refer another EOF — knock 0.5% off your platform fee
Every time a new EOF is approved and lists you as the referrer, your platform fee drops by another 0.5 percentage points across the board. There’s no cap — refer two EOFs, your rate goes down by 1%. Refer four, it’s down by 2%. The discount applies to every donation across every tier.
- How a referral is counted. When someone applies for a new EOF, their application asks who referred them. They name you (specifically, the program manager of an existing EOF). Once their EOF is approved, your discount activates.
- Who’s a good fit to refer. Anyone running scholarships under their own initiative, a yeshiva or school looking to formalize an aid fund, a family memorializing a relative, an alumni group, a community organization. If they need a sponsor and a platform, this is built for them.
- The discount stacks indefinitely. A fund with two approved referrals at the 4.5% base tier is paying 3.5%. At the $200k+ tier with two referrals, the rate drops to 2.25%.
Pro tip: if you’re already talking to others in the scholarship space — pass along your name. The conversation is short and the discount is permanent.
Bigger donations pay dramatically less
The platform fee on EOFs steps down aggressively with donation size — from 4.5% on a small gift all the way to 2.75% on donations over $500,000. The rate is determined per donation, so a single major gift gets the lower tier automatically; you don’t need to “earn” your way in.
- For major-donor cultivation, this matters: a $250,000 scholarship endowment gift gets 3.25%, not 4.5%, even if it’s your only donation that year.
- Donor-advised funds and family foundations often give in five- and six-figure ranges, and they hit the lower tiers naturally.
- The tiers and the referral discount combine. A $500k+ donation with two referrals on file: 2.75% − 1% = 1.75% platform fee.
DAFPay carries the only processing fee
ACH on EOFs is free. DAFPay (Chariot and similar donor-advised fund processors) is not — it carries a 3% processing fee because the DAF infrastructure itself charges us.
- For both ACH and DAF donors, the experience is one click. They authenticate to their DAF provider and the gift transfers.
- Larger gifts are welcome. A $5,000 DAF gift costs $150 in processing but lands in a much lower platform-fee tier than five $1,000 card gifts would.
- Tax-deductibility is already handled on the donor’s side when they originally funded their DAF — and available to the donor via the BrightLeaf platform.
Don’t trigger the off-system fee
Donations that arrive outside the donation page — a Zelle, a wire to the wrong account, a check the donor sent on their own initiative — carry an 8% surcharge. That’s the real cost of manually reconciling and receipting something unexpected. Almost all of these are preventable.
- Always share your donation page link first. When a donor asks “what’s the best way to give?” — that’s the answer.
- Checks aren’t accepted as a default method — ACH is required for direct bank gifts. If a donor truly has no other option, contact us before sending anything.
- For pledged or planned gifts, set up an in-system entry first so the donation can come in without the 8% surcharge when it arrives.
Platform fee — by donation size
The platform fee is tiered to the size of each individual donation. The rate that applies is determined by the donation amount.
| Donation amount | Base platform fee | With 1 referral | With 2 referrals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $100,000 | 4.5% | 4.0% | 3.5% |
| $100,000 – $199,999 | 3.75% | 3.25% | 2.75% |
| $200,000 – $499,999 | 3.25% | 2.75% | 2.25% |
| $500,000+ | 2.75% | 2.25% | 1.75% |
Referral discounts continue to stack beyond 2 — each additional approved referral reduces your rate by another 0.5%.
A $100 donation, four ways
All amounts shown are what lands in your fund balance after fees. Disbursement fees come off when you pay out, separately — they’re not shown here.
| Scenario | Donor pays | Fees | You receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACH No processing fee on EOFs |
$100.00 | $5.50 4.5 + 1 |
$94.50 |
| ACH, with 1 referral | $100.00 | $5.00 4.0 + 1 |
$95.00 |
| ACH, with 2 referrals | $100.00 | $4.50 3.5 + 1 |
$95.50 |
| DAFPay | $100.00 | $8.50 4.5 + 1 + 3 |
$91.50 |
A $250,000 endowment gift
A major scholarship gift falls into the $200,000–$499,999 platform tier (3.25% base). The referral discount and the lower processing fees compound nicely.
| Scenario | Donor pays | Fees | You receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACH, base rate | $250,000 | $10,625 3.25 + 1 |
$239,375 |
| ACH, 2 referrals on file | $250,000 | $8,125 2.25 + 1 |
$241,875 |
| ACH, 4 referrals on file | $250,000 | $5,625 1.25 + 1 |
$244,375 |
| DAFPay, base rate | $250,000 | $18,125 3.25 + 1 + 3 |
$231,875 |
For comparison, a typical scholarship sponsor at 2% annual fee would charge $5,000 every year on that $250k balance — not once. Within five years they’d cost you more than 10% of the original gift, while BrightLeaf charges once and you’re done.
Common questions
How do referrals actually work?
When a new EOF applicant fills out their application, one of the questions asks who referred them. They name you — specifically, the program manager of your existing EOF. Once their EOF is reviewed and approved, your referral count increases by one and the discount activates on all future donations to your fund.
If you’ve referred someone and don’t see your discount applied, contact us and we’ll check the connection.
Does the referral discount have a cap?
Not formally. Each approved referral takes another 0.5% off your platform fee, and they stack. In practice, a fund at the lowest tier with enough referrals can approach a near-zero platform fee — at which point the fiscal-sponsor 1% becomes essentially your entire cost.
Are tax receipts the same regardless of method?
Yes. Tax receipts are issued by Yeshiva Giving Fund for the full amount the donor paid, regardless of which payment method they used. Fees are what YGF spends to receive and process the gift; they don’t reduce the donor’s deductible amount.
What if I receive a check anyway?
Mailed checks aren’t accepted as a standard donation method — we require ACH instead, which is faster, cheaper, and avoids the lost-in-the-mail problem. If a donor has truly no way to give other than by check, contact us before they send it and we’ll work out an alternative.
Why is there a separate disbursement fee?
Crowded, the bank that holds your fund balance, charges 1% to actually move money out to a scholarship recipient or school. That’s a real cost paid to a real bank. The upside: you can disburse to anyone you specify, by ACH, without us cutting checks.
Can I pass the disbursement fee on to the recipient?
That’s your call — the disbursement fee comes off the gross disbursement amount. If you disburse $1,000 to a school, the school receives $990. You can either communicate this in advance, or gross up the disbursement (disburse $1,011) so the school receives exactly $1,000.
Will these fees ever change?
The fee schedule can change with reasonable advance notice (the Modification of Policies consent you signed during application covers this). When changes happen, you’ll get an email well before they take effect, and they only apply to future donations — never retroactively.
We’d rather you ask than guess.
If you’re looking at a donation in your dashboard and the fee breakdown doesn’t match what you expected, or you’re cultivating a major gift and want to plan the lowest-cost path — message us. We answer in business hours, usually same-day.
Contact supportOr browse the help center for more guides.