The evolution of BetterNow: Closing old platforms to empower charities with white-label solutions

The first iteration of the BetterNow platform launched in 2011. At the time, we believed that third-party platforms were the future for charities. However, we soon realised that this approach wasn't suitable for most charities. Since 2015, we've shifted our focus to building fundraising platforms for charities' own homepages.

Today, these old platforms represent a small portion of our operations, generating only 0.5 million DKK last year, compared to over 35 million DKK coming in through BetterNow overall. Consequently, we will close our old platforms to make room for new features, as we no longer need to support their specific peculiarities. This change will enable us to accelerate development and enhance the overall user experience for our customers.

While we're excited about these changes, we're also sad to say goodbye (for now, at least) to many charities, some of which we've been working with since 2011. We're grateful that many have chosen to continue working with us, and we're currently busy implementing numerous new fundraising platforms.

We've always felt a special responsibility to support both small and large charities, and we'll continue doing so with our small charity discount.

White-Label Platforms

In 2015, we started offering white-label fundraising sites, which now constitute over 95% of our activities. We've learned that white-label solutions are superior fundraising platforms in nearly every aspect, leading to more donations and contact permissions. As a result, we've decided to close our platforms and concentrate on building the future of P2P fundraising with greater freedom and flexibility.

Our belief that white-label fundraising solutions are the future of P2P fundraising isn't new – read about our reasoning in this post from 2017, where we discuss our decision to focus on white-label solutions.

BetterNow Crowdfunding

We aren't entirely abandoning fundraising platforms. We recently launched BetterNow Crowdfunding, which addresses specific issues related to fundraising in Denmark, where fundraising legislation is incredibly strict.

With BetterNow Crowdfunding, we've partnered with some of Denmark's largest sports and scout federations. Through these partnerships, we can help small associations begin fundraising. Additionally, the platform provides an avenue for organisations excluded from Facebook to start fundraising.

Best of all, BetterNow Crowdfunding is free for fundraisers, and the platform's operating expenses are covered by user donations.

If you're a Dane looking to start fundraising for projects of any size, head over to BetterNow Crowdfunding.

The Future of BetterNow

The future for P2P fundraising is promising. We see consistent year-on-year growth and have strong partnerships with charities we've collaborated with for years. We look forward to adding many more charities to our network and are pleased that several charities previously active on our old platforms will transition to new white-label solutions.

Our new found flexibility in product development means we can continue to be as highly innovative as we have been in the passed. Just as we was the first P2P fundraising platform to employ machine learning, we will also be leading P2P fundraising technology in the future.

Our pipeline is full of new features, designs, and product updates. With numerous customers currently being onboarded to their new platforms - and even more waiting, we're incredibly excited about the future of BetterNow in the coming year.

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