Supporting Nonprofits

This article will help you understand how your store can support nonprofits as well as what organizations are eligible to be in our database.

Who’s Eligible?

Our full nonprofit database contains almost 2 million registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits for your brand and your customers to support. We pull our database directly from the IRS, so any 501(c)(3) organization that is registered within the US and is in good standing with the IRS should be in our system. We also regularly update our database to include new nonprofits, as well as to remove nonprofits that may have fallen out of compliance or lost their 501(c)(3) status.

If you are utilizing the base-level Impact Starter plan or remain within your trial period, you will be limited to only supporting and donating towards Verified Nonprofit organizations, which appear highlighted in green within the cause search with a badge displaying their Verified status

A ShoppingGives Verified Nonprofit is a distinguished nonprofit organization that we feature on our Social Impact Stack for merchants to support at any level. These impactful nonprofits have been carefully selected, ensuring that they represent a diverse range of cause areas and organizational sizes — click here for a full list of our current Verified Nonprofits!

Featured Causes

A merchant can select up to 6 featured nonprofits or one cause portfolio to support at any one time. Your selection of featured nonprofits will be displayed to your customer once they click on the donation widget on your site and open the charity selector to choose a cause to support with their purchase.

Customers can choose to support one of your listed featured causes or they can search our database for a different nonprofit they'd like to support if you have access to our customer cause search feature

If you have a specific nonprofit in mind that you want to feature, such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation or American Heart Association, you can look them up in our system by name or by EIN (we recommend searching with the EIN when possible to ensure the correct nonprofit is selected)

To find a nonprofit’s EIN number you can visit Charity NavigatorGuideStar, or the nonprofit's website (check near the footer). You can also reach out to the ShoppingGives team and we’ll be happy to assist!

Additional Nonprofit Tools

  • Default cause — Setting a default cause will allow a donation to be generated on every order, regardless if a shopper interacts with the donation widget or not
    • With a default cause, the shopper still has the option to select a new cause if they wish to do so
    • A cause must be first set as a featured cause to then be set as a default cause
    • As an Impact Starter partner, a Default cause is required
    • To set a default cause, follow the guide linked here!
  • Cause multiplier — With a cause multiplier, you can choose a specific cause from your list of featured causes to donate an extra percentage
    • For example, if you are donating 1% site-wide, you can choose to donate 2X (2%) if a shopper selects a specific cause
    • The extra donation amount would only be applied if a shopper chooses the cause that you have set the multiplier on.
  • Nonprofit Exclusions — Merchants with access to Capsule Collection can use this to remove specific nonprofits from the search functionality of your store. Learn more here.
  • Nonprofit Category Exclusion — Merchants with access to Capsule Collection can use this to remove a category of nonprofits you would like to remove from your store's search functionality. Learn more here.