Charity events run on three things: volunteers, goodwill, and a budget spreadsheet that has seen things. Every pound that leaks out of your ticketing is a pound that never reaches the cause, and yet the standard industry deal for good causes is a per-ticket fee with a polite discount stapled to it.
We think that is backwards. So here is ours: registered charities, state schools and religious non-profit organisations get eventcloud free. For life. For up to 3 users. Paid events, free events, fundraisers, fetes, galas and iftars. Not a trial, not a tier, not 50% off something. Free.
Details and the application live on our charities and schools page. The rest of this article is the why, the what, and a little maths.
The Per-Ticket Problem, Fundraiser Edition
Most ticketing platforms charge per ticket sold. For a business selling conference passes, that is an annoyance. For a charity, it is a quiet tax on generosity: the more support you rally, the more the platform takes.
Picture a 500-person fundraiser at £20 a head. £10,000 for the cause, in theory. Here is what the ticketing line on the budget looks like:
| The deal | What ticketing costs you |
|---|---|
| Typical per-ticket platform (£0.60 to £1.80 per ticket) | £300 to £900 |
| The same, with a generous 50% charity discount | £150 to £450 |
| eventcloud, for approved good causes | £0 |
Card processing exists everywhere and is set by the payment processor, not the platform, so we have left it out of every row. The point stands: a discount on a per-ticket fee is still a per-ticket fee. It shrinks the leak; it does not plug it.
What the Industry Calls Charity Pricing
Credit where it is due: the events industry does try. Ticket Tailor offers registered charities 50% off its usage fees, which is genuinely decent of them, though the discount does not apply to their white-label or custom domain add-ons. Humanitix donates its booking-fee profits to children's charities, which is a lovely model; the fees themselves still come out of your event. Other platforms offer nonprofit rates that still scale with every ticket you sell.
All of these make the per-ticket tax smaller. None of them make it zero. And for an organisation where the entire purpose of the event is the cause, "smaller" felt like the wrong ambition.
Our Offer, In Full
Not a discount. Free. For life. Up to 3 users, paid and free events alike, unlimited everything.
Approved organisations get the full eventcloud platform, the same one our paying customers use: unlimited events, unlimited tickets, unlimited registrations, and every penny of ticket revenue flowing straight into your own Stripe account. We never hold your money, and we never take a slice of it. The only cost that exists anywhere in the system is Stripe's standard card processing, which goes to Stripe and applies on every platform on earth.
The Part Where We Say Why
Somewhere along the way, corporate social responsibility became a page in the annual report: a stock photo, a pledge, a hashtag in November. We think it was meant to be simpler than that. If a business is in a position to support the people doing the actual good, it should, and not as a campaign with an expiry date. Many seem to have forgotten that part. We would rather not.
So this is ours. We build event software, which means free event software for charities, schools and places of worship is the contribution we are able to make. It will not fix the world on its own. But somewhere a fundraiser keeps its full £10,000, a school fete stops paying a platform tax, and a community dinner stretches to a few more plates. That is a line item we are glad to carry, for as long as we are around to carry it.
Who Qualifies
- Registered charities. Anywhere we operate. Have your registration or identification number handy.
- State and government-funded schools, primary and secondary. Private and fee-paying schools do not qualify, and we say that with love and a straight face.
- Churches, mosques and other religious non-profit organisations. Parish fetes, community iftars, fundraising dinners, youth camps: all of it.
- Other good causes. Not on the list but doing genuinely good work? Apply anyway. Every application is read by a human and assessed case by case, and we enjoy being convinced.
What You Actually Get
The free-for-life account is not a stripped-down community edition. It is the platform:
- Unlimited events, tickets and registrations. Run the spring fete, the quiz night, the gala and the annual conference without watching a usage meter.
- Custom registration forms per ticket type, so volunteers, donors, vendors and guests each answer the right questions.
- QR check-in on any phone, with PINs for your door volunteers.
- Badge design and printing on any printer you own. No proprietary hardware, no per-badge invoices.
- Promo codes, affiliate links and waiting lists for when the gala sells out. It will. We believe in you.
- 30+ languages and multi-currency events, because congregations and communities are rarely monolingual.
- Your own Stripe account, with payouts on Stripe's normal schedule. Donations and ticket revenue land with you in days, or instantly, not weeks after the event.
Made for the Events You Actually Run
Charities and Non-Profits
Fundraising galas with tiered tables, donor receptions with custom registration questions, free community days with thousands of registrations and zero fees for the no-shows. Your supporter data stays yours, handled with the GDPR tooling we built for our enterprise customers.
State Schools
School plays, parents' evenings, fairs and fundraisers, all on one account the office team shares. Free tickets for the nativity, paid tickets for the summer fete, and a waiting list for the one night every grandparent insists on attending.
Churches, Mosques and Religious Organisations
Weekly events that repeat without re-entering everything, multilingual registration for diverse congregations, and fundraising dinners where 100% of the ticket price goes to the cause it was bought for. As it should.
How to Apply
- Apply via our contact form. Tell us who you are and what you run. Two minutes, no essay.
- Prove your status. A charity registration number or equivalent official documentation. For due diligence we may ask for more; everything is handled confidentially in line with our privacy policy.
- We review, case by case. A human reads every application and replies within a few working days.
- Run events forever. Approved organisations get 3 users, the full platform, free, for life.
The fine print, the FAQ and the application route are all on the charities and schools page. If your committee needs convincing, send them the maths table above and watch the treasurer smile for the first time this fiscal year.