Group Together is an online tool that allows you to collect money from a group of people. You can set up a collection, invite people to participate and when you’re done, either withdraw the money into a nominated (Australian) bank account, or purchase a giftcard or hamper from the site.
What can Group Together be used for?
Collecting money from your class to purchase a gift for the teacher.
Collecting donations for an end of year graduation present for the school.
Collecting registration fees for a sports club.
Collecting money to buy a birthday or wedding present for a friend.
Sourcing donations for a new building or playground.
Collecting money in advance for a group dinner.
Collecting donations for a charity.
Setting up a Group Together collection
How does Group Together work?
- It takes a couple of minutes to sign up for an account. You will be asked a couple of questions about what you are collecting for, and whether you want people to donate a certain amount or just leave it open. The you choose a design, write your text, choose a closing date and you’re done.
- Share the link for your collection with your community. This can be via text message, social media or email, and there is no limit to the number of people you invite. If you want to promote your collection more publicly, you can use a unique URL that you post on Facebook or LinkedIn, tweet it, or embed it into a newsletter.
- When people receive their invitation they can choose ‘yes’ or ‘no thanks’ when asked if they want to make a donation. If they say ‘No thanks’ it removes their email from the reminder list. If they say ‘yes’ it takes them straight to the unique webpage, showing the invitation (and what the collection is for), the closing date. They enter the amount they are donating (this remains private), then they can add a message for the group card and upload a photo of themselves.
- Payments can be accepted via credit card or bank transfer.
- When you have collected all the money, simply transfer it to an Australian bank account or use it to buy a gift from one of the retailers. It will take up to 2 working days after the collection closes for the money to be deposited.
You can withdraw your collection as cash or purchase a Gift Card or hamper directly from the site
What are other features of Group Together
Fees: While it is free to set up a collection, there is a small cost if you choose to transfer the funds to a bank account. If you take this option, there is a 1.5% processing fee for each contribution. You can choose to pass this on to contributors (so someone who is giving $20 has to pay an extra 30 cents) or you can pay for it out of the final collection (so if you have collected $150, you will end up paying $2.25 as the processing fee, leaving $147.75 as your final total).
However if you choose to use the money collected to buy one of the many gift cards or hamper options, there is no fee.
Gift Cards: There are at least a dozen type of gift cards available including David Jones, Coles/Woolies, Event Cinemas, Red Balloon, BCF, Endota Spa, Dan Murphys and JB Hifi and the range is constantly changing.
You are sent a voucher with a link to choose the gift card, you can either choose it yourself or forward the voucher onto the recipient so they can choose (or print it and hand it to them).
Note: all gift cards are actually eGift Cards and must be used online to purchase items.
Hampers: you can use funds to purchase any hamper from Little Kisses or Snow Goose. Little Kisses makes a range of baby hampers as well as gift hampers for males and females. Snow Goose provides stunning fresh fruit hampers which can be combined with wine, cheeses, chocolate and other luxury food items. Both sites deliver Australia wide.
Reminders and tracking: if you use email to share the original collection, Group Together can then send reminders, either automatically or on a date you choose.
Charity: You can choose to send all or part of the money collected to a registered charity.
Card: You can create a Group Card by asking contributors to add a photo and message when they contribute.
Just some of the many styles you can choose for your invitation
Things to note
There are more than 70 designs that you can use to create your collection ‘invitation’, including thank you Coach/Teacher, religious, new baby, Christmas, sport and many more. It also comes with a general text that you can easily edit, and four different samples of text including farewell, birthday, wedding and teacher gift.
You need to decide at the beginning of the process which of the fee options you will take (taking it from the collection, asking people to pay it when they contribute, or no fee because you plan on buying a voucher).
You will also be asked if you want to make a donation to charity. Simply enter the name of the charity and the percentage of the collection you want to donate. The money will be sent automatically to the charity, who will then provide a tax-deductible receipt to each contributor (where applicable). Only charities registered in Australia can be nominated. If you wish to send the money to a charity registered overseas, you must transfer the money to your bank account and then send it on yourself.
You can add email addresses individually (even after the collection has started) or upload a spreadsheet (csv) with just names and email addresses.
At any time you can send messages via the message service: to everyone invited, the people who have already contributed or just to an individual. Additionally you can set up an automatic ‘thank you note’ which you can compose, and which will be sent to everyone after the contribute.
Once the collection has finished, the group card can be sent electronically or downloaded as a PDF and printed. You have the option to edit the messages that people have left (if they have made a typo or said something inappropriate!), or upload a photo and message on behalf of one of the contributors.
To start a collection head to Group Together.
