Every donor wants to know they matter.

Your monthly donors, giving societies, and affinity groups shouldn’t get lost in your database. Swell Circles turns donor groups into communities that last.

Members, not just donors.People who feel part of something stay.
Join the Waitlist See how it works

Free to sign up · No monthly fee · 2% platform fee on funds raised

Ocean Stewards Circle Join
Choose your membership
Friend
Updates & every gathering
$25/mo
Most joined
Steward
Adds a vote & a field day
$100/mo
Guardian
Adds a seat at the table
$1,000/yr
+82
86 members have joined
Why giving circles?

Some of your best donors are surprisingly easy to lose in the crowd.

Monthly donors. Giving societies. Young professionals. Alumni. Women’s groups. Many nonprofits already have groups of people who share a connection to the mission — but too often those donors live as a list, a tag, or a recurring transaction instead of a distinct community.

You know they deserve communication, recognition, and experiences that feel different. The hard part is creating that kind of attention with an already-busy development team. Giving circles create a practical middle ground: your nonprofit gives the group structure and purpose, while members and volunteer leaders help create the relationships, energy, and belonging.

Turn a donor segment into a donor community.

Start with a group you already have — or create a new one around a program, passion, identity, or shared purpose.

One nonprofit. Many Circles. Build communities around the people, passions, and programs already alive in your mission.
A giving circle seated together in conversation
Friends who give together A shared interest becomes a reason to gather, give, and stay involved.
Donors gathered around a table sharing dinner and conversation
Affinity becomes community Women, alumni, volunteers, parents, neighbors — the natural groups are already there.
A young professionals giving circle standing arm in arm
New donors find their place A circle gives people an inviting way to join your mission — and bring friends with them.
What is a giving circle?

A group of donors who give — and belong — together.

Your nonprofit creates a circle around a shared affinity or purpose. Members join at a giving level, contribute monthly or annually, and share experiences that deepen their connection to your mission and to one another.

The simple model

Start with something people already care about. Give them an easy way to join, connect, give, and keep participating.

1
Create a circle
Bring donors together around a program, affinity, or shared purpose that already matters to them.
2
Invite members
Give supporters — and a volunteer chair — a natural reason to invite friends, colleagues, and peers.
3
Give together
Members join at a level that works for them and contribute monthly or annually, creating predictable recurring support.
4
Connect & engage
Share impact, gather members, communicate directly, and create experiences that deepen relationships with your mission and each other.
5
Renew & grow
Members renew, invite friends, volunteer, advocate, and grow into deeper supporters of your organization.
Where Swell Helps

Giving circles should create joy —
not an administrative nightmare.

Swell Circles handles the operational work that makes giving circles hard to sustain — recurring billing, renewals, communications, member records, and volunteer-chair access — so your team can spend more time on the experience members actually remember.

01
Right now
Different giving options create more to manage
Different tiers, monthly and annual giving, and varied renewal dates can create a lot of work. Most fundraising systems can process a recurring gift, but few make it easy to handle multiple types and levels of giving. Staff time is spent monitoring payments, following up on expired cards, and keeping renewal information updated across multiple tools. Or worse, the process does not feel unique to the circle.
With Swell Circles
Recurring giving stays organized
Set the giving levels and frequency once. Swell Circles handles ongoing billing, renewal timing, payment updates, and member status in one place — giving your team a clear view without the extra tracking.
02
Right now
Circle communication can get scattered
A circle has its own rhythm: welcomes, gatherings, impact updates, renewal reminders, and member-only news. When those messages live across email lists and individual inboxes, keeping the experience consistent takes more staff attention.
With Swell Circles
Circle Communication is Easy
Keep circle communication organized in one place. Send updates to the whole circle, a giving level, or a specific member group, schedule emails in advance, and create custom transactional emails that make welcomes, confirmations, renewals, and other key moments feel personal. Volunteer chairs can communicate with their own members, while staff keeps visibility into the circle.
03
Right now
A personal experience is hard to scale
You want joining a circle to feel different from making a standard donation — but creating a distinct welcome, member identity, updates, and ongoing touchpoints for every group can become difficult as your circles grow.
With Swell Circles
Membership feels intentionally personal
Each circle gets its own branded story, giving levels, member experience, updates, and progress. The structure is handled for you, so your team can put its energy into the moments that make membership feel meaningful.
04
Right now
Volunteer leadership still needs staff support
A great volunteer chair can create much of the energy that makes a circle special. But without the right access, even simple tasks — welcoming a member, checking a roster, or sending an update — have to come back through staff.
With Swell Circles
Volunteer chairs can truly help lead
Give each chair access to the members and communication tools for their own circle — without opening up your full database. They can support the fun and connection while your team keeps visibility and control.
What your members see

Not a donation form.
Their circle's home.

Every circle gets its own public page — your photo, your story, your colors, live progress, and the members already in it. This is the page a chair texts to a friend.

OS Ocean StewardsCoastal Conservancy
Join the circle
A giving circle of Coastal Conservancy
Protecting 40 miles of
shoreline, together
Ocean Stewards funds our shoreline restoration program — dune replanting, tide-pool monitoring, and the crew that does the work. Join a group of neighbors who've decided this coast is worth keeping.
$48,200raised of $60,000 80%
86 membersNext gathering · March 14
Choose your membership
Friend
$25/mo
Member updates, the annual impact report, and an invite to every gathering.
Steward
$100/mo
Everything in Friend, plus a vote on the quarterly project and a field day with the crew.
Guardian
$1,000/yr
Everything in Steward, plus recognition on the shoreline marker and a seat at the planning table.
+81
86 people have joinedSarah, David, Rachel and 83 others are already in this circle.
Your brand, not ours
Org photo, logo, and colors. Swell doesn't put its name on the page your members land on.
Tiers that read like membership
Benefits, not gift amounts. People choose a level they want to be, and the dues follow.
Proof there's a circle here
Live progress and the members already in it. Nobody joins a group that looks empty.
The platform

Everything a circle needs, in one place

Most nonprofits run circles on a spreadsheet, a payment link, and a lot of tedious staff time. Swell Circles replaces all three — built by the team behind Swell's fundraising platform.

Public circle pages
A branded join page for every circle — your photos, your colors, your story, a live goal thermometer, and a join flow that takes about two minutes.
Membership tiers
Define as many tiers as you need, each with its own dues amount, billing frequency, and benefits. Members pick their level; you get a giving ladder for free.
Recurring dues via Stripe
Monthly and annual dues charged automatically, straight into your own Stripe account. Card updates, failed-payment retries, and receipts handled for you.
Renewal tracking
See who's active, who's due, and who's lapsing — before they lapse. Renewal reminders go out on schedule instead of whenever someone remembers.
Member communications
Email your whole circle, a single tier, or just the members who haven't renewed — from inside the platform, with every send logged on the member's record.
Transactions & reporting
Every dues payment, one-time gift, and refund in one ledger — filterable by circle, tier, or date, and exportable for your CRM and your board packet.
Member & supporter records
Full history on every person — tier, join date, giving total, renewal status, notes, and activity — so any staff member can pick up the relationship cold.
Roles & permissions
Staff see everything. Volunteer circle chairs see only their own circle. Nobody gets access they shouldn't have, and nobody has to ask you for a report.
Events & gatherings
Circles run on getting together. Schedule member gatherings, track who's coming, and keep the calendar attached to the circle instead of in someone's inbox.
Coming soon
Circle Social
A mission-centered social space for your members. Post updates, share photos from the field, celebrate milestones, and let members talk to each other — inside the circle, around the cause, with none of the noise of a public feed.
Simple pricing

Start small. Grow at your own pace.

No setup fee. No monthly subscription. Swell Circles grows alongside your giving circle with a simple 2% platform fee on giving through Swell Circles.

Every feature included
2% platform fee

No setup fee. No monthly subscription. Launch the giving circles that make sense for your organization and access the full Swell Circles platform from the start.

  • Unlimited circles, tiers, and members
  • Unlimited staff and volunteer chair accounts
  • Branded public join pages
  • Recurring dues, renewals, and member communications
  • Reporting and exports
Join the Waitlist
Standard credit card processing fees are charged separately by Stripe.
ⓘPricing that grows with your circle

Instead of adding another monthly software bill, Swell Circles uses a percentage-based platform fee. That makes it easy to start with a small group and grow your circle over time.

♢Your funds go directly to you

Member payments settle directly into your nonprofit’s connected Stripe account. Swell Circles helps power the experience without holding your funds along the way.

✓Give members the option to cover fees

Organizations can offer members the option to cover platform and processing fees in addition to their dues, helping more of each contribution support your mission.

Questions

Before you sign up

No. Most organizations start from zero. You create a circle, set the membership tiers and dues, publish the join page, and invite your first members — usually board members and your most loyal annual donors. The platform is designed for a circle's first twelve members as much as its hundredth.
Recurring giving is a payment schedule. A giving circle is a group of people who know they're in it together — they meet, they get a say in how their pooled gift is put to work, and they bring other people in. Swell Circles handles the recurring payments, but the retention comes from the group — which is why the platform is built around circles, chairs, tiers, and gatherings rather than just a charge date.
Only as much as you want them to. This is the main way Swell Circles differs from the traditional giving circle model: the circle is created around your mission or a specific effort, so the funds are committed to your work before anyone joins. Member decision-making is optional and mid-stream — you might let members choose among three of your programs, or vote on which project the next quarter's pool funds. It's an engagement tool you turn on, not a condition of the model.
A mission-centered social space for circle members — updates and photos from the work, milestone celebrations, and members actually talking to each other, all scoped to their circle. It's the piece that turns a membership list into a community. It's on the roadmap, not shipped yet; early-access organizations will get it first and help shape it.
Yes, as many as you like, at no additional cost. Organizations commonly run separate circles by affinity or program area — young professionals, alumni, a women's circle, a specific initiative — each with its own chair, page, tiers, and goal, all rolling up into one staff dashboard.
You connect your organization's own Stripe account during setup, and member dues settle directly there on Stripe's normal payout schedule. Swell never holds your funds. The 2% platform fee and Stripe's processing fees are applied at the time of the transaction.
No — it sits alongside it. Swell Circles is the system of record for your circle membership: tiers, renewals, chairs, and dues. Transactions and member data export cleanly so your CRM stays the source of truth for the overall donor relationship.
Yes. Swell Circles is built by the team behind Swell's fundraising platform, which nonprofits have used to run events and campaigns for years. Circles is the answer to what clients kept asking for after the event was over: how do we keep these people?
We're onboarding early-access organizations now, in small groups so each one gets real help standing up its first circle. Add your organization below and we'll be in touch with timing and next steps.
Early access

Start your first circle this year

We're onboarding a first group of nonprofits and working closely with each one to launch a circle that actually holds. Tell us about your organization and we'll be in touch.

  • Free to sign up — no card, no commitment
  • Hands-on help designing your tiers and join page
  • Direct line to the team building it
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