Now in early access — free to sign up

Every donor wants to know they matter.

Giving circles help donors find purpose, connection, and community. Swell Circles makes them effortless to launch, grow, and manage.

Members, not just donors.People who feel part of something stay.
Get early access 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
A global movement

A giving circle is a group that gives together

People with shared values give as a group, stay involved well past the donation, and bring others in with them. There are more than 2,500 active giving circles worldwide. Swell Circles takes that model and points it at your mission — a circle your organization hosts, for an effort your organization already cares about.

1
Start with the mission
Your organization defines the effort the circle exists to fund — a program, a campaign, a fund. Members know exactly what they're joining.
2
Gather
A chair invites friends, colleagues, and community members who already care about that same effort.
3
Give together
Members join at a tier and pay dues monthly or annually. Individual gifts become one pooled, predictable commitment.
4
Decide along the way
Optional. Bring members into the choices mid-stream — which project this quarter, which need to meet first.
5
Stay engaged
Members show up, volunteer, host, advocate, and recruit. The gift is where it starts, not where it ends.
🎯
This is a little different from the giving circles you've read about
Traditional giving circles start with a pool of money and go looking for a cause — which is lovely for the members and unpredictable for everyone else. Swell Circles starts with your mission. The effort is set before the first member joins, so the funds are committed to your work from day one. Member decision-making becomes a feature you turn on when it deepens engagement — choosing among your programs, voting on the next project — rather than a structural risk to your budget.
The part nobody warns you about

Circles are wonderful.
Running one on your current tools is a nightmare.

Every nonprofit we talk to hits the same three walls — and none of them are about strategy. They're about the fact that no donation platform was built to handle a circle.

01
● Right now
Renewal billing lives in a spreadsheet
Three tiers, some members annual, some monthly, everybody on a different anniversary date. Your donation platform can only do "one gift" or "recurring gift," so somebody on staff is tracking renewal dates by hand, sending individual invoices, and chasing expired cards over email. Every lapsed member is an administrative failure, not a relationship one.
✦ With Swell Circles
Dues bill themselves
Each tier carries its own amount and frequency. Members are charged automatically on their own renewal date, failed cards retry and prompt the member directly, and your renewal pipeline is a live screen — who's active, who's due in 30 days, who's lapsing — instead of a spreadsheet somebody has to remember to open.
02
● Right now
You can't email just this circle
Circle communication is specific: this group, this goal, this gathering, this renewal push. But your email tool segments by your whole donor file, so it becomes a BCC blast from someone's Outlook. Nothing is logged, the chair can't send anything without going through staff, and nobody can answer "what did we last say to these members?"
✦ With Swell Circles
Communication scoped to the circle
Message the whole circle, one tier, or only the members who haven't renewed — in a few clicks. Volunteer chairs can reach their own members without asking you first, and every send lands on the member's record, so the history is right there the next time anyone picks up the relationship.
03
● Right now
Members still feel like "just another donor"
You sold them on joining something. Then they hit the same generic donation form every other donor sees, get the same automated receipt, and land in the same year-end letter. Nothing in the experience says you're part of a circle — so a few months later, nothing in their memory says it either.
✦ With Swell Circles
A membership experience, end to end
A branded circle page with their group's story and live goal. A join flow that names their tier and welcomes them by it. Member-only updates, gatherings on the calendar, and progress they can watch. From the first click, they're joining a circle — not filling out a donation form with a nicer headline.
The retention problem

You're not short on donors.
You're short on returning donors.

Acquisition gets the budget and the attention. But the math that decides whether your individual giving program grows is what happens in year two — and for most nonprofits, year two barely happens. Donors rarely leave because they stopped believing in the mission. They leave because nothing connected them to anyone else who believed in it too.

Four reasons a circle nurtures a donor
01
They belong to something
A circle gives a donor a group, a name for what they're part of, and people who would notice if they stopped showing up. That's a fundamentally different relationship than a gift receipt creates.
For you: leaving stops being a silent, frictionless decision.
02
Their gift gets bigger than they are
A $25 monthly gift on its own feels small, and donors know it. Pooled with eighty other people behind one clear effort, the same $25 helps fund something they can point at — and they get to watch it happen.
For you: predictable dues you can forecast instead of scattered one-time gifts.
03
They're invited, not solicited
Circles grow by invitation. Someone a donor already trusts asks them to join something that person cares about. The relationship starts with a friend rather than an appeal letter — and it never fully resets to transactional.
For you: chairs reach people your email list was never going to.
04
They have somewhere to grow
Tiers give a donor a visible next step and a reason to take it. Moving up a level reads as recognition — you've become more of what you already were — instead of one more ask arriving at a worse time.
For you: an honest signal of who's ready for the major-gift conversation.
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 hope. 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.
Built for two people

Your staff run the program.
Your chairs run the circle.

Volunteer leadership is what makes circles scale — and the fastest way to lose a chair is to make them email you for everything.

Organization admin
The development office
One dashboard across every circle you host — revenue, membership, renewals, and the health of the whole program at a glance.
  • All circles, members, and transactions in one view
  • Create circles, set tiers, publish join pages
  • Renewal pipeline and lapsed-member follow-up
  • Exports for your CRM and board reporting
Circle chair
The volunteer leader
A focused portal scoped to one circle — enough to lead it well, nothing that isn't theirs to see.
  • Their circle's members, goal, and progress
  • Invite links to share with their own network
  • Message members without going through staff
  • Zero access to other circles or org-wide data
Pricing

Free to start. You only pay when it works.

No setup fee, no subscription, no minimum. If your circle doesn't raise anything, you don't owe anything.

Every feature included
2%platform fee
Charged on funds raised through Swell Circles. That's it — sign up free, launch as many circles as you want, and the platform only earns when you do.
  • Unlimited circles, tiers, and members
  • Unlimited staff and volunteer chair accounts
  • Branded public join pages
  • Recurring dues, renewals, and member communications
  • Reporting and exports
Get early access

Standard credit card processing fees are charged separately by Stripe and go to Stripe, not to Swell.

Why a platform fee instead of a subscription?
Because a monthly bill punishes the small circle that's just getting started. A percentage means a first-year circle with twelve members pays almost nothing — and we're only paid if the model actually works for you.
Your money, your Stripe account
Funds settle directly into the nonprofit's own connected Stripe account. Swell never holds your donations in between.
Optional donor-covered fees
Members can be offered the choice to cover the fees on top of their dues — which most of them take, so your circle nets its full pledged amount.
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
Request early access
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