With the rise of crowdfunding, there has never been a better time to lend financial support to as many and as wide a range of projects as take your fancy.  With billions donated to charity already, plus the increasing sums offered via crowdfunded platforms, it’s a sizable flow of cash to good causes.  As the number of sources we send our cash to has grown however, so has managing our donations effectively.

Step forward PlanG, a new platform that aims to make it easier for us to manage our philanthropic efforts.  The site aims to make it considerably easier for people to both track and make donations.  The site comes with a range of features to support fundraising and philanthropy.

Arguably the most interesting of these is their tracking functionality, which will allow donors to manage and track all of their charitable giving from one place.  This feature will also allow users to produce a single tax report from their accumulated philanthropic activity.

The site also offers a campaigns feature, which is a kind of shop to donate style affiliate portal.  As with similar sites in the past, PlanG have teamed up with around 250 major retailers who offer a range of deals through the site.  Any user that capitalizes on the deals via the site will raise money for the charity of their choosing.  It’s not a new thing, but it has been slightly revamped for the current digital climate, so is an interesting feature.

There is also a social element to the site, with users encouraged to share their philanthropic deeds via their social networks.  There are also fundraising features on the site, so if you wanted to raise money for your chosen cause, there are various tools on the site to help you to do that.

It should be said that PlanG are a profit making organization, and any money processed through the site sees them take 4.95% as their cut of the transaction.  Obviously, their pitch is that by making it easier and more effective to raise money for good causes, the additional revenue generated for charities will more than offset this cut of proceedings.

So, overall, there are a mixture of some nice new features with some tried and trusted ones.  It’s a shame there isn’t more of an integration with the various crowdfunding sites, and in particular those that support a range of civic projects.  Maybe that will come in good time.