A U.S. Senate campaign moved its email and general fundraising from the Legacy Platform to GoodChange mid-cycle, and we audited every dollar. Head-to-head, GoodChange matched the Legacy Platform on conversion, a slight edge in fact. So the campaign gave up nothing at the top of the funnel. That's the on-ramp. The biggest wins come after the click: more money kept, far less donor regret, and stronger security and fraud prevention on every gift.
Through late 2025, the Hallie Shoffner for Arkansas campaign ran its email program, SMS program, and general fundraising almost entirely on the Legacy Platform. Like most campaigns on legacy rails, it was losing the full cost of platform fees on every gift, money straight out of its own pocket, with no way for donors to cover it, and no read on how much regret was hiding inside the platform's "frictionless" no-confirmation checkout.
In late December 2025, the campaign migrated email and general fundraising to GoodChange while keeping SMS on the Legacy Platform, then kept both running. That created a rare, clean comparison: the same campaign, the same donors, the same asks, processed two different ways. The goal of this audit was simple: measure, dollar for dollar, what each platform actually delivered to the campaign.
Full audit period, May 2025 – May 2026. Figures are drawn directly from raw platform exports and verified against source records.
The switch was a deliberate channel decision, and the campaign's growth never broke stride through it.
Because we're evaluating a channel switch rather than a controlled A/B test, we measure per-unit performance: how did each platform do with every dollar of donor attention it received? Here's how we kept the comparison fair.
The Legacy Platform confirmed its visit metric counts raw page loads, with staff and admin visits excluded. We measured GoodChange on that exact basis. Counted identically, GoodChange converts at 13.45% to the Legacy Platform's 13.04%: comparable, with a slight GoodChange edge. No deduplication tricks; the same yardstick on both sides.
GoodChange ran no texting program for this campaign; the Legacy Platform handled 100% of SMS. All SMS- and MMS-derived traffic was stripped from the Legacy Platform baseline so GoodChange isn't measured against traffic it never had a chance to capture.
The slight conversion edge means nothing is lost at the top of the funnel, but the case doesn't hinge on it. The findings that decide a campaign's bottom line (zero regret refunds, 4× lower fees, a higher average gift) hold no matter how either platform counts a visit.
We re-ran the comparison granting every concession against GoodChange: a discounted average gift, halved fee-cover, and the Legacy Platform's refund rate applied to GoodChange. The net-economics advantage still holds: the effective fee stays far below the Legacy Platform's, donor-regret refunds remain zero, and the slight conversion edge survives.
Per-unit performance across every dimension that matters to a campaign's bottom line.
| Metric | Legacy Platform | GoodChange | GoodChange Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate (head-to-head) | 13.04% | 13.45% | Slight GC edge |
| Average gift | $37.15 | $116.96 | 3.15× |
| Median gift | $15 | $26 | 1.7× |
| Base processing rate | 3.95% | 3.75% + 25¢ | Lower percentage rate |
| Effective fee rate to campaign | 3.96% | 1.00% | Donors cover the rest |
| Donor-regret refunds | 45 | 0 | Zero regret |
| Donors who covered the fee | 0% | 77.3% ($12,461) | Money kept, not lost |
| Donors who tipped the platform | Not reported | No donor tipping | No donor confusion or guilt |
Conversion is counted head-to-head on the Legacy Platform's own confirmed basis: raw page loads, with staff and admin visits excluded on both sides. On that identical yardstick GoodChange edges ahead, 13.45% vs 13.04%. That edge matters because it means no trade-off at the top of the funnel, but the case never rests on it. On fees: GoodChange's base rate (3.75% + 25¢) sits below the Legacy Platform's published 3.95%, and the 1.00% effective rate the campaign actually paid comes from donors electing to cover the fee 77.3% of the time on top of that lower base. The findings that decide a campaign's bottom line (zero donor-regret refunds, the effective fee rate, and a higher average gift) don't depend on how visits are counted at all.
On platform tipping: the Legacy Platform doesn't report a per-campaign or per-donor tip figure. Across the 2023–24 cycle it collected roughly $88M in donor tips platform-wide, on top of its processing fee (FEC filings, ~0.5% of total throughput). GoodChange has no platform tip at all.
Once conversion is off the table as a trade-off, the real results come from things GoodChange does differently: keeping more money in the campaign, sparing donors the regret, and confirming intent before a single dollar moves.
At checkout, donors can opt to cover the platform fee themselves. On this campaign, 77.3% did, and opt-in scaled with gift size, from 60.5% on small gifts to 85.9% on larger ones, climbing over time.
GoodChange offers the same saved-card, one-click speed as the Legacy Platform's express checkout, but requires an explicit confirmation before the gift submits. Donors see the amount and intent and approve it, which captures informed consent, follows security best practices, and guards against the misclicks and unauthorized charges a no-confirmation flow invites.
The campaign moved email and general fundraising onto GoodChange without missing a beat. Donors didn't notice the switch (they kept giving generously to a growing campaign) and 1,523 brand-new donors arrived through the GoodChange channel alone.
Monthly revenue by platform. The Legacy Platform peaked at launch in July 2025 and declined; GoodChange ramped through the migration and peaked in March 2026 at $113K (its strongest month), then kept scaling.
Conversion was never the trade-off. GoodChange held a slight edge. The difference shows up after the click: zero donor-regret refunds, 4× less eaten by fees, a higher average gift, and a confirmation step that protects every transaction. The switch grew the campaign; it didn't just redistribute it.
Counted head-to-head on the Legacy Platform's own basis, GoodChange edged ahead, 13.45% vs 13.04%. So the campaign gave up nothing at the top of the funnel. That's what earns the right to the rest of this list: the wins that actually move a campaign's bottom line.
Donors covered the fee 77.3% of the time, dropping the effective rate to 1.00% vs 3.96%. The campaign keeps about 99¢ of every dollar instead of 96¢. That's $12,461 already saved, plus $31,551 in Legacy Platform fees that fee-cover would have shifted to donors. The average gift ran $117 vs $37.
Zero donor-regret refunds on GoodChange over 12 months, against 45 on the Legacy Platform. No-confirmation express gifts refunded at 2× the rate of confirmed gifts across 18,692 transactions, and 91% of same-day refunds came from express donors, the signature of a misclick a confirmation step would have caught.
GoodChange's confirmation step captures informed consent before any charge: the donor sees the amount and approves it. That aligns with security best practices and guards against the misclicks and unauthorized gifts a no-confirmation flow invites, which is exactly why the regret-refund count lands at zero.
Q1 2026 outraised Q4 2025 by 20% despite the Legacy Platform's natural decline, and 96% of cross-platform donors gave on the Legacy Platform first. Donors layered GoodChange on, they didn't migrate away. 1,523 GoodChange-only donors brought in $291K that never appeared in the Legacy Platform file.
No platform tips. No data sales. Donors can cover the fee. Launch your campaign fundraising today and put the unit economics on your side.
Case study prepared from raw platform exports for the Hallie Shoffner for Arkansas campaign, audit period May 12, 2025 – May 12, 2026. All figures verified against source data. Conversion is reported head-to-head on the legacy platform's confirmed counting basis (raw page loads, staff and admin visits excluded on both sides), where GoodChange holds a slight edge; the findings that drive the campaign's economics (donor-regret refunds, effective fee rate, and average gift) do not depend on how visits are counted. A full defense package with methodology, citation tables, and conservative-case recomputations is available on request.