In South Africa’s crowdfunding landscape, digital platforms have become an essential mechanism for responding to crisis, from medical emergencies and education costs to disaster relief and family hardship.
Through platforms such as BackaBuddy, thousands of campaigns have demonstrated the power of South Africa’s collective generosity, with communities responding rapidly when need becomes urgent and impossible to ignore.
However, beneath this responsiveness lies a structural limitation that is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook. Crowdfunding is highly effective at generating support in moments of urgency, yet it is far less effective at sustaining that support over time. For many beneficiaries, this creates a familiar pattern of initial relief followed by a gradual decline in support once campaigns leave the public spotlight, even when the underlying need continues.
It is this gap between urgency and duration that has driven the introduction of Donors For Life, a monthly giving initiative developed by BackaBuddy and Paysoft Impact.
Donors For Life connects people to causes they care about and invites them to become part of something larger than a single donation.
The model is designed to shift crowdfunding from reactive, once-off donations toward structured recurring monthly support, creating a more stable foundation for long-term need. Rather than changing what crowdfunding is, Donors For Life reflects a shift in what it is being asked to carry, particularly in a context where demand for support continues well beyond the lifespan of individual campaigns.
Catherine Swanepoel, co-founder of BackaBuddy and the Donors For Life programme, says the initiative responds to a reality that has always existed within crowdfunding, but is becoming more visible as the scale and duration of need increases across South Africa.
“Crowdfunding is incredibly powerful at responding to urgency. It brings people together at the exact moment they are needed,” she says. “The challenge is what happens after that moment passes. Donors For Life exists because need does not stop when attention moves on, and many of the challenges people face continue long after the initial response.”
She adds that the intention is not to replace existing crowdfunding behaviour, but to evolve it in a way that reflects how support actually functions in practice.
“We are not trying to fix something that is broken, we are responding to something that is incomplete. One-off giving will always be essential, especially in emergencies, but what has been missing is a way for people who want to stay involved to do so in a consistent and structured way that reflects ongoing need. Donors For Life is about helping people find meaning through giving. When supporters join, they are not simply making a donation, they are becoming part of a community united by a shared belief in a cause.”
South Africa’s socioeconomic environment makes this gap particularly significant for non-profit organisations, which are often operating under sustained pressure across healthcare, education and social welfare with limited and unpredictable funding. Rising living costs, ongoing healthcare pressures and entrenched inequality mean that non-profits are rarely responding to one-off cases, but to sustained need that continues well beyond any single intervention.
In this context, the sustainability of funding becomes as critical as the immediacy of response, particularly for organisations expected to deliver long-term support within short-term funding cycles.
“In many cases, the need does not change just because a campaign ends. Non-profit organisations continue to carry sustained caseloads shaped by ongoing medical, educational and social realities, regardless of whether public attention is still there, and the structure of support needs to reflect that continuity if it is to be meaningful over time,” says Swanepoel.