# RoundUp case study

import { Badge } from "zudoku/ui/Badge";

<Badge>Fundraising & giving platform · API user since 2026</Badge>

# Building trust into everyday giving: how RoundUp uses Charity Navigator to power its 5,000+ nonprofit network

RoundUp.org was founded around a striking statistic: only 3% of nonprofit donations are recurring. The platform helps nonprofits secure stable, repeat funding by letting donors round up everyday purchases and give automatically to causes they choose.

As RoundUp grew, so did its direct-to-consumer discovery experience, letting donors search for nonprofits by cause or by proximity to their location rather than by name. That shift changed what RoundUp needed from its data.

"When a donor already knows the charity, I think they're less worried about trust," said Rebekah Sedaca, Startup Ops Lead at RoundUp. "But when we're helping them match with a charity, it's more important that we can provide those trust signals." Before integrating Charity Navigator, RoundUp had no objective, third-party standard donors could use to compare unfamiliar nonprofits.

## Under the hood: a one-week integration

For platforms weighing whether an API integration is worth the engineering time, RoundUp's experience is a useful data point: the team implemented the Charity Navigator API in a single one-week sprint.

"I thought it was going to be a bigger implementation," Sedaca said. "We put it off for months, and then when we got it done in a week, I thought, 'We should have done this months ago'. The lift was relatively small for the value it adds to our pages."

RoundUp pulls Charity Navigator ratings, scores, and rubric details directly into each nonprofit's listing page, and refreshes that data monthly, more often on request. The team layers the ratings alongside their own compliance checks, giving them one integrated view of a nonprofit's credibility rather than two disconnected systems.

## Where trust comes in

On RoundUp, only nonprofits with a three-star or four-star Charity Navigator rating are surfaced to donors. Each listing displays the star rating and numeric score, along with a short explanation of the ratings methodology, so donors understand the "why" before they commit. From there, donors can click through to the nonprofit's full profile on Charity Navigator.

That transparency has created an unexpected feedback loop: nonprofits that improve their Charity Navigator rating are now coming back to RoundUp to request a refresh. "We hear from a lot of nonprofits that have gone to Charity Navigator to improve their rating, and then come back to us and say, 'Hey, we got Charity Navigator to increase our rating, can you refresh it?'" Sedaca said.

## Small lift, big return

For a fast-moving, resource-conscious team, the case for the API came down to leverage. "It gives us a third-party proof point for validating nonprofit quality," Sedaca said, without RoundUp having to build or maintain that trust infrastructure itself.

That's the benefit Sedaca would point other fundraising apps and platforms toward if they're weighing the same build-or-integrate decision: a well-established, independent data source that took a single sprint to stand up and now runs quietly in the background, strengthening every nonprofit listing on the platform.

## More to build on

RoundUp's team is already thinking about what's next from the API: "We would love to have the API provide 'where to give now' recommendations," Sedaca said. "Your team is doing that work, and I think there's a real need for it." It's a reminder that today's ratings integration is a foundation, not the finish line, for what platforms can build with Charity Navigator data.

## The takeaway

RoundUp's experience points to three things other API customers can expect: an integration that's lighter than it looks on paper, ratings data that becomes a genuine trust signal for both donors and nonprofits, and a foundation that opens the door to deeper product features over time.

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