Comparison
An engraved brick fundraiser sells a real clay paver that gets installed in a walkway or wall. A GiveBrick campaign sells a digital brick on a mosaic of your project. Both work. Which one nets your organization more depends on your brick price — and on whether you have anywhere to put a wall.
Nothing on this page is submitted anywhere. The calculator is just arithmetic.
Every trade-off below — cost, timeline, who can even run one — comes from this single fact.
A vendor laser-engraves a clay or concrete paver with your supporter's name and ships it to you. Someone lays it into a walkway, patio, or wall. The supporter can visit it, stand on it, photograph their family beside it.
That is real value a digital wall does not deliver. If your donors expect something permanent they can touch, that expectation is legitimate, and this page is not going to talk you out of it.
Your supporter claims a block on a mosaic of your actual project — the stadium, the sanctuary, the playground. They add a name and a short message, and their block fills in with colour. The picture completes as the campaign funds.
Nothing is manufactured, shipped, or installed. Recognition lives on the campaign page, so a wall can go live in days and works with no physical site at all.
The two models charge in different shapes. That shape — not the headline number — decides which one pays your organization more.
You buy each brick from a vendor and sell it for whatever you choose. Published prices for a standard 4×8 brick — engraving and shipping included — run roughly $18–$25. Your organization keeps the difference.
sale price − brick cost = your proceeds
Nothing to buy, nothing to ship. GiveBrick keeps one flat 15% per brick, card processing included, so your organization keeps 85%. No setup fee, no monthly fee.
sale price × 85% = your proceeds
A fixed cost stays flat as your brick price rises. A percentage doesn't. So a percentage wins on cheaper bricks and a fixed cost wins on expensive ones. At a $19 brick cost the two models pay your organization exactly the same at about $127 per brick. Below that, a digital wall nets you more. Above it, the engraved-brick vendor does.
Most school, church and team campaigns price bricks between $25 and $100 — the digital side of that line. Campaigns built on $250-and-up bricks sit on the other side. Don't take our word for it; run your own numbers.
Published 4×8 prices generally run $18–$25 including engraving and shipping. Use a real quote if you have one.
Enter all three to compare the two models.
Neither column includes the walkway, wall, or patio the bricks go into, or the labour to lay them. Those fall on the engraved side only, and in a physical brick campaign they are frequently the largest number of all.
Cost is the part everyone compares. These are the parts that decide whether a campaign is possible at all.
| What it takes | Engraved bricks | GiveBrick |
|---|---|---|
| Somewhere to put them | Required — a walkway, patio, or wall your organization controls and can dig into. | Not required. The wall is the campaign page. |
| Installation | Someone lays every brick: volunteer labour or a contractor, plus base work. | None. |
| Time to first dollar | Design, proof, order, engrave, ship, install — typically weeks to months. | Reviewed and live in days. |
| Fixing a typo | Re-cut the brick and re-lay it. | The organizer approves an edit. |
| Running out of space | The installation area is finite; expanding means more groundwork. | The mosaic is sized to your goal up front. |
| What the supporter gets | A permanent physical object they can visit and touch. | A named placement on a public campaign page, with a receipt and a share link. |
| Best brick price range | Higher-priced bricks — roughly $125 and up. | Everyday bricks — roughly under $125. |
| Card processing | Yours to arrange and pay for. | Included in the flat 15%. |
Brick costs and lead times above describe published industry pricing for standard 4×8 engraved pavers, not any one vendor. Get a quote — vendors differ, and several have no minimum order at all.
GiveBrick is the wrong tool for that campaign, and we would rather say so here than after you have applied.
Free to launch, no setup or monthly fee, and every campaign is reviewed by a person before it can take a payment.
Get a free preview of what a digital wall would look like for your project. No account, no commitment — and if engraved bricks are the better fit, the calculator above will already have told you so.