Do you take online donations on your charity’s website? If not, why not?
PayPal is an online payments tool. It’s extremely popular with 160,000,000+ people signed up, and if you’re an eBay user you’ve probably used it. Did you know that you can use PayPal to put a donate button on your nonprofit organisation’s website? Transactions are safe and secure and all details are kept for your records. Donors can pay by PayPal or credit card. Of course PayPal takes a small percentage of each amount, they’re a business after all!
It’s a really simple solution but…
Unless I’m mistaken (and please leave a comment to let me know if I’ve got this wrong) PayPal isn’t set up to help you claim GiftAid, which would affect UK charities. Does that mean you have to send a paper form to donors? Apparently not, as you’ll see on these websites – Claire House & Red Nose Day - charities can simply add a GiftAid statement and tickbox to PayPal’s donation process. Problem overcome?
PayPal has published a Developer Donation kit with more information – although it’s not as in-depth as I would have liked.
Alternatives to using PayPal
One of the most popular UK online fundraising services is called eFundraising and is run by the reputable Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). It’s set up especially for the needs of UK charities, can claim GiftAid as part of the donation process and gives you access to a detailed history of your donations.
In Australia recently I’ve been using Donations.com.au. It’s an awful service: it provides minimal feedback and can’t even produce basic details about donors in a format that can be downloaded easily. I might suggest moving to PayPal.
No related posts.
Now, Paypal is the best way for me to accept all money from worldwide.
http://blog.jemput.com
Syed Ikhwan
on January 27th, 2008
Yea paypal isd a safe, secure and in my opinion well worth any customer with small volumes using.
Chris
http://www.c4sites.co.uk
Chris
on February 2nd, 2008
Pay-Pal is a great way to accept payments on your web-site. Like you said, anybody who has used ebay is familiar with Paypal and knows roughly how it works.
Also, there a new features on Paypal where you can offer ‘recurring payments’ for donations, so once they sign up, Pay-Pal can actually send out invoices each month / quarter / year to your donors.
The easier you can make it for people to donate, the more people will donate!
James - Creare Design
on March 6th, 2008