Charity website donating

I’m going to be making a charity website and am wondering if anybody has experience with taking online donations - i.e. giving money to a charity which is not part of a campaign, like with JustGiving.

Cheap is good!

Thanks.

Have you explored the button options offered by PayPal? I think there is one where you can request a donation. You will, of course need a PayPal account, but it’s free and simple to implement.

First question is to find out if they have any existing payment gateways they use.

I built a charity site that also handled child sponsorship and I had to integrate an existing payment gateway they used. For various reasons they were not wanting to change platforms.

If they don’t have one already. PayPal and Stripe are very good. Most have non profit options to sign up for.

Which leads to the second question, and relates to their activities, what types of donations are they collecting. Sometimes it’s a straight forward and other times they can be involved in a multitude of activities. For example one of the sites I did was involved in community projects, micro enterprises, sponsorship etc. It all required different payment forms going through the same gateway. I used a CMS though, which made it a lot easier.

Thanks @hendon52 @PeteSharp

I’ve dug deeper into PayPal and I think you’re right, it seems like a good, flexible, inexpensive option.

(I’m sure I read somewhere on their own website that PayPal can take 90 days to transfer the money, but must have misunderstood.)

And, I now know I don’t have to use that HORRIBLE PayPal Donate button… phew!

Thanks again!

donate-button Just kidding!

I think it varies. In New Zealand PayPal will transfer straight away. Strip will take a few days.

Hi Ian, never had that amount of hold up on transfers from paypal. Normally a day or so, but their charges are a bit higher than some others.

Thanks @TrevReav, so who would you suggest (for a UK charity)?

“A penny saved is a penny earned”!

I really wouldn’t know. PayPal is probably the easiest to integrate (given my limited knowledge) but might be worth just researching Stripe, Worldpay etc. To see how easily they could play with Blocs.

PayPal fees for registered UK charities are 1.4% + 20p per donation. If you are not a registered charity, standard fees will apply which are currently 2.9% + 30p per transaction. There isn’t usually a retention system in place for charitable donations as chargebacks are highly unlikely to occur. With commercial transactions, it is possible that PayPal could retain some fees for a period of time to cover the eventuality of chargebacks.

Thanks for that… it is a Registered Charity so the fee sounds competitive!

PayPal works great for non-profits. You can create several types of buttons. I use it on several of my non-Profit sites.

I’d also recommend starting a free Mailchimp account and having a signup form to reach out to supporters. It’s really helpful to communicate with people and ask for support.

Casey

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Good advice, thanks!

I have a charity organization and the fee from paypal when using the donate button its about a 10cent bigger than the normal buy button.