Guide To Accepting Donations Online
A lot of groups want to accept credit card donations or fundraising auction payments online, but don’t know how to do it. There are three main ways to accept payments online: use PayPal, use a nonprofit credit card processing service, or get your own merchant account.
Using PayPal
PayPal is by far the easiest way to handle credit card processing for donations and auction payments. Why? Because they are a division of eBay, the world’s largest auction company.
With PayPal, you register for an account using an email address that will serve as the access point for your account. You verify the email address by clicking a link in an email sent by PayPal and your account is operational.
Most groups will want to set up a Business Account with PayPal so they can wire their funds from PayPal to their checking account. PayPal requires you to verify your bank account information by making a small deposit to your account and having you confirm the amount deposited.
Within PayPal, you select Merchant Services and then Donations, then enter some basic information that enable you to track your donations. Then, you select one of four donation buttons to use on your website. That’s all it takes!
Accepting online payments for fundraising auction items is just as simple. All you need to do is email your winning bidder a PayPal payment link for their purchase. They don’t need to have a PayPal account, just a Visa, MasterCard, or other valid credit card.
Nonprofit Credit Card Processing
For handling larger volumes of credit card transactions on a regular basis, you’ll want to step up to a more robust platform. The good news is that there are several companies who provide credit card processing for nonprofits at very reasonable rates.
Network For Good is one organization that I highly recommend. They handle everything for a low monthly fee of $29.95 and 3% of total donations.
Click here to read the rest of the article on how to accept credit card donations.
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