Collect Donations Online

So you're not collecting donations from your website. Maybe your collecting them from another website like Paypal. Or maybe you're taking credit card numbers over the phone. 

Paypal and other "easy to get started" processing websites are expensive. They charge 2.9% per transaction. By contacting your bank, you can get this reduced to 1-2%.  This maybe not seem like a lot of money, but you'd be surprised how quickly it adds up.

Taking credit card info over the phone is very insecure. Your donor is reading their personal card info outloud, and maybe your staff is repeating it or writing it down somewhere. 

Why collect donations online?

1. Easy for your donors. They can visit your website any time they want. It's easy to point them to your website too if you can create a nice like like "yourwebsite.com/donate".
2. Trustworthy and secure. When someone goes to your website and sees that HTTPS or little lock next to your domain name, they will feel secure and trust your organization more. This will encourage them to share your donate page with friend and family.

Here is a quick guide to start collecting payments online:

1. Make sure you have a bank account for your non-profit. This is a no-brainer, but your banker is the one you will negotiate a lower transaction rate.
2. Find a payment Gateway like authorize.net. We recommend Authorize.Net simply because we've used them for years, they provide a secure product and their software works great with ours.
3. Enable eCommerce on your website. Okay, this is something you're going need your web developer to help with probably.
4. Start collecting donations online.

This transition will require some technical experience.