Donate via the web or by email
There are many services that let people find and donate to nonprofit charity organizations via the web or email.
The services accept the donations and forward it, usually minus a fee, to the charity.
Considerations for choosing a service to accept donations for your charity
- Accepting donations
- What forms of payment are accepted from donors: credit card, bank transfer, personal check?
- Can membership dues or event registrations be accepted also?
- May the charity enter donations on behalf of people who request it do so?
- Can you create your own form for people to use to pay you?
- If you don't create your own form, what are the form possibilities?
- Is a donation initiated by a link or button to another website, or entirely on the charity's?
- Can payments be initiated by a web page address in an email?
- Must donors have cookies, scripting, or graphics enabled in their web browser?
- Must donors first register with the service?
- Fees [indicated below within square brackets]
- How much are the percentage and flat fees per donation?
- How much are the initial (one time) and monthly fees, independent of donations?
- Transfering donated money to the charity
- What method does the service use to transfer money to the charity: check or bank transfer?
- Is each donation paid to you separately, or are multiple ones combined?
- If payments are combined, how frequently is the money forwarded to you?
- What, if any, is the delay between when someone donates money, and you receive it?
- Other issues
- Can the charity participate independently in employer donation campaigns?
- Are services provided for the charity to send email to donors?
- Who is charged per-donation fees: person donating, or organization receiving it?
- Will the service process donations for us? (Do we qualify?)
Donate via credit card, paid to charity monthly
Donation and fundraising services
Federations providing online donation services to their member charities
Some employers have systems that allow their employees to donate to a list of charities. For example, the U.S. federal government has the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Charities can get themselves listed by those employers. Federations get their member charities listed but retain a portion of donations.
Federations, to provide online donation services, usually hire companies such as Maguire/Maguire, Association Management.
Services helping people manage their giving
Websites listing charities to which to donate
Donating a percentage of your purchases to a charity you choose
Information elsewhere to help charities with online fundraising
Payment services for all
Not listed above are the many commercial services (merchant accounts) to which anyone can apply to use. There are many such services that charge less than 3% per transaction. Most of them also charge one-time, monthly, and per-transaction fees.
There are also personal online payment systems that allow anyone to pay anyone via email without any setup or monthly fees. The most well known is PayPal, which is free for payments via bank transfer and with other limitations, or $0.30 plus 3% to accept credit cards. Another one is c2it by Citibank [2%] (also) Service discontinued 2003-November-9. For more information, visit the following web pages elsewhere.
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[contact] This page changed 2003 December 2.