Using PayPal for Nonprofit Donations

Nowadays, nonprofits have an exponentially larger amount of tools for raising funds. With all those options out there and the strong association PayPal has with businesses and ecommerce, you may not consider it such a natural fit for your own nonprofit. However, there are many ways in which PayPal online donations for nonprofits can be beneficial.

Why Use PayPal?

PayPal has several features that give nonprofits an incentive to use it for raising money.

It is easy to set up donations, and the process is not time-consuming. You can add a donate button to your website quickly, and the button is customizable as well. Donors can choose to make recurring donations share some of their information to store in your donor base, and send notes with their donations as well.

Accepting donations becomes easy once the donation button is set up, because all you have to do is put this button on your website, and you are ready to go.

Nonprofits get a discount on the payment processing fee. However, this is only for organizations that are 501c3 registered and only apply to online donations. Offline donations made through PayPal Here have to pay the standard processing fee. However, if your contributions are usually under $10, you can also opt for PayPal’s micropayment plan, which has a lower processing fee.

PayPal also offers offline and in-person donations through PayPal Here, which is an application that reads cards and processes donations at events such as galas and auctions, etc.

You can also sell merchandise related to your nonprofit on your website and use a customizable cart. This can be done through PayPal Here if being done offline or through a virtual terminal such as the ones e-businesses use. However, you will have to have a Payments Pro account to use it.

PayPal also allows your organization to keep a record of all the transactions being made to and from your account. This makes it easier for you to keep track of your accounts and bookkeeping. It can even provide reports that you may need for your own organization or provide your donors for their personal accounts or transparency. Additionally, PayPal can also integrate with QuickBooks to make bookkeeping even easier.