There are what appear to be hundreds of different methods to accept online donations. Many people think it would be better to suggest the most used donation tool depending on your circumstances. To simplify things, I have divided the different methods into three categories. These are the freeway, the not-so-free way, and the commercial way. Let's look at them closely, starting with the freeway first.
Most non profit organizations that accept donations on the internet, do so through sites that require a one-time membership fee to access the website. This is a good method because there are no limitations or catches involved. However, a closer examination may reveal that some of these nonprofits actually charge the member a monthly fee for the privilege of using their site to make a donation. These are called "non-profit" nonprofits and they have one of the most significant weaknesses.
Some nonprofit donation processors rely on processing fees to pay their bills each month. Processing fees can add up to as much as 40% of all the money that they raise every year. Since nonprofits have to depend on fundraising in order to survive, they have to raise significantly more money than their processing fees allow them to. Unfortunately, one of the major reasons they must raise money is to pay their administrative costs. If they have to accept online donations, this means their overhead has to increase significantly to pay for the added costs of accepting online donations.
Non Profit organizations that use a payment processor to accept online donations have one other major advantage. They typically already have a solid infrastructure in place for accepting payments through credit cards or services like PayPal. This means they don't need to build another site from scratch in order to maintain their clientele.
Anytime you're planning to accept donations over the Internet, it's important to make sure your website is secure. A payment processor will make sure your site is safe from hackers by building a strong security system around it. For instance, it's very common for charities to ask donors to enter their contact information before they can donate. Hackers often try to attack charities that make it too easy for them to donate.
A third important aspect of accepting donations over the Internet for nonprofits is ensuring that your website has a good donation page. Many nonprofit websites don't actually make it clear where people can go to make a donation. This means they may not be maximizing the potentials of their nonprofit websites. Therefore, selecting the right provider takes the guesswork out of making sure that your nonprofit website has a great donation page.
|