Five ways to accept donations via your charity/non-profit website
Online giving is on the rise and this trend seems unlikely to slow down anytime soon. Just consider these stats from charity NPT-UK:
- Online giving increased in 2017 by 12.1% compared to 2016
- Online giving increased 18.5% among UK non-profits in 2017
- Donations made via websites, social media and apps account for 26% of donations in the UK
- Websites, social media and apps account for £2.4 billion in donations in the UK annually
So if you’re not already accepting donations via your website, now’s the time to start.
While there is a plethora of tools you can use to accept donations via your charity or non-profit website, it’s not easy to decide which one’s right for you in terms of pricing or ease of use. So we’ve done the research for you.
Following are five tools you can use on your website to make it easier for people to donate to your cause.
PayPal
PayPal is one of the most popular and trusted brands for online payments, and they also offer services to help non-profits accept online donations. You don’t need advanced programming skills to customise your PayPal button and add it to your website.
Here are two examples of how a PayPal donate button looks, although you can customise it as you see fit:
Key features:
- PayPal is a trusted brand that’s well-known for processing money online. This can help donors feel comfortable enough to provide their credit card information online.
- It’s easy to donate. PayPal users can donate via their accounts while those without accounts can make a payment using their credit card. This saves donors time and makes the donation process quick and hassle-free.
- People can tick a box to make it a monthly donation, like in this example:
- If you know some HTML, PayPal’s donation buttons allow you to include additional form fields on your website so you can collect additional donor information outside of the usual name, address and email.
Price:
The standard processing fee is 3.7% of the donation, plus a fixed fee of 0.20 GBP.
How to get started:
Here are the steps to follow to add a PayPal donation button on your website:
- Create a PayPal Business account.
- Click “Donate” from the buttons page and fill out the form to set up your button
- Update the final code provided by PayPal to include your additional fields, if you wish.
- Copy and paste the button code in your website editor
For further instructions, check out PayPal’s guide.
JustGiving
JustGiving is the UK’s largest online fundraising platform, which means a lot a people know it and see it as safe. While many organisations use it to create campaign pages on the platform, you can also use JustGiving to add a donate box on your website.
Here’s an example of how it looks:
Key features
- Adding a donate box on your site is easy, even if you don’t have technical skills
- It allows donors to make both one-off and monthly donations
- By adding the donate widget on your website, people won’t have to leave your site to finalise the donation.
Price
JustGiving charges a fee of 5% for each donation and Gift Aid contribution, plus a payment processing fee of 1.25% on debit and credit card donations and 1.45% on PayPal UK donations.
Charities pay 2%-5% on each donation, plus a monthly membership fee of £15 or £39 depending on volume of donations.
How to get started
Adding a JustGiving donate widget on your website is easy, and you can have it up and running in minutes. Check out this step-by-step guide to adding a donate box on your website.
Virgin Money Giving
Virgin Money Giving is known for being the official fundraising platform for lots of high-profile events, including the London Marathon. But that doesn’t mean that if you’re running a small non-profit you can’t use it to raise money directly on your website.
Key features
- You can create a fundraising page on the platform that you can customise as you see fit. Virgin Money Giving offers lots of options to add to your page so make sure you take advantage to make your page as attractive as possible.
- You can add donate buttons and banners on your website using the code provided on the platform. If you have a WordPress site, there’s also a plugin you can install to show visitors details from your Virgin Money Giving page.
Price
Virgin Money Giving takes 3.45% of donations – 2% as a transaction fee and 1.45% as a card processing fee. Charities must also pay a £150 + VAT set-up fee before registration is complete.
How to get started
Start by registering your charity or non-profit with Virgin Money Giving. You’ll then need to set up a page on the platform so you can then link to it from your website.
@Pay
With 21% of all online donations in 2017 being made using a mobile device, you know you need to stay ahead of the curve. With @Pay you can enable your site visitors to make a donation quickly directly from their smartphones.
Key features
- It’s an easy to set up and use online donation tool for mobile giving.
- With @Pay you can add donate buttons on your website and start accepting donations directly from mobile phone users.
- Donors can make a donation in just two clicks. This makes the process simple and easy, thus reducing donation form abandonment.
Here’s how it looks:
Price
The site charges a fee of 2.9% for each donation, plus $0.30 (or the equivalent in pounds) per transaction processing fee.
How to get started
Go to the Fundraising page to choose your plan and set up your account. You’ll then be able to choose the buttons you’d like to add to your website to start accepting donations via mobile.
Charity Checkout
If you want to have online donations fully integrated into your charity site, a service like Charity Checkout might be the right solution for you.
Key features
- It integrates fully into your site, allowing you to keep donors on your own website. This can increase trust in your organisation as people are donating directly to your charity, and not to some third-party site.
- You can accept online donations via credit and debit card, PayPal and direct debit.
- The payment process is mobile optimised, allowing mobile users to make a donation with ease.
Price
The price is higher compared to the previous tools. Charity Checkout charges £199.99 per year plus VAT, plus a one-time £49 setup fee. There is also a 5% fee for every donation plus card processing fees.
How to get started
Visit the website to learn more about the service and how to get started accepting donations on your website with Charity Checkout.
Wrapping up
Online giving is on the rise so make sure your organisation takes advantage to maximise online donations. Take a closer look at each of the donation solutions above and choose the one that best works for you in terms of pricing, features and ease of use.
