Where to get it:

Online Donations:

Cheap and simple:

JustGive.org
American Express lets Cardmembers donate online (using their Amex cards, of course.), using Guidestar as their database of eligible charities. Donations are processed by JustGive.org. Money is paid to JustGive, they mail you a check within 30 days, deducting 2.5% as a processing fee. Donors must give their consent for JustGive to share personal information with you.

Amazon's Honor System
The visitor clicks on a "click to give" button and is taken to Amazon's website, where he uses Amazon's regular payment forms to make his donation. Donor chooses whether to share his info with you. Amazon accepts all major credit cards.

Network For Good
Nonprofit collaboration to help nonprofits. The money is paid to them, then disbursed to you later. They share donor information in online reports only, and donor can choose to remain anonymous. No download capability. Note: They solicit a $3 contribution from your donor to support their site.

CanadaHelps.org
For registered Canadian charities


You keep donor info:

Donate.net
Organization can set up your own levels of giving ($20 supports a monkey, $50 supports a lion...) Donor gets instant thank you email for tax purposes. You can also sell mugs, tickets and other items. Donations go directly to your organization, not Donate.net. Excellent technical support by phone or email for organization and donors. $200 setup fee for customizable form hosted on their secure web server. Per transaction fee, with a minimum $29.95/mo. + 3.3% card processing.

Click&Pledge
Their form, your name on top. They send you a copy of the donor's email receipt. No database or reporting, but very cheap and no startup costs.
Payment Method % Rate Fixed
American Express 8.75%
MasterCard 4.75%
VISA 4.75%
Discover 4.75%
Invoice 0.00% $0.00
Purchase Order $1.00
PayPal $1.00


Groundspring.org
Form with your logo hosted on Groundspring.org. Donor gets on-screen receipt and instant thank you email for tax purposes. Money goes to Grounspring, your organization gets a check every 30 days, along with a printout of donor info. You can also download donor info as an Excel spreadsheet. No mug selling allowed. For $50 a year you can get an offline database to store and manipulate your downloaded information. Setup is $129-199, then $14.95 a month for small nonprofits or $24.95 for large ones, plus a 3% per transaction fee.

Contribute.com
Will build as many custom forms as you like, provide online reports, customize data download to be imported into your offline donor tracking software, send customized automated thankyou emails and let you send other emailings to the donors in your contribute.com database. Their fees are based on an 8% transaction fee on each donation made, with an $80 monthly minimum. The forms they build look like part of your website, but are hosted by them. They do all the credit card processing.


Portals/Affinity Shopping:


iGive.com
Shopper signs up at iGive site. Merchants are large and respectable, like store like Lands' End or Dell. Nonprofits sign up for free. Sharing donor info is strictly up to the donor.

Heartof.com
Shoppers must start at the Heartof.com portal. Traffic is low to this site as of this writing, so your organization will have to press your advocates to use the site.

DHS Club
Local merchants, like Joe's Diner, or online mall merchants, agree to give rebate to Club members. Nonprofits make money by referring new shoppers to the Club, which via a link and/or word of mouth.

MissionFish
In conjunction with EBay. Sellers pick your nonprofit and a percentage of proceeds to donate (10-100%), then list the item with MissionFish to be auctioned on EBay. Free registration for the nonprofit.

Ads

Amazon Associates Sell books, DVDs, etc.

Google AdSense Text ads.

AXSNetwork Offer ad space to advertisers at a fixed rate.

Online Donations



You're in luck! Mechanisms to get credit card donations online are fully mature now. There are several companies that will process credit card payments for you for a cut of the take, though some require an application fee. A few actually specialize in nonprofits. All promise security for your donors. Network for Good has a page of guidelines for evaluating online fundraising services.

Here is an example of a page that was built for absolutely no money, using one of the fundraising options available to charities and non-profits. Incidentallly, it's a worthy cause. You might want to chip in a few dollars to the Missionary Volunteer for the Deaf

Companies that specialize in nonprofits


Cheap and simple
The cheapest and simplest way to receive donations is to use a service such as Amazon's Honor System that collects the money on their site. They give you a "click to give" button, which takes a donor to a page on their site where she can make a donation. American Express has a version too. Since there's no setup cost, this is free money, so it's a good idea to sign up at Guidestar's database to be listed as an eligible recipient, even if you are also pursuing other online donation avenues.

Pros:
Cons:
Companies That Let You Keep Your Donor Information
There are companies, such as Donate.net that will host a customizable donation form or forms on their site, process credit card transactions and allow you to view and download all the information about your donors. These services allow you to have a professional looking donation form just like the big guys, and to guard your own donor information.

Although there is some effort and expense involved in setting up your form (Donate.net charges $200 for setup), it's worth the extra expense for all but the smallest organizations.

Build Your own form

Some web hosts offer credit card "gateways" as part of their hosting package. You enter into a relationship with a credit card processing company, hook up to the gateway and collect your own donations. If you anticipate a large volume of online contributions, this may be cost effective. Usually, there's a fee to set up the account and a monthly flat charge. However, you can get contributions through Paypal. with no up front charges, and just a percentage of what you receive in payments through them. You can either build a form through one of the companies listed on this site or work with a web designer to create your own form and hook it up to PayPal or the credit card company.

Pros:
Cons:

Affinity Shopping

(aka Free Money)


This is a real win/win. A shopper signs up at an affinity site such as iGive.com, frequently getting coupons or discounts as a signing bonus. When he buys something online, part of the purchase price goes to the organization he designates. For the organization, this is free money. The only effort on the organization's part is asking their supporters, both online and in the real world, to patronize the affinity site's merchants.

More Sources of Free Money



Pay Per Click Search Engines


There are search engines, such as CafeFind that charge people to get listed. They in turn seek affiliates to display their search boxes, so that their advertisers can get "clicks", i.e., people clicking on the sites that are listed when the visitor to the affiliate's site enters a search term in the affiliate's search box. The big guy in this field is Overture. They get most of the advertisers' money, but a little is better than nothing...

If you put a search box on your website, you will get paid a few pennies each time someone does a web search using that box. The Rainforest Site has a tagline above their search box that says "Each search preserves over 10 sq. ft." You probably won't make much money, but the only expense involved is the few minutes it takes to sign up and add the search box to your pages.

A Few Discreet Ads

Amazon has a particularly nice ad program. (See this page for some examples.) You can select the books or other merchandise you offer so that it's relevant to your site, or just have a general link to Amazon. Of course, you would want to ask your visitors to support your cause by using the link to purchase merchandise. Google has nonintrusive ads -- like the ones on this page. Theirs is a variation on the Pay Per Click paradigm, so you get a few cents each time someone clicks on their ad. They are very good about targeting ads to your website content. The only problem is that, unlike Amazon, clicking on one of their ads takes your visitor away from your site, rather than opening a new browser window. Of course, if the ads are on the thank you page after your visitor has made a donation, well, goodbye and good luck!

You can actually sell ad space on your site. AXSNetwork functions as a buyer/seller marketplace, letting you set your own terms. Several nonprofit sites have a "Visit our sponsors" area, with a request that you help the cause by patronizing them.

Other Helpful Websites



For more information on fundraising on the internet, try these sites:

Network For Good Fundraising section

The Nonprofit Matrix
Articles about online fundraising, guide to affinity shopping, portal sites, etc.

Techsoup Articles and online community for nonprofits.

Internet Nonprofit Center Offers some articles and a list of resources npo.org
Lists companies and organizations that provide technical help to non-profit organizations.

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