[liberationtech] Anyone know of a free payment/donation app for non-profits?

[Miles Fidelman]

Zak Whittington wrote:
> A friend of mine is working for an anti-genocide org in southeast 
> asia, and they want to start doing some online fundraising. Their 
> first thought was to do a PayPal button, but they'd rather not pay 
> PayPal a cut of all their donations.
>
> Anyone know if there are any free tools out there for small social 
> justice orgs to fundraise online without transaction fees or buying a 
> costly software package?
>

You can always install an open source shopping card system (e.g., 
zencart), and an awful lot of ISPs offer that as a hosted service. The 
software is free, hosting or Internet access will cost you something, 
and administration will require labor (paid or otherwise).

"Without transaction fees" is a different story.  If you want to accept 
credit card donations, you'll need a bank account and a merchant account 
- lots of options, start with the bank (in effect PayPal is just one 
example of a merchant account, so is Amazon Payment services - and the 
rates aren't bad).  There is simply no way to avoid the 1-3% rakeoff 
that the credit card networks charge. If you limit yourself to bank 
account-to-bank account transfers, transaction fees can be lower, but 
you're likely to limit your audience.  If you really want to avoid all 
transaction fees, you need to handle only cash.




-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra