Accepting Donations on Your Site

Allowing Your User Community to Donate to Your Organization

If you are offering really valuable information, services, free downloads, etc. on your website, you may find that some people appreciate it enough to make a donation to help support your efforts. Anyone can accept donations, it's not just for charity or non-profit organizations.

Over the past few years I've run into a few sites that provided exactly the information that I was looking for and let me download some really cool software for free, and on a few occasions I have made a small donation. Making a donation is just another way of saying thanks and letting them know that I liked the site and product and want to see it continue.

While revenue from donations may be small as compared to your other sources of income, it is real and some people do it all of the time. From a business point of view, you might want to consider accepting donations if you don't want to exclude any possible ways of making money.

Is it Begging?

Whether or not you decide to accept donations will depend on your business plan and your personal feelings on it. Some people think that by adding the ability to accept donations online is a form of begging for free cash. If your website tactfully presents the ability to donate money, and explains that donations are completely optional and not required in order to access the information, it should not carry any such stigma.

Actually, donation revenue can be used as a measure of the quality of your website and the information that you are providing. If a substantial number of people donate to your website, you can conclude that you are really providing a valuable service and should continue exactly what you are doing.

How to Start Accepting Donations

Setting up a method of accepting donations is simple - just go to PayPal and start a Merchant account.

Once you have your PayPal merchant account setup, you can click on the Merchant Services tab and find the link to Donations which takes you to a page where you can customize your donations preferences. PayPal's donations page will give you the code needed to create a donation button like the one on this site's donations page.