PayPal Giving Fund

[miwilc]

It appears that Heliohost is not a part of the giving fund for some reason, could we apply for this? Since it would allow Helio to receive funds from participating companies like humble bundle with its fundraiser (https://www.humblebundle.com)

 

Heres the link: https://www.paypal.com/us/givingfund/

[Krydos]

I actually already started this process, but the first step is changing our business type since we created the paypal account when we weren't an official 501c3 non-profit. Unfortunately the change doesn't stick. At first I thought it just took some time to update, but it's been too long so I contacted paypal support. Thanks for the reminder about it.

[nuk]

Looks like this change is active. However, do you need to update your regular Donate button links to instead go to your PayPal Giving Fund page?

https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/what-is-the-difference-between-paypal-donations-and-paypal-giving-fund-donations-help222 says "[For] donation buttons,... the money] is subject to PayPal’s processing fees. Charities enrolled in PayPal Giving Fund can direct donors to their PayPal Giving Fund donation page or pages... PayPal Giving Fund doesn’t charge charities or donors any fees."

The forum donate button goes to https://paypal.me/heliohost which looks like it's subject to fees. The main website donate button goes to https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=33M9CSPP5YPXS, which looks like some sort of campaign associated with the giving fund so may avoid fees? 

When I search from PayPal's website directly, it's very clearly a Giving Fund page that would avoid fees https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/2598664

[wolstech]

We pay PayPal fees.

Some of the things we use PayPal for (like VPSes and eventually Morty) are effectively commercial offerings, so likely ineligible.

Also, giving fund money isn't given to the charity directly if I remember right...it goes to PayPal then it takes months for PayPal to send it to us. Or was that the gofundme? Krydos would know.

[Krydos]

You can donate directly to the giving fund if you want. Here's the link

https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/2598664

It usually takes us several months to actually get the money though so it can't be used for most stuff like donating to get a Tommy account, donating to get more storage, signing up for a VPS, or anything like that. There is also a minimum amount that they'll transfer so if everyone donates like $1 at a time it could take months before it accumulates to the point where they'll send us the money so it's really slow. The main thing we use the giving fund for is our GoFundMe fundraisers. Basically people donate through GoFundMe, but it's actually PayPal Giving Fund that moves the money for us in the background, and like I already said it can take months for us to get the money.

On our actual PayPal account we have non-profit status too which gives us slightly better fees. For small donations of $1 or $5 etc it's kind of pointless, but when people donate $50 or $100 at a time it makes a significantly larger percentage of the money go to us instead of going to fees. Donations made directly to this account are basically instantaneous so they can be used for getting a Tommy account, or increasing your storage, or paying for a VPS, etc.

Honestly most people who donate to us only do it because they want something from us, so we post the regular instant link, but yeah as long as people don't want anything in return and don't mind their money taking months (or maybe years) to get to us the giving fund is a great option to eliminate all the fees. Either instant or giving fund is tax deductible for you.