Donor Tools Blog

If you’re not doing online donations yet, this will make you want to start. We’ve made it so easy to set up online donations that all you have to do is put in your email address.

First off, if you don’t have a PayPal or Amazon Payments account for your non-profit yet, go get one. It’s easy: for PayPal, go to https://www.paypal.com/nonprofits, and for Amazon Payments go to https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/nonprofit.

Set up PayPal or Amazon Simple Pay (or both)

To get started, go to Settings, and click Online Donations. Then, click either PayPal or Amazon Simple Pay to begin setting up the gateway.

1. Click the slider to enable PayPal
2. Enter your mail address. This email address should be the one you used to set up your PayPal account. (If you haven’t set up a PayPal or Amazon Payments account yet, this would be a good time to do it. See below, under Additional Resources, for some links to get you started.)
3. Select a default source. (more about sources)
4. Save PayPal settings.

That’s it – you’re now set up to receive online donations! You can either stop here and stick with your plain-jane donation page, or you can read on to learn about fundraising pages and advanced options. Read More »

Interesting tidbit today by Dan Pallotta in HarvardBusiness.org: Why Nonprofits Should Spend Money on Advertising – an article about the discrepancy between advertising expenditures of “gigantic brands” and “gigantic causes“. The article asserts that charities should be advertising alongside corporate brands – we ought to see ads for breast cancer, Darfur, and climate change, right alongside ads for BMW, Netflix, and Oprah.com.

While I agree that there is often a strong case for advertising for charities, I disagree with one fundamental assumption: that charity is equivalent to consumption. Here’s why: nobody would disagree that protecting an acre of rain forest will make THE world a better place, eventually. But that new BMW? That will make MY world a better place, right now.

The message is different: Improve the world, vs. improve your world.

If you remember Maslo’s Hierarchy of Needs, the higher self-actualization needs at the top (morality, creativity, problem solving, etc.) are not acted upon until the lower needs (self-esteem, respect of others, security, food, water, sex, etc.) are met. During a time of economic turmoil, more people are focusing more of their attention on satisfying their lower needs. They’ll respond better to ads for their lower needs than they will for philanthropic outreach. Thus, this time may be precisely the wrong time for charities to advertise.

If your organization had Disney’s advertising budget ($2.4 billion), how would you use it to connect with people on the same level as their Bimmer?

Thoughts?