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In order to start accepting online donations, your organization must register all its fund raising activities. So, you will have to register in every state where you are planning to solicit funds. Keep in mind that every state is likely to have its own rules concerning fund raising activities. Also, it is advisable for your organization to start accepting online donations coming from the contributors who are living in the same state as you, then consider expanding your fund raising activities just one state at one time. Next, you will have to choose the methods you are planning to use for your online donations. Once you decide that you will be handling all your online transactions all by yourself, you will need a professional merchant account in order to pay the necessary fees to your credit card companies. Be aware that there will be a lot of paperwork involved along the process and you may get tired of filling out all these papers. On the other hand, your organization can go for a third party that can charge an additional fee but will take care of all the necessary bureaucratic details. Once you decide to accept online donations, you will need a well built website. Keep this website informative enough and make your visitors understand more about the services you are planning to offer to your community. There are 3 common ways to accept such online donations – through a non-profit processing service that uses credit cards, through PayPal or by getting your own merchant account. Paypal is among the most popular and reliable methods when it comes to the online payments. Also, it is the easiest method to be used in order to handle the whole credit card processing regarding auction payments and donations. With this online payment service, you will have to register for your own account. You can do this by using your email address – this email address will serve as your only access point for the fund raising account. Next, you will have to verify your registered e-mail address – you can do this by clicking the link sent by the service in order to make your PayPal account operational. Within the Paypal service, you can select the Merchant Services category and from there, you will have to select the Donations category. Next, you will have to enter the necessary pieces of basic information in order to enable your organization to track all its future donations. Next, you will have to select one of the existing donation buttons in order to have it installed on your own fund raising website. Non-profit credit card processing is all about handling larger volumes of donations on a regular basis. This is a more robust platform when compared to other systems that enable online payments. Go looking for your local companies that can provide such non-profit card processing at some very reasonable rates. Also, you can have your donation pages customized in order to match your fund raising website – also, you will have some tax-deductible receipts that will be emailed automatically. In addition, such non-profit credit card processing will also handle the possible recurring donations. The so-called merchant account service can be found at the bank you are already working with because this is the safest bet for your organization. Keep in mind that a larger bank is going to offer you such merchant accounts at really competitive rates. Go for a larger bank that is already pretty familiar with your fund raising cause and organization.
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