Friday Update: Payment System Notice
Hey guys, hope you’re ready for a great weekend! So here’s the inside scoop…
Our payment system has been down for some time now (in case you haven’t heard). Originally, we were using Paypal to process donations made on our site. However, PayPal didn’t fancy us facilitating money on behalf of third parties. Conclusively, we are no longer able to use PayPal. In an effort to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, we applied to every money processor left, right and center including Google Checkout and PaySimple to name a few. Unfortunately, they closed the door in our face too!
As a temporary solution, we will accept checks made out to The MicroGiving Foundation and issue payouts immediately upon Donor request. We’re are continually working on a resolution, if you’ve got any suggestion feel free to drop us a message to support.
We promise to have this sorted as quickly as possible. Thanks for your understanding =)
Sincerely,
April Jasmine
The MicroGiving Team
Tags: payment system, Updates
11. September 2009 at 8:59 pm :
This is great news! I’ll start sending in Money orders around the first of the month.
I know the team is trying hard, you will find the right solution but at least by accepting checks or money order from donors we can get things moving again.
28. September 2009 at 5:11 am :
What about just getting the basic paypal button system up so we can use paypal to donate to others cause, and if anybody wants to make a bigger donation by credit card, then just have them send in a check or money order and you issue that out to who they donated to. I don’t understand why paypal would turn you down all that business. It is for such a great cause. Let me know how I can help at all.
I think it is a great idea to do the checks and money orders until we can get it worked out. I mean it’s the same exact thing, you just have to buy a stamp and send it off. Keep donating people!
26. October 2009 at 2:38 am :
I have another idea. How about providing a place on our profiles to put the paypal donate button. That way microgiving doesn’t have to have an account with paypal or amazon. Each person has there own personal account with paypal, which is free, and microgivng just provides a place to put the donate button code on the profiles that want them.
1. November 2009 at 6:10 pm :
Hi Penelope
The problem with private donation buttons is donors cannot declare those contributions on their taxes. If they contribute directly to MicroGiving which is a 501c3 they can declare their contributions. That doesn’t really affect us smaller donors who can only give $5 or $10 here and there, but for donors who give over $500 a year they would like to be able to have the tax deduction. We will never get the higher dollar donors if they don’t have a tax break on their contributions so this is an issue that really needs to be figured out.
I’m in support of no Paypal for recipients. Letting recipients accumulate the full amount they need and have MicroGiving cut a check when their request is complete. For online donations I’m in support of setting up a Google Checkout for donors to contribute by credit/debit card. If the donor wishes s/he can attach a note saying how much they would like to contribute to each recipient or they can just let MG decide how to divide the contribution among recipients. There are many wish sites such as Wish Upon A Hero and Tree of Wishes that have paypal direct donation buttons. If recipients need to have the funds as they are raised then those sites would benefit them. Sites like Modest Needs and Fundable do not let you get funds until you have reached your goal and those sites help out with higher dollar, non-urgent needs. We see the higher dollar contributers on sites where the funds are witheld till they are raised. This says that donors don’t want their contributions used for anything other than the stated purpose. When donations trickle in to Paypal they are most often used for other purposes than the stated need. I know many of us here have needs over $500 and many of us have withdrawn funds when the goal was never reached because “something came up” That means the funds donors provided for that one need, were not applied to that one need and that really turns donors away.
I would like donors to feel that they are really making a difference because otherwise they will just send their donations to big charities knowing that big charities make sure the money goes exactly where it is suppose to go.
1. December 2009 at 5:50 am :
Ahh, Oh okay, I see, thank you. A big minus then, the paypal donate buttons. I didn’t really look at it that way. And your right, I agree, we should wait until we reach our goal until we request it. That’s what I’m going to do. Some people lose patience and they give up, that’s why I always tell them, don’t give up. Raising donations isn’t easy.