The Most Common Mistake Nonprofits Make When Choosing Personal Fundraising Software

Avoid the middleman.  With lots of options for personal fundraising software, nonprofits need to choose a vendor that gets their donations to them the most quickly and securely.  A surefire way to cause delays is to allow a software company to insert itself into the money trail that starts with the donor and ends with the nonprofit.

See http://www.firstgiving.com/Riding4Renal_CircaRigel

Like all fundraising campaigns, a personal fundraising campaign needs to generate as much revenue as  possible...without hurting cashflow.  The personal fundraising pages, the stories, etc... are all a means to an end - donations ASAP. 

In order to keep the money flowing quickly and securely, choose a vendor that can integrate their software with your own payment gateway and merchant account.  By doing this, you ensure that the money goes from the donor and DIRECTLY into your bank account.  This speeds things up and elminates any middlemen in the donation process.  Most payment gateways have robust API's so there is no reason for a software company to be handling your donations.  That's asking for trouble.

SWEET Fundraising Software supports the following payment gateways:

Sage Payments http://www.sagepayments.com/Default.aspx

Authorize.net http://www.authorize.net/

Cybersource http://www.cybersource.com/

Paypal Website Payments Standard https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-standard-overview-outside

Paypal Website Payments Pro https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside

Paypal Payflow PRO https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside

Google Checkout www.google.com/checkout

Linkpoint and First Data http://www.firstdata.com/linkpoint/

Chances are your nonprofit uses one of these gateways.  So when you choose a software vendor, choose one that faciltates the transfer of money to your nonprofit, not one that slows it down.

Comments

[jenn]

Good fundraising tips. I have done a lot of school fund raising and I wish that paypal worked for it... hate collecting money or not.

Jenn
http://www.momentsofelegance.com

[Nursing top]

Paypal is so useful. Great in money transactions and secured.