how to accept donations for projects? paypal?

Dieter@be · 2009-10-06 19:57:13

taken from http://lists.uzbl.org/pipermail/uzbl-de … 00363.html

Someone contacted me because he wanted to do a donation (small
financial contribution) to the uzbl project.
I guess we can expect more people to do this in the future, so we
should probably set up a "system" for this:
1) is there a hassle-free payment thing we can outsource this too?
paypal? I don't care they take a % on it, I mostly want it to be
painfree and accessible.
But there are always people who don't have/use paypal, so maybe i
should use a regular bank account? in Europe we have iban/bic numbers
for international free moneytransfers, but i'm not sure if this extends
to outside of europe.
2) I also haven't figured out yet how to use donation money. I
think our hosting and such will always remain free (now we host it on
mike's account, but there's always companies and such who are
opensource minded - such as my employer - who could take care of the
hosting if that ever becomes necessary). anyway, i guess we would save
the money and figure out later what to do with it. maybe give each
developer a t-shirt or something once we have enough money
or maybe we could pass through the money to some other project /
charity.

i would like your opinion, esp. about point 1. I talked to our overlord Aaron and he said "paypal is easy, and they dont charge really but it's not a bank, so the situation can be scary". But I don't expect much problems for a small scale project like uzbl.

nonetheless I don't like that you cannot donate if you don't have either visa or paypal. so maybe i should just open an extra (free) account at my bank. makes it easy for people with bank accounts in europe at least. not sure about the states.

I just found some interesting links on google as well.
will start reading this..
http://www.viget.com/advance/3-easy-way … onprofits/
http://www.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/ … 16&item=23

funkyou · 2009-10-07 19:27:36

Afaik PayPal ist a bank since 2007, but only in the EU. Probably a useless fact and doesnt make it less scary However, so far my experiences with them were ok and its almost painfree besides the fact that donators must have an account too...

Oh, and i would also check taxes and stuff, at least in germany its not an easy thing to receive donations if you are not a registered association or club or something. (another useless fact: more than 70% of all wordwide books about taxes are about the german tax system )

Dusty · 2009-10-07 19:49:03

Paypal is quick, painless, and easy. They're a bit of a ripoff when it comes to percentages, but not any more so than their alternatives. Almost everyone uses it, so they'll be more likely to donate if you have paypal. I use them for arch schwag.

I have no problem with paypal itself, but I despise their parent company (ebay), so I'm starting more and more to look at alternatives. I'm really pleased with alertpay, which I'm using for archbounty. The only drawback is that fewer people are signed up to it (but that can be a plus because they give you a referral bonus if people sign up because of you. ;-) )

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-06 19:57:13

how to accept donations for projects? paypal?

#2 2009-10-07 19:27:36

Re: how to accept donations for projects? paypal?

#3 2009-10-07 19:49:03

Re: how to accept donations for projects? paypal?

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