If you have a client that is a non-profit, group, or even for profit charity, there are many ways to use the Internet to collect donations.  The first one that comes to mind for most people is Paypal but there are a few others out there that are equally as trustworthy and maybe even simpler to deal with.

Facebook Causes is a great, graphical, interactive alternative for collecting donations online.  To collect donations for your client’s cause or effort, all you have to do is set up a Causes page and when someone donates, the payment is processed.  Causes is an easy, fun tool to use however the trickiest part of this may be making sure the organization you are setting up the Cause for is part of Great Nonprofits, a nonprofit directory, which is only tricky in that it can take some time and you will need to make sure your charity has a EIN, etc.  A processing fee of 4.75% will be taken from the donation by Great Nonprofits to cover administrative costs as they are the company that that administers the cutting and sending of checks. You may choose to cover this cost in an donation at the end of the year.  You are responsible for your own accounting and sending of receipts, etc.

Paypal has the reputation of being most secure payment gateway. Many vendors, independent sales people, and even artists and crafters depend on Paypal to process their payments.  This is mostly because Paypal offers a wide range of buttons that a user can put on a site to allow the customer/client one click ordering.  They do have a program which allows you to accept donations which has no fees and a selection of buttons to put on any site.  Though they don’t have a special donations center, if you’ve ever sold anything online which was paid for via Paypal and in the process generated a shipping label, receipt or invoice, you get an idea of what you can do with your donation page.  This may be why they don’t ask any additional fees – all the tools are already available to anyone who has a Paypal account.

Not unlike Facebook Causes but seen as an alternative to it is Razoo.  On Razoo, you set up a donation page here just like Causes and request donations for any nonprofit, charity, or cause you wish local or national – even if you or maybe your small group want to raise money on a small scale in the wake of a disaster like Sandy.  The big difference here may be that there is no fee – Razoo pays the fee. Something else that makes Razoo a great all in one shop for fundraising is that when a donation is made, Razzo automatically generates a gift receipt and sends it to the donor. They even will send you an end of year report on your cause or nonprofit fundraising effort.

Another interesting alternative is WePay.  WePay is a relatively new player in the automatic online payment industry and offers many of the same features such as invoicing, a selection of buttons to place on a commerce site and also a way to collect donations.  The biggest difference, and what will be an unexpected bonus for many merchants and nonprofits, is the ability to set up automatic withdrawals of funds that go to your chosen deposit source without having to go in and start the process each time like Paypal.  When integrated with the donations feature of WePay, your group or non-profit can have donations directly deposited. Wepay charges a fee for each donation collected.

All of these alternatives are great and do what they say they will.  When it comes down to choosing one, make sure it has all the bells and whistles you need and the fee – if any – fits in your fundraising budget.