Has anyone successfully set up a Venmo account for their nonprofit to accept donations? We appear to have checked all of the boxes for verifying our status as a charity through PayPal but it seems they keep finding reasons to make it impossible for us to create an account. Our team has spent hours on the phone with support trying to solve the issue. Has anyone else gone through this process and have any tips or can share their experience?
Alternatively, besides cash donations, are there any other efficient ways to collect donations on-site at events? We host a lot of guided birding walks and field trips and would love an easy way for participants who wish to donate a few bucks to do so. Thanks in advance!
My Foundation has - I set it up but had to link it to my personal Venmo account. Not sure if you’ve gone that direction, but we’ve been using our Venmo account for about a year & a half without any issues. I did have to submit tax paperwork, etc. to clarify our nonprofit status.
Margo,
MNA doesn’t do a lot of personal fundraising, so we haven’t tried setting up a Venmo account. What I can say is that our experience with PayPal has been very similar. The problem we found with linking it to a personal account like Brandi suggested is that when that person leaves the organization, it is IMPOSSIBLE to change the “owner”. I submitted all the required documents 3 times over 2 years trying to change the owner information to our current ED… PayPal never made the change.
All that to say–I commiserate with you on your challenges.
Thank you for sharing this! I think we hit a snag with linking it to a personal account because the phone number didn’t match the org’s official phone number on the Venmo/PayPal Charity account. It was something bonkers that didn’t make sense. We’re trying other platforms now.
Ah, I’m not alone! The “ownership” piece has been difficult for us, too. I was the person trying to spearhead this project but Venmo/PayPal customer service wouldn’t even help me because I’m not the person who “owned” the account. Tricky stuff!
