PayPal Giving Fund

September 26th, 2017
ea
The PayPal Giving Fund seems good enough that I feel like there must be a catch, but looking at it I think it's fine. So either there's something I'm missing, or we should be sending basically all large donations via the fund.

The idea is, PayPal maintains a 501c3 that you donate to, then they batch the donations and send them on to the charity you chose, and PayPal covers all transaction costs. If you're funding PayPal with a credit card, then you still get the associated rewards (cash back etc). There is administrative overhead for the recipient charity, similar to as if you had sent a check, so it doesn't make sense to do this for small donations, but for large ones it looks like this is a way to donate $10k and then get $150 back from your credit card via PayPal.

Charities have to sign up for this, and I noticed that the AMF has, so I wrote to them to ask what they thought of it. Rob wrote back:

Yes, it's a good way of giving as the fees are zero and the admin for us is light. It is on a par with donating via check and bank transfer.

Currently the AMF recommends check or bank transfer for amounts over $5k, so it sounds like that's the threshold to apply here as well.

So: is there a reason not to use this?

Referenced in:

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Ozy and Vasili Review Lilo and Stitch

Sometimes my seven-year-old, Vasili, wants to see some godawful movie that makes me want to melt my eyeballs out of my head.

via Thing of Things June 27, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

more     (via openring)