PayPal/ Venmo for non-profits

Lara Couture · February 2023

Hello,

We are investigating adding Venmo as a payment option to BBNC. I understand that we need to create a PayPal business account. I've seen that there are options for non-profits so the fees are a bit lower. Does anyone have current experience with this? I have to break this down for our Business Office and Legal next week to get them to approve this process and want to make sure I have a good understanding.

I need to have this up and running by the beginning of March.

PayPal's website makes it appear that non-profits have to use their fundraising platform which I don't want to do. I also will need to present to the Business Office how reconciliation would work as it's my understanding that the disbursement doesn't come through Merchant Services.

Feel free to email me if it's easier lcouture@carrollu.edu

I GREATLY appreciate any feedback,

Lara

Bobby Steurer · February 2023

@Lara Couture
Really glad to see someone asking here, Lara. We've had a PayPal charitable account for quite some time, and it's mostly used as a medium to get our Bonfire.com t-shirt sales/donations funds to our bank account. For the past 3 weeks, my colleague and I have tried to create a Venmo charitable account, and it's been an absolute nightmare - to the point where yesterday I felt like I was actually going crazy. Venmo's support team is the WORST, so head's up before you dive in. There's issues in actually creating the account via the PayPal Business Tools link, and any time we've tried, the response is “Engineering is working on it. Please be patient.” I think the whole charitable account thing is pretty new for Venmo, and they've not worked out any of the kinks or released any features that would be beneficial to a nonprofit. Heck, you can't even access a business/charitable account through the website; it's all through the app right now.

Just FYI on my own experience. I also really wanted to have this up and going to kick off our events season in February with one of our dance marathons, but so far, I feel like I'm actually further backward than when I started. If you have better success than I did (or anyone else in the Community), I'd really like to know what you did! Ha!

Best of luck.

Lara Couture · February 2023

@Bobby Steurer That's super disappointing. I'll let you know how things go as we proceed. I'm trying to get more in-depth information from PayPal to meet PCI & security questions our IT have to ensure PayPal meets university policies. I had to talk to a sales rep to get the info and it hasn't been straight forward. He has me jumping through some hoops. ?

Stephanie Rockwell · July 2023

@Bobby Steurer Hi Bobby - your attempt for Venmo caught my eye! Have you had any success since February? We (Gonzaga University) have PayPal up and running and are hoping to add Venmo. Sounds like it may be possible! I'd love to pick your brain on your path to it so far. Thank you! (rockwell@gonzaga.edu).

Bobby Steurer · July 2023

@Stephanie Rockwell Hi Stephanie. No luck. I don't think their system is equipped to create charitable accounts yet, even though the option is there. Over the past several months, we'll occasionally try again but run into the same error every time. We've contacted their support team, and the response is always “Our engineers are working on it.” So, probably not going to happen. Sorry! If you have better luck, I'd love to know!

PayPal/ Venmo for non-profits

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