While PayPal offers some donation tools, there are many reasons why thousands of nonprofits prefer Donorbox. Your organization needs an all-in-one, powerful fundraising-focused platform that will offer you multiple ways to raise money, boost donations, and retain supporters. Donorbox does that, and it offers you much more - read on to explore all the reasons why Donorbox is your best option to fundraise!
You may be wondering what the differences are between Donorbox and PayPal donations.
While PayPal’s donation function may seem similar to Donorbox in some ways, we want to show you how Donorbox better caters to your nonprofit’s needs.
Watch this short video to understand how Donorbox is a better fundraising solution than PayPal. Or read on!
Donations on PayPal can be only one-time, monthly, and annually. These limited options might cause some supporters to only give once instead of setting up a recurring donation.
For example, many church nonprofits run membership programs and their church supporters would want to donate weekly, biweekly, or quarterly. But due to PayPal limitations, they can’t do so. This is why PayPal is not a good option for churches. Read more on how PayPal for churches can have some serious disadvantages.
At Donorbox, we understand the need for more flexibility when it comes to recurring donations. That’s why nonprofits who opt to use our fundraising platform can choose up to four of the following donation intervals: one-time, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. You can also choose a default interval and a preferred interval, which gets marked with a heart.
Recurring donors get their own Donor Portal to manage their donation plan at Donorbox. With the help of our impeccable donor management system, donors can also pause, cancel or resume donations, edit their card information, change a donation amount and even change the charge date of a donation. On the other hand, with PayPal, donors cannot increase donation amounts or pause or resume recurring plans – they can only cancel, which could result in losing recurring donors over time.
If you already have a PayPal account, we understand that you may want to stick to PayPal for convenience. That’s no problem because Donorbox uses PayPal as one of its payment processors. So, you can link your PayPal account to a Donorbox form and still benefit from our awesome checkout process.
All donor data will be collected upfront on the Donorbox form. Then, donors will be transferred to PayPal to complete the payment.
In addition to PayPal, donors can checkout using digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Venmo with Donorbox UltraSwift™ Pay. Our low-fee ACH bank payments offer a quick and secure way for donors to give with a lower fee.
With Donorbox, it’s now easier than ever for donors to contribute using their preferred payment method.
Donorbox aims to make the donation process as complete and straightforward as possible, while still ensuring nonprofits gather important insights and info from their donors.
Our donation forms have a wide variety of settings to customize them to your preference. Gather as much or as little information as you like. Also, ask unlimited custom questions and give donors simple ways to respond. In contrast, PayPal’s donation forms are much less customizable, so you end up with less info from your donors – and fewer insights.
For example, check out how The Alex House Project added a custom question to learn more about their marketing efforts. They customized the radio button response options to make it easy for donors to quickly respond.
Organizations that use Donorbox can ask their donors to cover the credit card processing fee. This covers the 2.2% + 30¢ credit card processing fee from Stripe or the 1.99% + 49¢ fee from Paypal (this fee can be reduced for registered nonprofits), as well as the 1.5% Donorbox platform fee.
With PayPal, you can ask your donors to increase their donation to help offset the cost of fees. But they can’t cover the entire fee.
With Donorbox, you can also ask donors to cover fees by default. This means more of their donation goes directly to your mission!
Here’s the step-by-step guide on how to ask your donors to cover the processing fee.
Donorbox’s checkout process is very straightforward to save your donors as much time as possible. But you can also effectively demonstrate how each donation level serves your mission.
Although you can set donation amounts for PayPal, too, you can’t describe what each level does for your important work. Therefore there’s less of a sense of urgency for donors to give more!
What do you think is more compelling to a donor? An option to give $100, or an option to give at a level that provides medical supplies for ten children? It’s all about demonstrating impact for your donors – and Donorbox helps you do it better.
Here’s another great reason to use Donorbox. When receiving donations through PayPal, the money first goes to your PayPal account and you then have to transfer it to your bank account. This adds extra processing time before the transfer is complete, delaying your access to the money you need.
Stripe is another payment processor that Donorbox uses. It deposits your donations directly into your bank account, giving you quick access to your funds.
This is so important for nonprofits with smaller budgets who need access to their funds right away! Never worry about paying for your next project because your donations are tied up.
While PayPal only provides a donation platform, Donorbox provides extended support, even after your donations have been made. The acknowledgement step of the donation cycle is such an important one to help cultivate one-time donors into repeat donors.
Both Donorbox and PayPal offer automatic donation receipts, but only Donorbox allows you to customize them. You can also add text, images, hyperlinks, and change fonts, colors, and sizes to match your branding. It’s especially helpful if you’d like your receipt to contain special info like legal terms and conditions.
Along with the automatic one-time and recurring donation receipts, Donorbox also has a year-end tax receipt feature. Specify your fiscal year, customize your receipt, and send your donor’s annual tax receipts. This is a great way to help them out during tax season and it’s an additional act of appreciation for their support.
Donorbox offers thousands of useful integrations to give even more functionality to your fundraising campaign.
And more!
Plus, thousands more through Zapier. Zapier builds connections between frequently used apps to automate your work so you can be more productive.
Donorbox has a host of added features that give you complete control over how your donation form works for you, including a fundraising thermometer to share your progress and encourage more support. You can also embed your thermometer in your website!
This shows donors how close you are to your goal and inspires more giving urgency. For example, if they want to give and see that you are only $100 away from your goal, they’re more likely to give that $100.
PayPal doesn’t have this feature, so creating that donor experience simply isn’t possible.
Sometimes donors don’t want to just give cash, and giving them as many options to donate as possible will be the key to securing more donations and boosting your contributed income.
Donors may choose to give stock or cryptocurrency donations to nonprofits to avoid paying capital gains tax (and therefore give more to your nonprofit) or simply because it’s easy. Some donors also may not have the liquid assets to give but can donate stock or crypto.
Donorbox’s integration with The Giving Block makes it so easy to accept crypto and stock donations right on your donation form. Note that you need a Pro or Premium account to use this feature.
Accept Stock and Crypto Donations
Here’s a short overview in table format explaining the difference between Donorbox vs Paypal [In-Depth Review]:
| Donorbox | Paypal |
|---|---|
| At Donorbox, nonprofits can accept one-time, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually recurring donations. | Donations on PayPal are limited to one-time, monthly, and annually. |
| With Donorbox, recurring donors get their own login to manage their donation plan. Donors can easily pause, cancel, change, or resume donations. | With PayPal, donors cannot increase donation amounts or pause & resume recurring plans. They can only cancel. |
| You can ask custom questions and give donors a simple way to respond. | In contrast, PayPal’s donation forms cannot be customized. |
| With Donorbox, you can ask donors to cover processing fees. | With Paypal, there's no option to cover the processing fees - only to increase donation amount to offset fees. |
| Donorbox provides suggested donation amounts, guiding your donors along the donation process and providing context. | PayPal donation amounts are customizable so you can't provide amount context. |
| Donorbox uses Stripe to deposit your donations directly into your bank account, giving you quicker access to your funds. | When receiving donations through PayPal, the money first goes to your PayPal account and you then have to transfer it to your bank account. This adds extra processing time, often causing delays. |
| Donorbox allows customized email receipts for every donation. | With PayPal, you don't have the option to customize donation receipts. |
| Along with one-time and recurring receipts, Donorbox also takes care of the year-end tax receipts. | PayPal does not offer the option to send year-end tax receipts. |
| Donorbox offers a ton of Integration capabilities such as Mailchimp, Salesforce, Double the Donation, Rock RMS, and thousands more through Zapier. | If you use PayPal, there's no option for integrations. |
| With the help of a fundraising thermometer, you can share your progress and encourage more support. | With PayPal, there is no ability to add fundraising thermometer. |
| With Pro or Premium accounts, accept stock and crypto donations. | No ability to accept stock and crypto donations. |
Donorbox is an affordable, easy-to-use, and powerful fundraising platform for nonprofits. Its recurring donation system will provide nonprofits with a predictable source of revenue stream. Donorbox is a one-stop solution for nonprofits. Features such as company donation matching, text-to-give, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer, and a donor management solution make Donorbox the favorite online donation platform for all nonprofit organizations.
There are many alternatives to PayPal for Nonprofits. Some of them are Donorbox, Fundly, Qgiv, and Donately.
Donorbox is 100% safe to use. We do not store any card or bank data. Credit card info is encrypted, tokenized, and safely stored with Stripe. Donorbox is also secured by SSL/TLS and is PCI compliant.
To enable recurring donations on Donorbox, go to your Donorbox account and select the campaign you wish to edit. From the donation form editor, simply check which four donation intervals you wish to include on your form. With Donorbox you can add the options for one-time, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually recurring donations. Here’s a guide on how to set it up.
PayPal only allows recurring payments monthly and annually. If you want a better alternative for recurring donations, Donorbox is the right software. With Donorbox you can allow donors to donate one-time, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Additionally, you can send customized email receipts and year-end tax-receipts to your donors.
Donorbox accepts various payment methods such as Credit Cards/Debit Cards, Apple Pay, low-fee ACH & SEPA bank transfers, Google Pay, PayPal, and more. Plus, Donorbox organizations with a Pro or Premium account can enable The Giving Block integration to accept stock and cryptocurrency donations.
The Donorbox Form Builder is a powerful web-based application to create beautifully customized forms, complete with your own branding and styling choices. Plus, tons of features help you every step of fundraising, from accepting donations online and in person to selling event tickets and more.
Donorbox outperforms PayPal by incorporating more useful features and functionality for nonprofits of any size looking to grow. We hope this guide helps you see the benefits of choosing Donorbox over PayPal.
For more fundraising how-tos, guides, and tips, check out the rest of our Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter to get the best of our blog delivered to your inbox every month!
Raviraj heads the sales and marketing team at Donorbox. His growth-hacking abilities have helped Donorbox boost fundraising efforts for thousands of nonprofit organizations.
Subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive the latest blogs, news, and more in your inbox.
Raj