PayPal Nonprofit Donation Fees & Its Alternatives [Updated 2026]
In this article, we’ll explain the benefits of using Donorbox to accept PayPal donations and walk you through the steps to set it up.
Updated
![PayPal Nonprofit Donation Fees & Its Alternatives [Updated 2026]](https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PayPal-Nonprofit-Donation-Fees-Its-Alternatives-1.png.webp)
In this article, we’ll explain the benefits of using Donorbox to accept PayPal donations and walk you through the steps to set it up.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!PayPal is a trusted global brand and a popular choice for donors. Accepting PayPal donations is an easy way to increase donations, but it isn’t a free option. Like most payment gateways, PayPal deducts a fee from donations before funds are deposited in your organization’s PayPal Account.
What are the PayPal donation fees?
We’ll take you through this, explain the benefits of using Donorbox to accept PayPal donations and much more.
The updated rate for PayPal transaction fees for business accounts is 2.89% + $0.49 per transaction. But for registered charities, PayPal offers a discounted fee of 1.99% + $0.49. Learn more here.
Check the PayPal processing fees for specific donation amounts in this handy CheckYa PayPal Fee Calculator.
Please note that the fixed part in the above transaction fee is based on the currency received. Also, there’s an additional percentage-based fee of 1.50% for international donations.
Your nonprofit will need to confirm its charity status to be eligible for PayPal’s nonprofit fees. Learn more about registering your account on PayPal and confirming your charity status here.
With Donorbox, you can ask donors to cover the processing fees when making donations via PayPal and other payment methods. Research shows that 53.4% of donations are covered by donors when organizations enable this option on their donation form!
Donorbox also offers affordable platform fees and next-level form customization options to nonprofits using our OmniGive™ Donation Form – which is not available on PayPal. Our PayPal partnership enables you to accept donations via PayPal and Venmo while using all of Donorbox’s other features!
See how Crazy Love Africa collects PayPal and Venmo donations via their Donorbox donation form. They’ve also opted to ask donors to cover processing fees!
Start Accepting PayPal and Venmo Donations With Donorbox
Here are some of the benefits of collecting donations via PayPal:
While PayPal allows your organization to accept online donations, it isn’t optimized for nonprofits. Donor management isn’t possible if you’re only using PayPal. Plus, recurring donations are limited to the monthly interval.
A highly customizable donation form and donation page are crucial for scaling donations and donor engagement, but this is not attainable with PayPal.
It makes a difference to choose an all-in-one online fundraising platform like Donorbox that streamlines fundraising and provides a plethora of branding options for your donation forms and pages.
There are many reasons why nonprofits choose donation pages over PayPal donate buttons. The primary reason is the lack of customizations available for PayPal donate buttons.
To offer you the best of both worlds, we’ve partnered with PayPal to allow organizations to accept PayPal donations and take advantage of our fundraising and donor management features.
Check out our in-depth comparison video to see why Donorbox is a better solution for your fundraising needs than PayPal:
Start Fundraising With Donorbox
Donorbox allows donors to set up flexible recurring donations paid via PayPal — these include daily, weekly, bi-weekly, 1st and 15th, monthly, quarterly, or yearly options.
PayPal, on the other hand, only allows donors to set up monthly donations. For donors who want to give less often than this, the lack of flexible options can mean they only make a one-time donation.
See how Learning Lions is collecting donations to provide underprivileged people in Eastern Africa with technology skills using their Donorbox donation form. We love how they’ve included one-time and recurring giving options on their form!
Create a Recurring Donation Form
As mentioned earlier, Donorbox allows you to ask donors to cover credit card processing fees when making a donation via your form, so more of their contributions go directly to your cause.
When they opt in, donors will cover the 1.99% + $0.45 processing fee for PayPal donations, and the 2.95% Donorbox platform fee (3.95% for Events, Peer-to-Peer, and Memberships).
For Pro and Premium plans, the fee is even lower at 1.75% for features applicable at these levels, and only 2% for Events, Memberships, and Peer-to-Peer.
See how SHE for Girls asks donors to cover fees on their embedded Donorbox donation form:
Bonus Resource: Learn more about nonprofit donation processing in this guide.
With Donorbox, donations are sent straight to your organization’s bank account. If you’re fundraising using PayPal, you’ll need to transfer donations from your PayPal account to your bank account.
By removing this step, you’ll save time and effort while ensuring you have quick access to funds critical for keeping your mission moving forward.
With Donorbox, you can customize your donation receipts to thank supporters after they’ve donated. Custom receipts are also automatically sent after a gift is made to your cause, saving time and ensuring every donor is acknowledged while helping you remain tax-compliant.
Unfortunately, PayPal does not offer this functionality.
Donorbox connects with PayPal Checkout to give your donors a quick checkout experience.
It also integrates with PayPal One-Touch, allowing donors to stay logged into PayPal and move quickly through the checkout process. Your donors can fill out the necessary information, select PayPal for payment, and click the “Donate” button.
If they’re already logged into PayPal, the payment can be made with just one click, as shown below.
PayPal Checkout also allows your donors to use other quick payment options like Venmo. Donors can simply choose the option shown in the image below to make a quick donation to your nonprofit using their Venmo digital wallet.
Even donors using the desktop can use this option to donate. They’ll be shown a QR code that they can scan on their Venmo app to complete the payment.
With Donorbox, you don’t just get a simple and fast checkout process but also enjoy access to a plethora of fundraising and donor management features and multiple payment methods (other than PayPal).
And so much more! Explore all our features here and sign up today.
Once you’ve logged into your Donorbox account, click on Payment Processors under “Settings.”
Next, select “Connect PayPal.”
You’ll be taken to PayPal, from where you can enter your email address and country to log into your existing account or create a new one. Follow the prompts to complete your setup and connect PayPal to Donorbox.
That’s it! You can now accept PayPal donations via Donorbox.
Note: Donorbox automatically upgrades all new PayPal users to PayPal Checkout unless they’ve failed to complete the signup process or their country doesn’t support it.
Donorbox’s partnership with PayPal allows organizations like yours to accept mission-critical funds via PayPal and other payment methods. Our OmniGive donation form allows you to offer donors more than 22 payment methods, expanding your global reach and maximizing your fundraising potential.
Plus, you get to access our other powerful fundraising and donor management features and tools!
Sign up to start fundraising today.
Visit the rest of our Nonprofit Blog for more fundraising tips and insights. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter for exclusive fundraising content sent directly to your inbox!
You must have a PayPal business account to connect your PayPal with Donorbox. To start a PayPal business account, you must provide your legal name, email address, password, tax ID or social security number, business description, and business bank account details.
Yes, they do offer discounted rates for nonprofits. It is 1.99% + $0.45 per transaction with no monthly fees.
To avoid PayPal fees, you can sign up on Donorbox, which has an affordable platform fee of 2.95% for features included in our Standard plan, and 3.95% for Events, Memberships, and Peer-to-Peer at this level (which can be even lower if you opt for our Pro or Premium plans). Donorbox also gives you the option to let your donors cover the processing fees. Learn more about Donorbox’s plans and pricing here.
No. You can’t cover processing fees if you use PayPal as the donation system. But if you accept PayPal donations via Donorbox, you can always ask your donors to cover your processing fees.
You don’t get year-end tax receipts with PayPal. With Donorbox, you can get one-off and recurring donation receipts, as well as year-end receipts.
Donations on PayPal are one-time and monthly. With Donorbox, you can accept one-time, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual donations.
Raviraj heads the sales and marketing team at Donorbox. His growth-hacking abilities have helped Donorbox boost fundraising efforts for thousands of nonprofit organizations.
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