How can a nonprofit set up recurring donations on PayPal?

November 13, 2018 1:38 PM

I give money to a tiny local charity. They used to be able to set up recurring donations on PayPal, but somehow have forgotten how to do so, and now I have to give manually each month, which causes logistical problems for me. I know that recurring PayPal donations are still technically possible because I see new initiatives from other nonprofits that have them. Do you know how I can make this happen for my tiny local charity?
posted by hungrytiger to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Do you have control of their PayPal account? It's unclear what position you're in.

Either way, the steps for them to set this up are clearly explained on the PayPal website.

https://www.paypal.com/us/brc/article/setting-up-recurring-payments-for-business
posted by humboldt32 at 1:56 PM on November 13, 2018

Paypal may have removed that option for your charity. Oddly enough this exact conversation came up fairly recently when I wanted to change my monthly subscription to Kingdom of Loathing from Amazon Pay to Paypal and the team at KoL said Paypal won't let them set up monthly payments and also won't tell them why.
posted by Julnyes at 2:32 PM on November 13, 2018

I have had a nonprofit tell me that they were too small for PayPal to be worthwhile. I wish some online financial services company would offer a secure simple "monthly payment to support a nonprofit" feature, at minimal cost to the nonprofit, even if it was a small nonprofit.
posted by Baeria at 2:48 PM on November 13, 2018

Could you just bill pay them every month through your bank account?

I do this when I want to donate to charities without joining the mailing list.
posted by aetg at 6:22 PM on November 13, 2018

Ah, I was assuming the little charity just couldn’t figure out the technology - it hadn’t occurrred to me that PayPal might have restricted their use. I guess I should set up bill pay. Thanks for your help, guys.
posted by hungrytiger at 7:03 PM on November 13, 2018