Monthly recurring donations for healthcare crowdfunding?

July 20, 2021 4:28 PM

I'm helping a friend set up a crowdfunding campaign for living expenses following a health crisis. We want an easy way to accept recurring monthly donations, as well as one-time donations. Is there a crowdfunding platform for individuals that supports recurring monthly donations? Alternatively, is there a way to MacGyver this?

As my friend's expenses are ongoing over the six months to a year, and many of our friends do not have piles of money lying around, we'd like people to be able to make recurring monthly donations, as well as one-time donations.

From what I can tell, GoFundMe, Fundly, and Fundrazr do not support monthly donations. The platforms that do seem to be aimed at nonprofits rather than individuals. Someone suggested using Patreon, which seems like a hassle because it's a big stretch from their typical use case.

My best idea so far is using a Google Form to collect pledges, then manually sending out PayPal requests. Help me find an easier way!

posted by ottereroticist to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Would the folks who want to do monthly donations be willing to set it up from their own bank or credit union? Mine has a "bill pay" feature that would work for this purpose. Another thought is that you could do it as subscriptions (instead of "donations," which is indeed a non-profit thing) via PayPal, but that's still intended for businesses and will therefore have fees associated with it.
posted by teremala at 5:24 PM on July 20, 2021

I think the reason that GoFundMe et.al. don't do recurring, monthly donations is that those could be considered income, which ushers-in a host of tax issues.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:05 AM on July 21, 2021