Help setting up a non-profit's website
March 25, 2018 1:32 PM   Subscribe

I would like to set up a very simple website for my synagogue. At this point, and for the foreseeable future, what I really need is a donation form. If tax receipts can be auto-generated, even better.

This is not my area of expertise; I have no problem getting a domain, and, if the best option involves using a registrar other than the hosting company, hooking that up. If it gets much more complicated, I'll lean on members who do this kind of thing for a living – but I'd like to minimize that.

So I’m looking for help like: get x for the hosting, using y template and z option(s) for payment processing.

Just one page, with just the ability to collect donations. We don’t need a lot of bandwidth or storage space.

If there are easy options that also include a couple of email addresses, and/or a couple of easily updated pages for other uses, I wouldn’t be against that.

If you’ve done something similar, and can also ballpark prices* please help!
*especially payment processing. We're currently using PayPal for credit cards. It's… PayPal.
Thanks
posted by mhz to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
How much money does the synagogue have to pay for hosting? I set up a web page for a political campaign last year using SquareSpace, and their donation setup is good, and their website building is easy. I suggest using Stripe for dealing with the donations. I don't know if it can automatically generate tax receipts; that would be awesome. SquareSpace has got a couple of options for websites depending on how much eCommerce you want. Their "commerce" platform is $30/month but doesn't charge transaction fees (but Stripe takes 3%).

(If you can hire someone with web design experience to spend a couple hours making your website look nice beginning with the SquareSpace templates, that's probably worth doing; I hacked out a website pretty easily using one of their templates, but the volunteer who had some web design experience made my website a lot nicer looking, even still just using their templates.)

I'd switch from PayPal to Stripe anyway for payment processing, whichever way you go with web hosting and donations.
posted by leahwrenn at 1:52 PM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I bought a domain name off GoDaddy and used Weebly to build my very basic website and linked the two together. I just followed the directions Weebly gave me to do it. They have an e-commerce option so I assume there might be a way to get donations. On their pricing page looks like they take 3% per transaction. Weebly is a little clunkier than Squarespace or Wix, I think, but I went with it because it was cheapest. If you're getting the starter plan for the eCommerce aspect, they might get the domain for you so you don't have to do it through GoDaddy. I had already bought mine so it was moot. Wix and Squarespace are popular too though and might be worth looking into. With Weebly, I started with a free plan to see if I liked it and could build a site I was happy with, and then I just bought a plan once I decided I did.

Instead of PayPal, you could switch to Square. I believe their transaction fees are lower. I also believe it does everything PayPal does. I don't own a business and I only use the Square Cash app for exchanging money between friends, but I've heard good things about Square from those who use it.
posted by AppleTurnover at 6:32 PM on March 25, 2018


I use WordPress for my own projects, but always recommend Squarespace for friends and community projects. Jt’s, hands-down, the easiest to use, with beautiful layouts out of the box and all the features you need, including payment processing.
posted by third word on a random page at 11:46 PM on March 25, 2018


In terms of keeping track of donations, Stripe is much better than Square. Square is super-easy to use, but it’s hard to figure out who made the donation afterwords.
posted by leahwrenn at 7:42 PM on March 26, 2018


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