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Feb 22.2012

Hi, my site that allows my members to setup a marathon profile page so that their friends and family can donate to them when they are running a marathon.

I need to store the donations (maybe in my PP account) and then pay the charity (who are already set up as charities on my site) if the person completes the marathon.

I also need to be able to refund all of the donators if the person decides to refund because they cannot run the marathon

1 – what type of paypal account should i set up

2 – what fees do i have to pay when the site receives donations from donators

3 – what fees does the donator have to pay when they are making a donation

4 – what fees are required when i need to refund all of the donators

5 – what fees are required when i need to transfer all of the donations to the chartiy

I am a little confused how i can manage the donations for each marathon user, so any help at all would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance

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@aj_nscFeb 22.2012 — 
  • 1. Website Payments Standard is easiest (and cheapest unless you expect a high monthly volume - over $3000)

  • 2. $0.30 + 2.9%/transactions

  • 3. nothing - all costs are incurred (and determined) by you

  • 4. nothing - although there is a time limit (60 days I believe from the original transaction?) after which the 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee will not be refunded.

  • 5. nothing - transfer all the funds directly into your bank account and then cut each charity a cheque.


    • Manage the donations by keeping a detailed record of who donated to what and how much in your database. Then, at the end (after the marathon) you can just say

    "select all transactions to charity Z that were successfully processed"

    You'll get a total like $4500 and then you simply cut that charity a $4500 cheque from your bank account (to which you deposited all of the PayPal money).
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    @oo7mlauthorFeb 23.2012 — Thanks a million for your help / input...

    Just one small questions, i understand that i can record the donation if it was from a member but what about users who need to donate that are not members (and do not want to join the site)
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    @aj_nscFeb 23.2012 — You don't have to record their personal information, they can remain as 'anonymous' donors as far as your concerned. If you ever need to refund their money (within the allowed time), then you can just go to PayPal and click refund next to their transaction and PayPal will refund it.
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    @oo7mlauthorFeb 23.2012 — Ok cool, but what if there are over 50 people who donate and 100 marathons ?
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    @aj_nscFeb 23.2012 — Ok cool, but what if there are over 50 people who donate and 100 marathons ?[/QUOTE]

    What difference does that make?
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    @oo7mlauthorFeb 23.2012 — i thought there would be an automated way of doing this... if only half the people run the marathon and each of the other 50 people who did not have 70 donators each, that's 50 X 70 = 3500 refunds that i need to complete by trying to find a refundable donator and then clicking the refund button on all 3500 of them
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    @aj_nscFeb 23.2012 — Well, in this case, you move to PayPal Website Payments Pro. It costs $35 (or is it 30?) a month plus the same transactions fees (but the % transactions fees get cheaper the larger the monthly volume you do).

    The biggest benefit of PayPal Website Payments Pro (other than the fact that you can process credit cards on your site, with an SSL) is that PayPal provides an authentication-required API.

    Basically, you can set up an application where you have all the transaction IDs of the donations to a certain runner - if that runner doesn't complete the marathon then you can have a button (in the administration area of your site - not public) where you can just push 'Refund' and your program will grab all the transaction IDs associated with this runner (which you should be storing in your database) and pass them to the PayPal API with your accout username, password, and signature saying 'refund these transactions please'.

    Voila! Solution for everything. ?
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    @oo7mlauthorFeb 23.2012 — Now that's what i am talking about ?

    I find the PayPal site quite poor in terms of what they offer... i will look into this now, thanks a million for your help
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