Venmo for Nonprofit Donations

12 Reasons Why PayPal and Venmo Donations are Better on GiveCampus

If you’re not already using Venmo for donations, chances are you’re researching your options right now. Good for you—and great for your school. Digital wallets are increasingly popular across all demographics, and GiveCampus partner schools that accept mobile wallets see higher conversion rates (+2.36 percentage points) than those that don’t. Plus students are 3.6x more likely to make a gift via Venmo than other wallet options. 

So it should come as no surprise that every fundraising platform is suddenly offering a PayPal/Venmo integration. But if you’re looking to add these popular payment options to your online giving experience you should know that GiveCampus is different. So let’s set the record straight.

GiveCampus is the only educational fundraising platform that has a direct partnership with PayPal, the parent company for Venmo. As a result, we’ve been able to integrate the company’s mobile payment services in a way that’s truly seamless. What exactly does that mean and why should you care? It means that accepting PayPal and Venmo is not only easier for donors on GiveCampus, it’s easier for you and your frontline staff too. And here are a dozen reasons why you should care: 

1. The giving experience is consistent—no matter how donors pay

With GiveCampus, PayPal and Venmo are integrated seamlessly into the normal donor journey so the checkout experience is always consistent, fast, and frictionless—no matter how a donor chooses to make their gift. On other vendor platforms, donors may be redirected away from your giving form to complete payment, detracting from the community experience.

2. You’re automatically approved to accept PayPal and Venmo Donations 

With GiveCampus, your school doesn’t have to jump through hoops to start using Venmo for donations. On other platforms, you have to apply, get accepted, set up your account, and then link your account to your platform. With GiveCampus you’re good to go from day one.

3. Your school name appears in Venmo feeds with each gift

When donors see a name other than yours—a name they don’t recognize—it can erode trust and ultimately impact conversion. Consider this: Donors don’t know or care which vendor supplies your fundraising platform—they know and care about your institution and your mission. So it’s important that your school name appears in Venmo feeds, not your vendor’s name. 

4. Donors automatically get a gift confirmation and tax receipt

With other platforms, it’s often left up to you and your staff to manually send out confirmations and tax receipts—and that ends up taking time away from more meaningful work. Plus the margin of error is often greater when procedures like this are performed manually. Finally, if you fail to send a receipt, your donors may not feel like they made an official gift that counts—and they may not give again.

5. All funds get deposited directly into your school’s account

On other platforms, funds pass through the vendor’s bank account first. Put yourself in your donor’s shoes. Would you want your gift to go through a third party first before being sent to the institution you’re supporting? On GiveCampus, 100 percent of funds get deposited directly into your school’s bank account. Full stop.

6. PayPal and Venmo donations are included in donation and deposit reports—by default

On other platforms, you have to log in to PayPal and Venmo to download reports separately, and then reconcile them manually. On GiveCampus, we make it easy with reporting and analytics that capture the gift data you need by default.

7. Donation reporting includes the donor’s actual name (not just their Venmo account username)

On other fundraising platforms, you get the donor’s account username only and it’s on you to try to match it to your database. Once again, that’s more manual work for you and your team. Plus what happens when you can’t find a match?

8. Our reporting distinguishes PayPal donations from Venmo donations

On other platforms, you actually have to log in to PayPal to see if a donation was made using PayPal or Venmo. On GiveCampus, donations are clearly delineated in the reporting—which means ZERO extra steps for your team.

9. PayPal and Venmo refunds are managed right from the GiveCampus dashboard

On other platforms, refunds can only be initiated and managed by logging in to PayPal. On GiveCampus, you never have to leave the platform to issue or manage a refund. 

10. GiveCampus hosts other mobile wallets and crypto too

Giving donors more ways to pay is a best practice, so be sure to ask your current or prospective vendor if their platform supports other digital payment methods—like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and crypto. Many do not. GiveCampus does. 

Fun fact: In just one year, the share of GiveCampus partners that accept all four digital wallets (Venmo, PayPal, GooglePay, and ApplePay) jumped a whopping 73 percent.

11. GiveCampus supports donor-covered fees

Most platforms actually limit payment options for donor-covered fees, but not GiveCampus. In fact, giving donors the option to cover payment processing fees was one of the top requests from GiveCampus partner schools last year. So, by popular demand, we simply built it into our platform. Now you can easily offer your donors the option to pay the processing fees that your school would otherwise incur.

12. You don’t need to switch payment processors 

You don’t need to switch payment processors or do anything other than use GiveCampus. With some other vendors, you’re required to use a specific payment processor that may not be the one you already use, making reconciliation that much more challenging.

Summary

Using Venmo for donations should be easy—for you and your donors. And to us, the choice is clear. The GiveCampus PayPal/Venmo solution is the leading option for educational fundraising because it’s the only one built from the ground up expressly for school advancement teams. And it gets better every day because we listen to partner schools and use their feedback to inform platform enhancements. But don’t take our word for it, kick the tires for yourself. Schedule a demo with a member of our team so you can see firsthand exactly what sets our solution apart from other fundraising platforms.