GoFundMe Charity vs. PayPal Payments Pro

GoFundMe is well suited for personal appeals where a story can be told and donors feel an immediate result or effect. It is less appropriate for larger mass appeals that are not targeted directly to a specific cause. For example, not good for companies to ask for funding for operating expenses.

Incentivized

Paypal is great for personal payments as well as business payments for ecommerce of for paying monthly memberships. It is a user friendly software that needs little expertise to get used to. For larger payments, the fees become high therefore it is more suitable for payments of upto few hundred dollars.

• Peer-to-peer fundraising
• Fundraising pages

Incentivized

• PayPal offers me the option of converting my currency deposited in my account to another currency, so I can complete all kinds of payments and send money to employees who are in another country for business reasons.
• The mobile phone application is too fast, I can make payments to my employees in a matter of seconds without having to wait for the web version to load.
• Scheduled payments are great. PayPal allows me to add a list of contacts to my PayPal Business account, and after adding the contacts, I can schedule payments for a specific day and time. It's easier to make automated payroll payments with PayPal.

Incentivized

• Need a clearer picture of your campaign status, especially around publishing (making it live).
• Processing rates are not horrible but not great either - If we used our own processor our fees would be cut in half.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the UX flow would not deliver the customer back to our site, leaving orders in limbo "Pre-approved" status. The customer would call days later asking why we hadn't shipped it.
• The PayPal logo on the checkout page can be kind of large and obtrusive.
• They mention new features and programs on their login page, but it's hard to find any details on them deeper in the software.

Incentivized

GoFundMe is very easy to use and does a great job allowing us to share insights and stories to leave a lasting impression on donors. From setting up the account to ending the appeal, the entire process has been very user-friendly. I'm very impressed with the experience so far and plan to continue using it for future campaigns.

Incentivized

Crowdrise has been great with their customer support. They have always been helpful and available. They also have several resources on their website that has been useful to other areas of our non-profit. Their relatability has been positive for us and has made us feel taken care of and considered.

Incentivized

Customer service representatives were unable to explain why customer in Australia were unable to make payments using our link. It turned out that customers in Australia must create an account. PayPal's user interface did not reveal this to our customers in Australia. There was plenty about this issue appearing in online forums and PayPal customer service couldn't explain this. This change in PayPal's usability happened between April and May of 2021 and was done without notice to vendors (like us).

Incentivized

Since GFM was selected for us I can't give the rationale behind that. However, I do think that Qgiv and Salsa are more internally user-friendly and provide at least the same amount of functionality. That being said, the other two (I think) require CRMs to use whereas GFM can just integrate with others, making it a better choice for one-off campaigning.

Incentivized

I don't think there's really any competition here. There's Venmo (also owned by PayPal) who is now offering business accounts, but it still isn't quite the same. The closest thing in terms of ease of use would be Apple Pay or Google Pay (and there are a handful of others out there, but we offer Apple and Google Pay). As a business, I prefer Apple or Google Pay to PayPal Payments, but we offer either Google or Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit card options and PayPal is always right up there with credit cards. I don't foresee us ever getting rid of PayPal Payments as an option, but we do try to only offer it on request for higher ticket items or high dollar installment purchases.

Incentivized

• Brought in new donors from outside our solicitation area.
• Appeals to younger audiences.
• Great way to include client testimonials and stories.

Incentivized

• Our daily revenue has been increased when started PayPal Payments as the payment gateway.
• Refund rate and recurring revenue is stable and disputes are handled properly.
• Forex Fluctuations is controlled and solved the buying experience for few users.
• Solved problem for different currencies and retained our users.

Incentivized