How To Set Up A PayPal Account On A Non-Profit Website

A good friend of mine, Rev Daniel Salameh, emailed me the other day and asked, "Tom, I know on the church website [you designed,] there is a link to donate. I feel I should set one up on my account, how would I go about doing that?"

Here is my answer for the benefit of anyone who wishes to do the same.

Prerequisites:

1. Your own website with access to the source code.
2. An established checking account.

What to Do:

1. Go to www.PayPal.com
2. Click on "Sign Up" at the top. Follow the instructions for setting up a "Premier" account or "Business" account (if your non-profit is registered with a government tax identification number).
3. PayPal will send you two small deposits within in the next few days to your checking account (all under $1, nothing to get excited over) for you to verify the ownership of the account. Once you've completed their verification process you are set up to receive payments to your PayPal account.
4. To accept payments on your site, like I did with http://www.lccvt.org/donations, you will now create the source code for the page(s) where this will be added. Log into your newly establish PayPal account. Go to "Merchant Services", then under "Create Buttons" select "Donate". PayPal allows some personalization to the payment button at this point. When done, click on "Create Button" at the bottom. You will be directed to a page that shows your payment button source code.
5. Copy and paste this code into the source code of the select on your site where you want this button to appear on your site. This step may be a bit more difficult if you are using a free webdesign service. If you get stumped, contact them or your site administrator for help in this area.
6. You're done!