Jul 11
20
How To Properly Setup Your Web Donations Scheme
A vast majority of nonprofit organizations-from churches to environmental groups, animal rights activists to charities-require money in some form or another from their supporters. Therefore, acquiring web donations is the lifeblood that helps sustain these companies that actually have a significant Internet presence. Herein lies the problem: The worldwide web is quite infamous for its malware threats, false links, botnets, scams, and scary anonymity that allows hackers and online outlaws to manipulate the system and victimize all sorts of netizens (from the average user to the multinational conglomerate) at their behest. What’’s to stop the typical visitor in your nonprofit website to think, “Hmmm, this must be some sort of scam!” and leave post-haste without providing you a single cent in donations?
The Internet is the New Wild West
Even though the Internet is arguably a brave new frontier in human interaction and communication not seen since the rise of the telephone, it’’s also an untamed world full of thieves and criminals with superior skills (in computing, this time, just as the world of the legendary Wild West was filled with gun-slinging outlaws) who could victimize innocent users with scams, malware, and security threats at the drop of a hat. Even the different classifications of hackers (the malicious Black Hats versus the helpful White Hats) are taken from popular Western Cinema terms. You cannot blame visitors to be wary of sites that ask for money, even if they are charities or websites of nonprofit organizations. This issue goes double for nonprofit websites that haven”t established itself in the popular consciousness like Greenpeace or PETA.
Ergo, nonprofits should do everything they can to set their visitors at ease when it comes to asking for online donations. They can do this by using well-known companies like PayPal, WebMoney, or many other online payment service providers to handle their donations. They can also show that they”re trustworthy by the way they design their website. Nonprofit organizations should never resort to using misleading links, adware, or forced redirects when it comes to enticing their donors to donate. They should also, in plain language and with no ambiguity whatsoever, outline what their website is all about and what cause it’’s presently supporting. Donation software that uses cutting-edge public key encryption like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) are also viable means to win your donors” trust and safeguard their online cash transactions.